‘Right!’ he barked. ‘What the hell just happened?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ Steel said. ‘It was an accident …’
A few people muttered behind me, and Riff and Phoenix let out shouts of anger.
‘That wasn’t an accident!’ Riff snarled. ‘That was sorcery.’
Steel pointed a finger at him. ‘That’s a lie! You can’t prove it, you can’t see anyone else’s quintessence unless you’re a …’
He trailed off, staring at me. He knew. He knew I’d seen the magic in his fist, and I’d leapt forward to protect my friend. It would be Steel’s word against mine.
There was more muttering now, louder than before, and I knew I had lost. Steel was popular, a young hero no less. I was still the newbie. The strange new recruit, with the bizarre powers, wrapped in mysteries and secret missions.
Then, with a gasp, Steel’s body betrayed him.
He buckled, sinking to his knees as a wave of dizziness washed over him. He shook his head, attempting to clear it, but it was too late. Everyone knew what his sudden weakness signified.
Steel had accidentally drained too much of his quintessence. Magic lost its potency over distance, and he’d relied on his own quintessence to propel the circuit – not a torpefier. The gap between us had been barely three metres, but it would still be enough to drain most of his power.
Fox turned to me, his expression tight. ‘Explain.’
I drew a shaky breath. ‘I saw … I saw a glimmer, sir. Sometimes in the corner of my eye, I catch a glint, when someone’s using their quintessence …’
The room was dead silent now, except for shuffling feet. I knew that everyone was watching me. I was the Witness.
I was the freak.
‘I looked into the tenebrous shroud,’ I went on, fighting to keep my voice steady. ‘I saw a circuit in Steel’s hand. I thought it might hurt Phoenix, so …’ I hesitated. ‘I think I startled him, so he threw it at me instead. I think that part was an accident, sir. Just instinctive self-defence …’
I wasn’t sure why I was giving Steel an excuse. In part, it was probably true. No one would be mad enough to attack a fellow cadet in broad daylight, and I doubted Steel would risk his spotless reputation. When he’d struck out at me, it probably had been an instinctive lunge. But constructing the circuit in the first place? That had been deliberate. Steel had known what he was doing when he aimed for Phoenix.
‘That’s right!’ Steel said quickly. ‘The whole thing was an accident, sir – I didn’t even know I had a circuit, it must have been an instinctive thing.’ He staggered to his feet. ‘I mean, I don’t even think it was a circuit, sir. Just a bit of wild magic – you know how these things can happen when you’re panicking …’
Fox looked doubtful. ‘Wild magic?’
‘Yeah, exactly!’ Steel nodded eagerly. ‘It happens to me sometimes, sir, since I’ve got such a strong quintessence. Sometimes it gets out of control, without me even knowing it. I’d never use sorcery in a sparring session, sir – not on purpose. You know I wouldn’t. I’ve never cheated before, have I?’
Fox considered him for a long moment. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, cadet; you’ve certainly never been caught cheating before.’
Beside me, Riff fought down a snort.
Fox whirled on me. ‘Did you see the exact shape of his sorcery? Was it a constructed circuit, or just a general shine?’
I hesitated. ‘I … I couldn’t see properly, sir. It was inside his fist, so his fingers were hiding its shape. It was bright, though.’
A long pause.
‘I see,’ Fox said. ‘In that case, it appears we are at an impasse. The undisputed facts are these: Cadet Steel produced a burst of quintessence. Cadet Nomad tried to interfere. Instinctively, Cadet Steel hurled the magic at this “new attacker” in self-defence.’
Silence.
‘As it stands, we have no proof that Cadet Steel deliberately constructed a circuit,’ Fox said. ‘And I cannot punish a cadet for a burst of wild magic. Not when it is a purely instinctual defence mechanism, beyond his conscious control. Since Cadet Steel has a spotless record, I have no choice but to take him at his word.’
‘But, sir …’ Phoenix began. At the same moment, Riff said, outraged, ‘Hang on, you can’t just let him get away with –’
‘Enough!’ Fox barked, cutting them off. ‘I have made my decision, cadets, and you would do well to respect it.’
Fox turned to Steel, whose face was slowly melting back into its usual smirk. ‘However,’ he said, ‘if I ever see something like this from you again, Steel, I will come down with the full force of the HELIX rulebook. Do I make myself clear?’
