by Amparo Ortiz
“The press conference is scheduled for eight in the morning, Dubai time,” says a deflated Director Sandhar. “You have to give your speech in front of protesters. Do you have any questions?”
I need some good news before I smash something. “Did President Turner manage to track the Sire tonight?”
“No. Since he was unconscious, he couldn’t use the curse to his advantage in time. We’re hoping to try tracking him again when the president is feeling stronger.”
I’m dying to unleash a flurry of swear words. This is a lot of pressure on President Turner. And he can only locate one of the bad guys. Granted, it’s the Big Bad, but his lapdogs would still be free. There’s nothing the president can do to find Takeshi, much less Randall.
“Director,” I ask, “who really is the boy named Randall?”
He grows a sickly shade of pale within seconds. He’s fidgeting, too. His discomfort makes me uncomfortable, but I don’t regret asking him. It’s time I got my answer.
“I’m afraid we can’t discuss that at this time,” a soft-spoken Agent Horowitz says.
“And when would be a good time? Should I make an appointment?” I turn to Director Sandhar again. “I know he’s not your son. My best friend told me about Hari’s passing, and as sorry as I am for your loss, I also deserve to understand why the hell that vampire wannabe keeps calling you ‘Dad.’ Especially since he’s working for the dragon who’s trying to manipulate me.”
Director Sandhar whispers, “You know about Hari?”
If he’s trying to make me feel bad, it’s not working. “Yeah. Now who’s Randall?”
“Lana. Enough.” A blizzard would be warmer than Agent Horowitz’s tone.
“She’s right, Sienna … She’s right …” Director Sandhar sits back, inhaling like it’s his absolute last breath. “Randall Wiggins was born nineteen years ago in Ravensworth Penitentiary. He’s the son of inmate Grace Wiggins. Are you familiar with her?”
“Edward Barnes’s last arrest before his death,” I say.
“Yes. Her arrival to the prison was rather uneventful, but after a standard physical evaluation three months later, it was discovered that Grace Wiggins was pregnant.”
So he really isn’t Randall’s father. Good. “Why wasn’t her pregnancy ever on the news?”
“Because of the circumstances surrounding it. Despite being imprisoned for three months, Grace’s pregnancy was six days old. She’d been locked in solitary at all times, except for medical evaluations. She wasn’t allowed visitors. Her child’s conception remains a mystery.”
Okay. Weird. “Did you do a DNA test on Randall after his birth?”
Director Sandhar lowers his head. “He has no traces of his father’s genetic makeup. He has only his mother’s. Randall was born a Gold Wand wizard from a Regular’s womb.”
That’s impossible. Regulars can’t have magical children unless they mate with a wizard or a witch. I don’t know which is scarier: the fact that Randall appears not to have been fathered by anyone or that he was born a Gold Wand instead of leveling up like the rest of his kind.
“So … why does he keep calling you ‘Dad’?”
Director Sandhar is even paler than he was a few minutes ago. “We waited six weeks before bringing him to the department. Our mission was to study him. Randall was kept in a sealed chamber, watched and cared for at all times. Our previous director assigned me to the case. The other agents in charge of Randall’s care and observation would hand me notes on his progress, from crawling to walking to talking in full sentences, and I’d sign on the dotted line to ensure the work was being done. For six years, this went on without a hitch.”
My jaw falls. “You kept him locked up for six years?”
Director Sandhar nods to Agent Horowitz. “Show her.”
Agent Horowitz pulls out her Recorder. She activates it with her voice. “Access granted.” Instead of breaking apart, the Recorder’s shards become a screen.
A six-year-old Randall is in a white room. There’s no furniture except the metal chair he’s sitting on. There are dark circles under his eyes. Despite his angelic face, he’s giving the camera the kind of look that suggests he’d like to pour flesh-eating acid on whoever crosses him.
“When is my dad coming home?” he asks someone off camera.
“Your dad?” a woman answers him. “Who’s your dad, Randall?”
“The man who brings me flowers.”
A beat, then the woman says, “Randall, no one brings you flowers.”
