The Returned

by Bishop O'Connell

  Caitlin and Edward exchanged a look.

  “What exactly would you have us do?” One asked. “We’re doing the best we can with the situation we’re in.”

  Caitlin thought about that. He was right, and it didn’t sit well with her. What other options were there? She and Edward couldn’t singlehandedly tackle every issue like this that arose. That’s when she realized that neither she nor Edward had ever spoken of what they were going to do if they found the person responsible. Would they kill them? Talk them down? What if the perpetrator had in fact been duped and it all continued? They’d be responsible for every person who died after that.

  “It doesn’t taste good, does it?” One asked.

  “So you find the one responsible,” Edward said. “Are there any systems in place to ensure you have the right person? What if there are extenuating circumstances?”

  “We make our decision based on the best evidence we have,” One said. “We have a special court in place for this situation.” He looked at Caitlin. “And yes, it’s secret, because it has to be. I’d like to say it’s foolproof, but we both know that’s impossible. But as to your second question, if we can help them and return them to their lives, we will.”

  “Like you tried to help me?” Wraith said from behind One, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, which was entirely possible with her.

  Caitlin could see the comment cut One, though he showed it for only a moment.

  “I’ve said all I came to,” he said and stood.

  Caitlin was sure he wanted to say something else.

  He made to leave but stopped and turned to Wraith. “It might not seem like it, but we sincerely did try to help.”

  Was that genuine remorse in his eyes?

  “Does that include sending your men to alter the memories of innocent kids?” Wraith asked. “And sending me in to destroy a group you didn’t have the balls or the firepower to get rid of yourself?”

  Caitlin’s mouth fell open, and all the sympathy she’d been building for One vanished.

  “We don’t need or want that kind of help,” Wraith said.

  “Enjoy your breakfast,” One said, then walked away.

  “Tell Four I’ll see him around,” Wraith said.

  One didn’t answer. He just kept walking and left the restaurant.

  Caitlin and Edward shared another look, and again, she knew they were both thinking the same thing. Had the government really intentionally sent Wraith, a teenager who at the time was suffering horrible mental instability, to confront the Order?

  “Are you going to eat that bacon?” Wraith asked after sitting down.

  Caitlin blinked. “What?” She shook her head and pushed her plate toward Wraith. “Help yourself.”

  Wraith picked up a couple of pieces and began munching.

  “What happened to your hand?” Caitlin asked, noticing the dóú craiceann bandage.

  “Tried to juggle near-molten metal without my asbestos gloves,” she said and waved the comment away. “I’m fine. Brigid patched me up.” She looked around. “We have more important things to go over though.”

  “Your field trip bore fruit, then?” Edward asked.

  “Yeah, and not all of it is sweet and tasty.” She looked over the table and the chair she was sitting in, the same One had used. “You think he left a bug?”

  “It’s not paranoia if everyone really is out to get you,” Caitlin said.

  “Actually, it is,” Edward said. “It’s just justified.” He looked at Wraith. “And I didn’t see him touch the table or feel him drop any magic, but . . . ”

  Wraith lowered her goggles and looked over the table and chair again.

  “Subtle,” Edward said, looking around.

  Caitlin noticed a few people staring, though they returned to their food after just a moment.

  “Does anything about me say ‘blend in’ to you, Doc?” Wraith asked.

  Caitlin just smiled, and she wondered how Fiona was going to be as a teenager.

  “It looks clean,” Wraith said and pushed the goggles onto her head. “Let me take a precaution though.”

  Caitlin felt the tension in the air like when Edward used magic, but this felt different. A gentle buzzing, almost unnoticeable, started in Caitlin’s ears.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “I call it a muffliato spell,” Wraith said.

  “Like from Harry Potter?” Edward asked.

  Wraith shrugged. “Some of the stuff from those books has a basis in reality, at least in theory. Though I just made the air around us work in such a way that it doesn’t transfer the vibrations of sound beyond a certain perimeter. Not quite the same, but—”

  Caitlin cleared her throat.

  “Sorry,” Wraith said and shook her head. “I didn’t get any sleep last night, and I’m running on a lot of coffee. Makes me kind of ADD.”

  “Are you okay?” Caitlin asked.

  Wraith nodded as she poured herself a cup of coffee from the pitcher on the table and added a small mountain of sugar and cream before taking a big swallow. “I’m good.”

  Edward and Caitlin just looked at her expectantly.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Wraith swallowed the coffee and sighed. It was good, and the flavor of bacon in her mouth mixed with it so nicely. When she looked up, Edward and Caitlin were staring at her.

  “Oh right, sorry,” she said again. “I didn’t get everything, not even close, but I got a lot. Brigid has copies of what I did get and is sending everything on to Dante.”

  She filled them in on the details of her adventure, leaving out the parts that would make the parental side of them go apoplectic, and gave them a CliffsNotes version of what she learned.

  “Starting sometime in early World War II,” she began, “troops started reporting back weird stories of Nazi officers who were able to use magic.” She shrugged. “Obviously they didn’t call it that, but that’s what it was. Needless to say, this freaked the hell out of the American and British bigwigs. Once they figured out it wasn’t just some trick, they started researching it.”