Steel’s expression shifted. He was suddenly the picture of innocence, with wide eyes and a nervous tremble in his lip. ‘Of course, sir. I’m so sorry this happened; I don’t understand how –’
‘Yes, very well,’ Fox said sharply. ‘If I were you, cadet, I’d spend a bit more time training in the Initiation Room.’ He pointed a stern finger. ‘Get that quintessence of yours under control.’
Half an hour later, we found ourselves back in the cadet lounge. Fox had decided to skip our mini-mission, claiming he’d had ‘enough excitement for one day’.
The lounge jostled with whispers and rumours as news of our disastrous Combat and Weaponry briefing spread. We made hot drinks – coffee for me, tea for Phoenix and cocoa for Riff – and retreated to Riff’s room for privacy. As always, entering his room felt a bit like stepping back in time. The walls were smothered in posters for ancient rock bands, from the Rolling Stones to the Runaways, and musical instruments lay scattered around the room.
Phoenix pushed a tambourine off the bed and shoved Riff’s guitar aside, clearing space for us to sit. She looked calm on the surface, but I knew her well enough by now to detect the undercurrent of boiling fury. ‘Are you all right, Nomad?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ In truth, I still felt a little dizzy, but the ache had subsided. ‘Lucky we wear those combat suits, huh?’
‘You shouldn’t have interfered,’ Phoenix said. ‘I could have taken him.’
I bit back a laugh. ‘You didn’t even know he was armed!’
‘It wasn’t your fight!’ Phoenix snapped. ‘You just put yourself at risk, yet again. We’re your guardians, remember? How can we do our job if you go charging into dangerous situations?’
‘I wasn’t just gonna let him hurt you!’
‘Yeah, so instead he hurt you. Great plan, Nomad, really smart. I’m so impressed by your talent for suicidal recklessness, I think you deserve a medal for –’
‘Uh, guys?’ Riff said.
We both whirled on him. ‘What?’
‘Shouldn’t we be mad at Steel? I mean, he’s the jerk in this situation, isn’t he?’
Phoenix deflated a little, and then shook her head. ‘I know. I know that. It’s just … It’s so frustrating.’
‘He built that circuit on purpose,’ I said. ‘He was lying about wild magic. He had a chunk of quintessence in his fist, like a weapon, before he even lunged at you.’
The others nodded.
‘We can’t prove it, though,’ Phoenix said. ‘He’ll get away with it. I mean, he’ll probably be even more popular after this. The perfect cadet, beloved by all, with such a wonderfully strong quintessence that his wild magic even surges up to defend him …’
For a long moment, no one spoke. We simply sat there, staring at an enormous black and white poster. I didn’t recognise the band, but they seemed to be some kind of heavy metal group, with painted faces and wild hair. The singer’s face was pulled into a ferocious snarl, and he wielded his electric guitar like a weapon.
It didn’t exactly help the mood.
‘Hey,’ Riff said, brightening, ‘at least we’ve got camp to look forward to. Day after tomorrow, remember? I can’t wait to stuff myself full of marshmallows.’
Phoenix stared at the wall. ‘With our luck, they’ll probably give us food poisoning.’
Riff laughed, and poked her in the arm. ‘Come on, don’t be such a gloomy-doomer. It’s gonna be great!’
She gave him an incredulous look. ‘Excuse me?’ she said. ‘Did you just call me a gloomy-doomer?’
‘Yup.’ Riff grinned proudly. ‘You know, cause you’re all “gloom and doom” all the time. I reckon I’m helping to expand the English language. Those blokes that write the dictionary should give me a call, I’ve got loads of good ideas.’
‘It sounds like something a kindergartener would come up with.’ Phoenix paused. ‘Actually, that’s probably a bit too harsh on kindergarteners.’
I laughed, although my heart wasn’t in it. I stared at the poster in front of us, complete with its snarling singer and sparking pyrotechnics. Those sparks of light, so much like the sparks of Steel’s quintessence …
There was nothing we could do. No way to prove the truth.
But Steel was dangerous. He wasn’t just an idiot with a grudge; he was willing to break the rules to win. On top of that, I couldn’t go outside without worrying about Inductors – and on top of that, there was the threat of Nephrite’s secret, lingering like a chill in the corridors. All in all, it was an uncertain time to be a cadet at HQ.