“My dad brings me flowers. He leaves them for me in the vase outside. I see him through the glass walls.”
There’s a sigh of disappointment, as if the female agent had been expecting Randall to confess something entirely different. “The man who changes the flowers after they’re dead?”
“Yes. He’s my dad.”
“No, Randall. That’s not your father. That’s Agent Sandhar.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“I’m sorry, Randall. You can’t.” The woman jots something down with a sharp pencil.
Randall watches her without blinking. Now it’s the look of someone skinning their victim alive, keeping them awake through the whole process, living for their screams.
A golden shimmer flashes in his eyes.
POP!
Blood splatters Randall’s shirt, the bottom of his chin. He doesn’t wipe it off.
The woman’s shrieks ring out across the chamber. There’s a loud thud, as if she’s fallen to the floor. Despite her agony, Randall is the epitome of inner peace.
“He performed such strong magic without a wand?” I whisper.
“Yes.” A squirming Agent Horowitz freezes the image on a bloody Randall. “He gouged her eyes out. She died before we could heal her.”
I have a sudden need to take five hundred showers. “Jesus Christ …”
“Our previous director didn’t want to punish Randall. Instead, he thought we could use him to our advantage,” Director Sandhar says. “Randall was supposed to be the bureau’s secret weapon. I opposed this plan, but I started visiting Randall at the director’s request. I’d stay with him for hours, playing with his action figures, talking about the world I thought he’d never see. Randall continued to call me his father. It didn’t matter how many times I corrected him. He stopped using his magic for terrible things … at least he did for the next ten years.”
This is wild. “He worked for you until he was sixteen?”
“He helped whenever he was needed. Most of the time, he tracked criminals and their lairs. He would design traps for them, too. Complicated, intricate traps built from the strongest Gold magic on record. Randall used to call them his ‘skullpits.’ Those were his specialty.”
“And when did he go full regalia against you all?”
He falls silent.
Then he tells Agent Horowitz, “Please show her the last day.”
She taps her Recorder twice, which makes the image warp into fast-forward. There are several glimpses of Sandhar and Randall together in the white chamber. Randall gets taller and less baby faced with each frame. The one constant is his smile. I see them coming and going from the chamber, probably to those secret missions and traps Randall helped the bureau with.
The footage stops on a sixteen-year-old Randall towering over Director Sandhar:
“Why are you abandoning me like this?! Why can’t I go with you?!”
“Randall, please stop yelling. I’m not abandoning you. This is just a brief trip. There are things I must take care of back in New Delhi. Like I said, I’ll be back in a few months.”
“You’re taking him, aren’t you? He gets to go with you while I rot here!”
Director Sandhar furrows his brow. “Whom are you talking about?”
“That stupid little boy!” Randall circles the chamber once, pulling at his hair, kicking at the walls. He’s in full-blown meltdown mode. “He’s the one you really love, isn’t he? You never cared about me! I’m just some
weapon to you!” Randall turns his back on Director Sandhar. “You’re abandoning me because you don’t care!”
“Please calm down, Randall. Can you do that for me?” Director Sandhar retrieves his wand from his coat. He aims it at Randall’s back. “Everything will be all right.”
Randall whips around and looks at the wand. He screams out in blind rage.
The glass walls shatter into a storm of knives. Director Sandhar crumples onto the floor, losing his grip on his wand. The world around him is chaos.
The image fades to black.
“Randall broke out of the bureau,” says Director Sandhar. “Eleven agents lost their lives that night. When I regained consciousness, I wondered why he’d left me unharmed. Then I saw the missed calls from my wife.” He’s deep in thought. “Have you heard of Dragonshade?”
Papi’s taught me all about this. “That’s a poison, right?”
“It is. Do you know where it comes from?”
“It’s dragon’s blood. Sick dragon’s blood. Two Un-Bonded Fire Drakes had been fighting in England back in the 1800s. The one who lost sustained tons of bite wounds. One of the wounds got infected, creating a sort of self-destructing virus. The dragon died five days later. Its corpse is preserved in a British lab, but smugglers stole batches of its blood years ago.”