  “Researching magic?” Edward asked.

  Wraith nodded. “And anyone who could use it. They used some of those crappy psychic tests you hear about, predicting cards and stuff, but had some others that weren’t so bad. They found some people with real talent, but not many; seven, to be exact. Those troops were trained, put into a unit, and sent out to confront the Nazis. Some of those with lesser talent were put in other mundane units as small-level backup, but the seven were the key members.”

  “Not that I don’t love histories,” Edward said, “or that I don’t want to hear this all at some point, but could you maybe focus on the situation at hand?”

  “Chill, Doc,” Wraith said. “I don’t think the modern stuff makes sense without the history lesson.” She took another drink of the awesome coffee, then stole a piece of sausage from Edward’s plate and ate it.

  “Help yourself,” he said.

  Caitlin just started eating.

  “Where was I?” Wraith asked. “Oh, right. So it turned out the stuff about Hitler looking for supernatural artifacts and such was true. This group, who were called the OSS Seven, was pretty effective and helped turn the tide of the war. When the war ended, the allied nations started fighting over what the Nazis had collected.”

  “I can imagine,” Edward said.

  Wraith smiled. “Well, the Brits and Americans conned a lot away from the Russians, who didn’t really know what they had or didn’t care. And one of the items the Americans got was a collection of spell books that supposedly belonged to King Solomon.”

  “The cut-a-baby-in-half King Solomon?” Caitlin asked.

  “Same dude,” Wraith said. “And it was apparently good stuff, because after that, they were called the Legion of Solomon. Fast-forward a little, and during peacetime the military starts really looking for people with magic. They do tests and experiments all through the fifties and sixties, looking for pe
ople with talent and even seeing if they could give it to people.” She took another bite of sausage.

  “Like what the Order was doing,” Caitlin said.

  Wraith nodded. “Exactly. Did you ever hear about the CIA mind-control studies in the sixties?”

  “MK Ultra?” Caitlin asked.

  “Yep. That whole thing was actually one of their attempts to give power to mundane people. Apparently some of the Order had infiltrated the Legion, and they stole some of their ideas. That’s when the government freaked out and started hunting the Order. It was like a little cold war for years. That’s on top of the actual military, counter-magic support they’ve done in every major conflict since World War II, all without ever being discovered.”

  “And I lived so long without succumbing to conspiracy theories,” Caitlin said.

  “This one is helped by the fact that if anyone found out about it, they wouldn’t believe it,” Wraith said. “This is just slightly more believable than the conspiracy about lizard people secretly running the world by posing as humans—” Her mind spun. “Holy crap, you think that might be real too?”

  “Let’s just focus on one terrifying, shadowy conspiracy at a time, okay?” Edward asked. “I’m not even sure that the military can operate domestically without declaring martial law.”

  “They got loaned to Homeland Security,” Wraith said. “And for the most part they only go after the Order, mostly because the number of people who can use magic is so freaking small—and so lacking in power—they don’t need to worry about it.” She drank the last of the coffee and refilled her cup.

  “Until the Order started turning slinger kids loose after souping-up their power,” Caitlin said.

  “Bingo,” Wraith said. “Apparently I’m sort of the magnum opus of the Order’s evilness—and I feel so freaking honored—but there have been hundreds of kids with enough power to get noticed and cause damage.”

  “I’m not going to like this next part, am I?” Caitlin asked.

  Wraith shook her head. “The Legion started grabbing those kids off the street,” she said and reminded herself to ease up her grip on the mug, lest she break it. “Apparently in Seattle the process was this: The Order grabbed fifties and slingers. They murdered the changelings, bound the souls to slingers to enhance their power, and, as a bonus, fuck with their heads. Then they turned them loose on the world. That’s when the Legion steps in. They use the same sweet-and-cuddly tactic of snatching kids off the street. Only now it’s those slinger kids who’ve been warped by the Order. The Legion tried to undo what was done. It worked in some cases, but a lot of the time it just messed up the kids even more.” She shrugged. “In most cases—assuming the slingers survived—the power the Order gave them was removed. But I didn’t get anything about how the Legion does it. I don’t know if they’re releasing or killing the bound souls—or something worse.”

  “I don’t think someone could make something like this up,” Caitlin said.

  “They’d have to be pretty twisted,” Wraith said. “I’m not even sure the Legion knows what they were doing, just that it was working. I sincerely hope they released the souls. I didn’t see any on Ellie, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” Edward asked.

  Wraith nodded. “Some of the slingers couldn’t be fixed. But they were deemed too dangerous to be released back into gentle society.” She focused on unclenching her jaw. “So they locked them up and started”—she swallowed—“experimenting on them.”

  “Dear God,” Edward said.

  “He’s been silent on the matter, Doc,” Wraith said. “I saw some reports, something called Aegis Protocols. Stuff reads like something Mengele might’ve written in monster grade school.” She shook her head. “They do it overseas in black sites, like you hear about with terrorist interrogations.”

  Caitlin slid her plate away.

  “They only use code names for the locations, but a few were easy enough to figure out,” Wraith said. “The point of this horror show was to, in the words of the report, ‘investigate the supernatural phenomena and find practical defenses.’ ”

  “Which is code for the militarization of magic,” Edward said.