Perhaps this camp would provide an escape in more ways than one.
By Friday afternoon, only a Cryptography briefing stood between us and camp. We were due to leave on Saturday, and the entire cohort was buzzing with excitement.
In Cryptography, we studied the art of codes and ciphers. The Inductors often encoded their secret messages, and knowing how to crack their codes could determine the success or failure of a mission.
Our tutor was a middle-aged man called Skate, who managed to be both a genius code-breaker and a terrible teacher. He wore baggy shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and a scruffy beanie, and he lectured like a mentally addled sloth. As we filed into the room, he tried to give each of us an awkward high five.
When we were seated, Skate waved his hand at the board, where he had written the date in a barely legible scrawl. ‘It’s Friday,’ he announced vaguely. ‘Fridays are awesome, man. Fridays … sounds like frying, doesn’t it? You know, I sure wouldn’t say no to some fried mushrooms right now …’
Button cleared his throat. ‘Sir?’
‘Oh, right,’ Skate said. ‘Sorry, dude. What was I saying? Oh yeah, today’s Friday, which means you’ve got your briefing with me. Oh, and today we’re talking about steganography. Can anyone tell me what it’s all about? I mean, like, what steganography is all about. Not what life is all about, or the meaning of the universe, or anything trippy like that – although that’d be cool too, if you’ve got the answer …’
Button raised his hand. ‘It’s a way to hide a secret message, sir.’
‘Hide it?’ Skate prompted.
‘Yes, sir. You could hide a picture inside another picture, or a computer file inside a digital image. You could even write a secret message in invisible ink, concealed between the lines of a fake letter.’
Skate nodded. ‘Exactly, dude. Steganography is all about stashing stuff away, hiding it where no one can find it. Like, if you gave someone a painting of the ocean, you could hide a code in the curves of the waves, or on the fins of a shark, or … like, the eyes of a dugong, or something cool like that.’
He stared into the distance, lost in thought. ‘Man, it’s pretty groovy, isn’t it? The ocean, I mean. How the waves curl and curve. It’s like they’re dancing, or something. Just dancing away, just like the sea’s this enormous ballroom, and they’re all waltzing round and round, with no one to dance with them …’
Roach gave a fake cough.
Skate snapped back to attention. ‘Yeah, so, that’s what we’re talking about. I mean, that’s what steganography is all about. It’s all about finding the message inside the message.’
He steepled his fingers and peered between them, as if he hoped to find a hidden code between the hairs and wrinkles.
Eventually, Skate focused long enough to assign the day’s mini-mission. We were each given an object from a cardboard box of ‘junk’, and were instructed to decipher the secret code concealed within it.
‘I’m only supposed to give you till five o’clock,’ Skate said, ‘but if you wanna swing by my office later, that’s cool too. I mean, time is relative, right? Just so long as you find the meaning of it all in the end …’
Back in the cadet lounge, Phoenix, Riff and I spread our objects across a tabletop. Phoenix had pulled a handwritten letter from the box. On the surface, it appeared to be a soppy love letter from a woman called Mildred to her fiancé.
Phoenix wrinkled her nose in disgust as she read it. ‘Dearest Bertrand, how my heart does beat with love for you. With every passing moment of our separation, I fear that it might simply explode with unfulfilled desire …’
‘Huh,’ Riff said, surprised. ‘You know, that’s actually impressively cheesy. If Skate wrote that, I reckon he could get a side gig writing Valentine’s Day cards.’
‘Skate didn’t write it,’ I said.
Riff frowned. ‘How do you know?’
‘Not enough references to the power of the universe,’ I said. ‘Or to the mathematical intricacy of life itself. Or dugongs.’
‘Oh yeah. Fair enough.’ Riff gave a dramatic sigh and turned to his own object from the box. He had chosen a small plastic piggy bank, in the shape of a bright blue piglet wearing a red bow tie. Naturally, as an aficionado of all things tacky, Riff instantly fell in love with it.
‘Reckon I can keep him?’ he said. ‘He’d go well on the windowsill, next to my bobblehead collection. I’ll call him Mr Oink.’
‘Very original,’ Phoenix said. ‘Now, are you gonna decipher the secret message that “Mr Oink” is hiding, or ask him for his hand in marriage?’
‘Hoof,’ Riff said.
‘What?’
‘Mr Oink hasn’t got hands.’ Riff held up the piggy bank to the light to examine it. He ran his fingers across the plastic, searching for any hidden grooves or scratches that might suggest lettering. ‘I don’t feel anything … Wait, hang on …’
He peered inside the rim of the coin slot. ‘Hey, here it is! Geez, these letters are almost microscopic. Anyone got a magnifying glass?’
After five minutes of rummaging through the junk drawer in the kitchen – which contained everything from scissors to novelty drinking straws – we managed to locate a cheap magnifying glass. With a torch in one hand and the glass in the other, Riff peered inside the coin slot.
‘E … Q … P … I … T … C … V … W … N … C … V … K … Q … P … U,’ he read aloud, while I jotted down each letter on a scrap of paper. ‘Substitution code?’
‘Yeah, it’ll be another Caesar cipher,’ I said, passing him the paper. ‘Here, you have a go at cracking it, and I’ll work on my clue.’
My own object was a landscape painting. It depicted an idyllic slice of countryside: rolling green hills, dotted trees and a flock of grazing sheep. Above it all, a golden sun spilled rays of light across the horizon. It was the sort of thing a grandmother might hang in her living room.
I borrowed Riff’s magnifying glass, but there was no sign of hidden letters in the sheep’s wool. The painted sun was just as meaningless, as plump and golden as a daffodil. Its only role was casting long rays of light to illuminate the rest of the painting.
Illumination. That was a corny symbol for ‘realisation’ if there ever was one, and our English tutor would have slapped me for not realising it sooner. Perhaps Skate’s message was hidden in those rays of light! But there were no tiny numbers or letters in the rays, even under the magnifying glass.
What if the message wasn’t in the rays of light?
What if the message was the rays of light?
With a ruler from the junk drawer, I began to measure the painted rays. Each one, I noticed, was an exact length in centimetres, without a single millimetre astray to either side. A secret message, hidden in plain
sight.
‘Got it!’ I said, as I jotted down the last of the measurements. ‘23-5-12-12-4-15-14-5.’
‘What does that mean?’ Phoenix said, frowning. ‘Can’t be a book cipher, there’s no way to know which book is the key.’
‘It’s simpler than that,’ I said, thinking aloud. ‘It’s just swapping numbers for letters of the alphabet. The twenty-third letter is “W”, the fifth letter is “E”, the twelfth letter is “L” …’ I scribbled down the translation. ‘“Well done.” That’s what it says.’
‘Hey, I’ve finished mine too!’ Riff said cheerily. ‘It was a two-letter downward shift. “E” to “C”, “Q” to “O”, and so on. It says “Congratulations”. Not the most exciting secret messages, are they?’
We both turned expectantly to Phoenix, who was still working on the soppy love letter. She had a wallet of circuit cards open on one knee, and was attempting a difficult circuit to reveal invisible ink. ‘None of my circuits are working,’ she said, frustrated. ‘If there’s invisible ink on this letter, it’s seriously invisible.’
‘Wanna try the magnifying glass?’ Riff said.
Phoenix sighed. ‘It’s invisible, not small. That’s not gonna help.’
‘Maybe it’s not a sorcerous ink,’ I said. ‘I mean, it could be old-fashioned invisible ink, made of lemon juice or something.’
‘Oh yeah, could be!’ Riff said. ‘We used to play with that stuff when we were kids. You write your message in lemon juice, and it dries invisible. Then you heat up the paper and the words appear.’
We tried placing the letter on a tray, but the oven took too long to heat up and Phoenix grew impatient. She snatched it out again, cranked the gas on the stove and held the note above the flame. To my alarm, the edge of the page began to blacken and curl. I yelped and snatched the letter away, tearing off the smouldering edge and tossing it into the sink. ‘You almost set it on fire!’
‘Yeah, well, at least it would’ve been a victory for good taste,’ Phoenix muttered, glaring at the soppy love note.
‘And we know for sure it isn’t lemon juice,’ Riff said. ‘I reckon you’ve gotta use a gadget or something. Agents use all kinds of weird tools for this kind of thing, right?’
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