“The bureau recovered most of it,” says Director Sandhar. “A small portion fell into the hands of Grace Wiggins. She used Dragonshade to paralyze her victims. That’s how she was able to behead three witches without retaliation. Dragonshade strips magical beings of their abilities prior to killing them. Dragons die in five days. Humans last three. Randall had stolen a vial of Dragonshade from one of our evidence vaults. No one knew it was missing until he escaped. And they knew it because I told them.” He clears his throat as if he’s keeping tears at bay. “When I arrived home, my nine-year-old son, Hari, was lying on my living-room floor. He was paralyzed from multiple stab wounds. All were dripping with Dragonshade.”
His confession sends me spiraling. It was cruel of the bureau to keep Randall in captivity and use him as a weapon for sixteen years. What kind of law-abiding organization snatches a six-week-old baby from his mother and turns him into a soldier? Then I remember how Hari Sandhar is dead because of Randall. Dragonshade has no cure. It kills without haste. Randall chose to end a little boy’s life. He acted out of spite instead of running away in search of a better future.
“Did you have to end Hari’s suffering?” I ask.
Director Sandhar gives me a simple nod.
I’m as speechless as he is. His son never deserved to die like this, but Randall never deserved to live the way he lived, either. Somehow, though, I manage a soft, “I’m sorry.”
“Randall disappeared after that day. Completely off the grid for three years,” Agent Horowitz says. “He hadn’t been seen until the incident at Ciudad Juárez.”
And now I can’t unsee him.
Headmaster Sykes joins us with a tired smile. It doesn’t erase the deadness in his drooping eyes. His steps are snail slow, the floorboards creaking as he plods along. “Russell wants you all to know he’ll be at the press conference tomorrow morning.” He sits beside me. “He’s getting some much-needed rest, but he’s determined to stand at your side for what you must do, Ms. Torres. I’d also like to apologize for bringing you here under false pretenses.”
“Oh no, I understand. I would’ve done the same.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” the headmaster insists. “Please get home safely, Ms. Torres. Russell and I will see you at the press conference. Thank you for being here.”
After he hugs me goodbye, Agent Horowitz preps my Transport back to Dubai. I need to get out of this place drenched in nightmares. Deep down, I know it’s useless. Tomorrow I won’t just belong to the monsters.
I will become one of them.
Prior to his flourishing career as an agent for the bureau’s Department of Magical Investigations, Edward Barnes had been an aspiring dragon anatomist. He’d begun to pursue his degree at the University of Cambridge, but he dropped out after one year. He then signed up for the bureau’s Special Agent Recruitment Program and passed their rigorous examinations. Barnes spent the next ten years of his life hunting down the world’s most dangerous criminals until his own steed betrayed him. Or had Barnes somehow betrayed him first? The cause for the Bond’s disruption is unclear, but one thing is certain: No one does revenge bloodier than the Sire.
—Transcript from a TV episode of The Bureau Files: Unsolved Magical Mysteries
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THERE’S A STAGE FOR ME OUTSIDE OF THE BLAZEWRATH STADIUM.
It has a glass podium with dozens of microphones and a stage banner in the back. The banner is covered in a delicate white sheet, with the IBF logo plastered on its upper half.
Scotland’s match against Portugal will take place after my press conference. Reporters have been settled into a cordoned section with folding chairs. They’re close enough to hear what I’m going to say, but they won’t block the protesters’ view of me. No one has been told what my press conference is about. My teammates spent the whole night by my side in comforting silence. Director Sandhar told them everything except for Randall’s past. I filled them in after he left, though. This morning, they sit with me in the living room, waiting for our car to arrive.
“How are you feeling, Lana?” Héctor asks.
All I do is shrug. The Sire’s speech is still in my pocket, weighing me down.
“This is so messed up,” Luis says. “Can you imagine if Lana’s only the beginning? You think he’ll make the rest of us talk to the press, too?”