  “It was never mentioned specifically as a goal, but it was implied clear enough.” Wraith drew in a long breath. “There was no exact number given, but it’s clear those experiments have resulted in more than a few deaths.”

  “Mother of God,” Edward said.

  “How is this allowed to happen?” Caitlin asked.

  Wraith knew the question was rhetorical, but she answered it anyway. “It’s not on American soil, and the victims are, for the most part, not those people tend to miss.”

  Caitlin reached over and took Wraith’s hand. She let her and was grateful for the small gesture.

  “Tell me the story gets better,” Edward said.

  Wraith shrugged. “I guess. Those not being experimented on don’t ever seem to wind up dead; in some cases they come out, let’s say, a little broken inside. The Legion has what they call a mind magic specialist. That would be Four. He’s usually responsible for the memory wipes, and Ovation’s predecessor is the one who figured out how the Order boosted our power.” Wraith noticed Edward and Caitlin looking at her curiously. “Each of the seven has a focus and specialty, relating to their number designation. One is given to the best all-around wizard.”

  “I can see where this is going,” Edward said. “Where things usually go when you try to do brain surgery with Stone Age tools.”

  “Pretty much,” Wraith said. “To be fair, they did genuinely help some with little or no side effects, but in others the results were not unlike a lobotomy.” She cringed at the memories that were still seeping into her head. “People, kids included, lost their minds and broke with reality. Sure, the power was stripped away, but between their efforts to ‘help’ and—because they’re a big secret—removing any memories to cover their tracks, they left a lot of people half-mad.” She rubbed her eyes before the tears got away. “Some more than half.”

  Both Caitlin and Edward looked at her, and she was surprised by it. Not that they were looking at her, but the look itself. It had fear and sympathy in it, but it also had strength and support. They were saying, without speaking a word, that they were there for her and they wouldn’t judge her.

  Wraith felt herself calm a little, but just a little. “I was apparently too tough a nut to crack, and then I got away,” she said, staring intently at her coffee cup. “This was during the time that my power and the dark corruption the Order had put in me was warping my brain. I guess I blocked it out or twisted it into another memory.” She drew in a breath. “Apparently I killed someone when I left. Four, their mind guy. Ovation has me to thank for his promotion.”

  Caitlin squeezed her hand. “Honey, it wasn’t your fault, none of it. If they hadn’t—”

  Wraith shrugged. “Anyway, they saw how much power I was packing and figured it was their chance to hit the Order and hit them hard. Ovation was just a military support guy at the time, sort of like an apprentice. He brought them the idea to go undercover and get at me that way, sort of nudge me in the right direction. He got into the heads of Geek, Sprout, and Con to give him a cover story. Apparently he even got into my head a little, though usually in more traditional means.”

  Neither Caitlin nor Edward asked her to expound on that, for which she was grateful.

  “I was a bomb they couldn’t hold or disarm, so—”

  “Why not make some use of your death,” Edward said.

  “The bitch of it is,” Wraith said, “I can’t entirely condemn them.”

  “Really?” Caitlin asked.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Wraith said. “There are some seriously sick bastards in their ranks, but I think most of them are just doing what they think is right. They’re in over their heads.” She looked up at Edward. “To use your analogy, they’re the ones who invented spears to fi
ght off saber-toothed tigers, dragons, and other nasty shit. Then they find out some member of their tribe is worse than all those monsters. They want to do something, protect their tribe, but don’t have the tools or skills. So they use their spears, because that’s all they know, all they have.”

  “When your only tool is a hammer . . . ” Edward said.

  Wraith nodded. “Except people got screwed instead of hammered.”

  “I can’t believe you’re making a joke,” Caitlin said.

  “They took enough from me,” Wraith said. “I’m not giving them my sense of humor.”

  “So a group of well-meaning people are doing horrible things for the right reasons,” Edward said.

  “And some sociopaths are using that to satisfy their twisted curiosities,” Caitlin added.

  Wraith nodded again. “Pretty much.”

  “I don’t know that this could’ve gone any other way,” Edward said.

  “Sucks, right?” Wraith asked.

  “You’re both wrong,” Caitlin said.

  Wraith looked up at her.

  “You said they’ve known about all this since World War II,” she said. “That means they’ve had almost a century to think it through and figure it out. They had to know something like the Order existed and figure out something.” She shook her head. “But they were too interested in making weapons and fighting wars to think about how they could heal people.”

  “They have a medic,” Wraith said. “Two is always a doctor.”

  “That’s not even close to the same thing,” Caitlin said. “And you know it.”

  Wraith just nodded.

  “I’m curious,” Edward said. “If you’re so understanding of the moral complexities here, why the comment to One about Four?”

  “Because that was just about me,” Wraith said. “He came up with that idea. He messed with the heads of my friends, one of whom is ten years old. He also let some innocent kid die so he could keep his secrets.” She shook her head. “No, there’re no moral complexities when it comes to fucking with kids. What he did was unforgivable, and I’m going to make him pay for it. They need to learn they can’t act without consequences.”