“So what if he does? We talk to the press and move on,” Victoria says.
Héctor’s less charmed by the thought. “That doesn’t mean we can’t hate doing it.”
“What does it matter how you feel? It won’t make a difference to the Sire. Besides, none of us came here to get political. We’re here to play a game. It’s very important not to lose sight of that.” Victoria nods to me. “Say whatever he wants you to say.”
I pretend I haven’t heard her. If I open my mouth, the prospect of yet another tone-deaf rant from Victoria is high. The last thing I need is her slamming me off the rails with her ridiculousness. Whether I hate the speech or not, I still have to give the stupid thing.
Génesis speaks on my behalf. “Victoria, some of us give a damn about the people dying out there. Some of us care about Lana’s free will, too. This speech is gross. Not because she’s siding with the IBF and the bureau. She’s being manipulated into giving her support.”
“She doesn’t have a choice,” Victoria says through gritted teeth.
They keep going at it, with Héctor and Edwin joining in. The people who thought I’d been dragging them down are now worried about me? Or maybe learning the truth about the Cup desensitized me to hypocrisy. I guess it’s for the best. Something bigger than team drama has taken up residence in my headspace, and that’s how it should remain.
Victoria’s right. I don’t have a choice.
Once again, I think of my mother. She’d rather have me betray my morals than watch the Sire rip my insides out. Papi and Samira would say the same thing, too.
But what if there’s a way I can still belong to myself?
“Good to see you all.” President Turner walks into the house. I hadn’t noticed that he and Headmaster Sykes had arrived. His white suit is as posh as ever. His salmon-pink tie matches his pocket square. That salesman-of-the-month smile is still intact, but his eyes are sunken and tinged red. “Forgive my appearance. Rough night at chess club.”
We are all rendered speechless. Not even Victoria says a peep.
“Mr. President, should you be attending this press conference?” a worried Joaquín asks.
“I should not, but I still have to be there,” the president replies. He takes a shaky step toward me, still putting on his fake good mood. “Shall we, Ms. Torres?”
&nb
sp; “Let’s go.”
I rise without meeting his weary gaze. When nobody’s looking, I yank the Sire’s speech from my tracksuit’s pocket and toss it at the trash bin. The page lands a couple of feet away.
I pick it up again, shoving it into the trash bin before leaving the house.
SAYURI ENDO HOLDS UP HER NO MORE BLOOD SIGN AS I’M LED TO the side of the stage.
While other protesters cut me into pieces with their hardened glares, she’s trying to crack my code. I wish I could tell her what her son did last night. How he stood by while an innocent man was held hostage and almost killed in order to bribe me.
“I’ll introduce you in a few minutes, Ms. Torres,” says Ambassador Haddad as he shakes my hand. “Is there anything else you need for this mystery speech?”
I ponder his question while Noora snaps pictures. Reporters love quotes. Newspapers love blowing up quotes into headlines and captions. The Sire’s expecting a speech, but the most important thing is the message itself.
“Do you have a black marker I could borrow?” I ask.
“We can certainly arrange that.” He leaves to speak with a staff member, who makes a black marker appear with his Silver wand. The ambassador then hands it over to me.
After I thank him, he escorts me to Noora, who asks if she can take solo shots. I pose with my fists on my waist. President Turner, Headmaster Sykes, Manny, Joaquín, and a newly arrived Director Sandhar chat a bit farther away from the stage. They’re too busy checking up on President Turner to notice the black marker in my hand.
At 8:00 a.m. sharp, Ambassador Haddad introduces me to the crowd. I walk onstage with my head held high. Flashes go off as I shake Ambassador Haddad’s hand again. He leaves me to join the others on the ground. I get to the podium, but it’s too bright to make out any shapes other than dancing stars. The protesters are silent. So are the reporters. Then the flashing lights stop.
I uncap the marker and face the huge stage banner behind me. It’s a white backdrop with the IBF logo on the upper right corner. Everything else is blank. I make each letter big enough for the crowd to see. Then I face the cameras again, resolute, as everyone reads my message: