Deadly Magic
Page 18
I cast my eyes around for a weapon. Orbit’s button could deploy a portable lethargy circuit, but he needed direct contact with his enemy’s skin for its magic to work. Without another weapon, he’d never get close enough to even try.
‘I’ll lead the attack,’ Phoenix whispered. ‘You lot take cover, and then –’
Riff stiffened. ‘Don’t be stupid, those are fully trained Inductors.’
‘And this is our chance to stop them!’ Phoenix started to rise. ‘We’ve got the element of surprise.’
Riff threw out a panicky arm to stop her – and in doing so, his elbow knocked a chunk of broken stone, right at the edge of the cliff. Phoenix froze. My entire body went cold. The loose rock teetered, dancing on the precipice. Riff lunged, fumbling to catch it, but it was too late.
The rock fell.
Horrified, I watched as it plummeted towards the security guard. It tumbled downwards, faster and faster, until suddenly … it stopped. Inches above the guard’s head, the rock slammed into a barrier of air. It rebounded, shattering into fragments, which smashed and scattered across the riverbank. The guard glanced up at us, slightly startled, before his face twisted into a cruel smirk.
A quintessic shield.
How was it possible? Had the guard held a quintessic shield over the riverbank this entire time? Such a shield would drain a sorcerer’s power in mere minutes.
But he wasn’t a normal sorcerer, was he? He was an Inductor. He wasn’t afraid to drain the power of others, to hurt and kill and maim and torture, all to skim a little extra strength from his victims’ suffering.
He was stronger than us. He was strong enough to –
‘Nomad!’ Riff shouted, and pushed me aside.
A nightbead whizzed through the air above me, slicing the space where my head had been a moment earlier. Nephrite stood with a torpefier in her hands, aiming upwards with a chilling glare on her face. The guard had dropped his shield, and the Inductors were ready to take us down.
I scrambled backwards, joining my friends at the back of the cliff ledge. So much for the element of surprise.
‘We’ve gotta get out of here!’ Riff said. ‘Contact Dragon somehow, let her know about Nephrite and the vials.’
He was right. If we chose to fight and die in this ravine, it would not be a courageous final stand. It would be stupidity. We were the only ones who knew the truth. If we died here, countless others would die as well.
Phoenix’s face twisted, torn by indecision. Her instinct was always to fight, and she would probably cherish the chance to go down swinging against a pair of Inductors. I hauled her aside, just as another nightbead sliced through the air.
‘Riff’s right – we’ve gotta run!’
‘Where?’ Phoenix cried, as another nightbead struck the canyon wall, and fragments of broken stone exploded around us. I ducked, shielding my face from the rubble, but another bead was already on its way.
‘Back the way we came?’
‘Nah, too easy to follow us!’ Riff said. ‘We’ve gotta lose ’em first …’ His hands were a flurry, weaving levitation circuits from his quintessence. I immediately plunged into the shroud and focused on my own magic. No time to braid the light into proper wires; all I could do was grab individual strands and twist them into spirals, wild and messy as they spun like out-of-control firecrackers in the dark.
I yanked the spirals around my limbs. Riff pushed down on the air, as if testing its buoyancy. His muscles clenched as he prepared to spring upwards. ‘This way!’
He shot up into the air, paddling his arms to haul himself higher. Levitation had always reminded me of swimming underwater, requiring kicks and sweeping arms to steer your body. Riff swam through the air with a kind of breast-stroke, while my gait resembled a wonky dog paddle.
Riff kicked away from the canyon wall, shooting out above the underground river. We followed. The ravine was long and narrow, and we floated in the dark abyss between its walls. In the empty air, there was more space to levitate – to sweep our arms, and to kick our legs. But there was no shelter. Trapped in midair, there were no boulders, or ledges, or tunnels to hide us.
We were completely exposed.
Another nightbead blasted towards us and we twisted aside, kicking and flailing. A quintessic spiral slipped down my arm, but I managed to grab it just in time before it fell. With a wild kick, I propelled myself higher, and then darted to the left, avoiding the next bead from Nephrite’s torpefier.
‘On three,’ Riff rasped, ‘we dive. Got it? One … two … three!’
Riff plunged, diving straight towards the base of the ravine. We followed, clapping our hands together as if we’d leapt from a diving board. Just before we hit the water, Riff yanked himself upwards and skimmed along the top of the river. I heard a shout of fury from Nephrite, somewhere in the dark behind us.
We blasted along the ravine in single file, twisting and kicking and gasping for breath. My entire body was shaking now, punctured by cold and adrenaline, but I fought to keep my arms pulling and my feet kicking, as the levitation circuits swayed and slipped around my wrists.
Ahead, there rose a vast wall of rock: a dead end, marking the end of the ravine. With a cold lurch, I understood what Riff was planning. Although this canyon ended, the river did not. It gushed away through a small tunnel in the rock wall – a tunnel too small for the security guard to squeeze through. Nephrite could manage it, perhaps, but she wouldn’t risk the Midnight Vial on such a foolhardy mission, and I doubted she trusted the guard enough to leave it in his possession.
Another nightbead blasted towards us – but it was too late. One by one, we dove through the mouth of the river tunnel.
As I hit the water, my levitation circuits dissolved. They were only weak, single-strands of magic, and they hadn’t been built to withstand the rush of violent water. The river carried us onwards, tugging and rushing, pummelling us with bruises as we slammed against the rocky walls.
It spat us out into a tiny cave, where we managed to scramble up onto the riverbank. I flicked on my helmet’s torch, casting a narrow beam of red into the dark. Phoenix was half-dragging Orbit, whose left arm fell limply by his side.
We coughed and spluttered, fighting for breath. Orbit quavered as he held up his left wrist. ‘I think … I think it might be broken …’
The right lens of his spectacles was smashed, and there were scratches around his eye, as if the shards of glass had burst backwards when they shattered. Luckily, the eye itself looked fine.
I tore the sleeve from my jacket, providing a strip of fabric to bandage Orbit’s wrist. Phoenix pulled the glasses from his face and pushed out the remaining broken shards, before handing them back to Orbit. He placed the frame back onto his face and peered through the surviving left lens.
‘What now?’ I asked. ‘If we stay here, they’ll figure out a way to follow us.’
‘Keep following the river,’ Riff said, flicking on his own helmet torch. ‘I mean, it’s gotta lead outside eventually, right? Or at least join up to one of the other tunnels, the ones the rafters use.’
We all glanced at Orbit. With his injured wrist, he was helpless. He would never survive another drenching in the torrent.
‘All right,’ I said slowly. ‘We’ll walk where we can, and levitate where we can’t. Save our quintessence for when we really need it.’
It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the best we had.
‘Wait!’ Orbit said. ‘I have an idea.’
He reached into his pocket and produced a sodden handkerchief. I had only a moment to marvel that he actually owned a handkerchief, let alone carried it during dangerous missions, before he’d dabbed it onto a bleeding cut on his knee. Once the handkerchief was sufficiently bloodstained, he turned to Phoenix.
‘Can you lay a false trail?’
Phoenix nodded. She carried the handkerchief towards another tunnel exit, pausing only to smear a trail of blood onto several boulders and stalactites.
‘T
here,’ Orbit said, looking satisfied. ‘That should do it. If Nephrite follows us in here, she’ll assume we went … that … way …’
He looked woozy, and slumped a little in pain. We helped him to his feet, and then turned back to face the river. As I stared at it, winding away into another dark passage, my heart gave an exhausted thump in my chest. The world was black, the air was cold, and the water was deadly.
It would be a long journey back to the light.
For hours, our entire world was cold.
We were too exhausted to talk, and too beaten to even try. We had lost. The Inductors had two of the vials, and they had Steel. All we could do was report our failure, so Dragon could send in a team of real agents to replace us.
The air was damp, stained by clammy stone and our own sweat. Once, we passed through a grotto of glow-worms, shining like a night of broken constellations. Another time, we levitated up an underground waterfall, which gushed with glimmering light to match the crystals in the rocks around it.
Any other night, I would have been staggered by the beauty of the caves. But right now, they were a prison. All I wanted was to escape.
‘If we all die a horrible death here,’ Riff said hoarsely, ‘I’ll come back and haunt Dragon as a zombie. Serves her right for dumping us here on our own.’
I threw him a weary smile. ‘I think it’s ghosts who haunt people, not zombies.’
‘Whatever.’ Riff waved a hand. ‘I’ll be a maverick zombie. Maybe I’ll even get an electric guitar made of brains or something. I mean, so long as my fingers don’t decompose and fall off while I’m trying to play it …’
As Riff rattled on about his plans for the afterlife, we limped along the shore. When the shore disappeared, we levitated above the water. Sometimes, when the tunnel walls were knobbly enough, we saved some quintessence by crab walking along the walls instead of floating. Orbit levitated behind us, his left wrist hanging uselessly by his side.
Finally, we caught a glimpse of daylight. The river here was shallow, and gentler, so we splashed down to walk in the water. The tunnel twisted slowly, turning cautious loops until finally we sloshed out into open bushland.
Riff let out a low whistle. ‘Geez,’ he said. ‘Never thought I’d be so glad to see a bunch of trees.’
It was morning. Chinks of pale sky peeked through the canopy, while foliage lined the riverbank. After hours of nothing but rock and stone, the scent of fresh leaves, wet dirt and damp moss was more refreshing than a mouthful of toothpaste.
‘We’d better keep moving,’ I said, although I wanted nothing more than to simply collapse into a puddle. ‘The Inductors might know where the river comes out.’
Riff groaned, and Orbit swayed a little on his feet, but they nodded.
We headed into the trees, away from the river. The world here was painted in vivid hues of brown and green, as tree-fern fronds swayed overhead. We clambered over fallen logs, stippled with moss, and scrambled through thickets of bristling undergrowth.
We munched our sodden protein bars as we walked, and took turns sipping from our lone surviving water bottle. Our damp clothes dried slowly, sticking to our skin. At first, I was shivering slightly – but the morning began to warm up, and the exercise helped to heat my aching limbs.
‘Guess it really is “Wilderness Survival Camp” now,’ Riff said, surveying the trees. ‘I mean, I reckon it’s hard to get much more wilderness-y than this.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ I said.
The words slipped out before I’d even thought them. It was true, though. If I survived this, I told myself, I would come back here one day with a brush and canvas. I could imagine the mixture of watercolours I would use, dabbing a landscape of brittle bark and dappled leaves.
‘You know, I’m not seeing a lot of ropes courses around here,’ Riff said. ‘No plastic bowls of rice and protein paste, either. Dunno about you lot, but I’m starting to suspect the camp curriculum isn’t all that accurate.’
‘No?’ I said. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Riff said, with a sad shake of his head. ‘It’s a dark day for us all. I mean, if it was gonna be an inaccurate survival camp anyway, the least they could’ve done was let us eat some pizza.’
‘You all right?’ Phoenix asked Orbit.
Orbit nodded, although he didn’t look too steady on his feet. I would have suggested that he levitate, but he’d already exhausted most of his quintessence in the caves. We couldn’t afford to run out of magic – not when the Inductors might be hot on our trail.
‘This whole thing was pointless,’ Phoenix said bitterly. When I glanced across, I saw that she had clenched her fists. ‘I mean, what did we even achieve from going into those caves?’
‘We learnt one thing,’ Riff said. ‘Steel isn’t working for the Inductors.’
Phoenix shook her head. ‘It was a stupid idea in the first place. As if they’d bother recruiting an idiot like him!’
‘Yeah, but now he’s in trouble,’ I said. ‘Once they get their hands on the Sunrise Vial –’
‘You say that like it’s a foregone conclusion,’ Phoenix cut in. ‘We can still stop them. We can get to the Sunrise Vial first.’
She looked oddly fierce. She stuck out her jaw and glared into the trees, trembling with fury and exhaustion. At that moment, she probably would have traded a week’s wages for someone to punch.
As we traipsed on, I wished I had my HELIX medallion. Right now, a 3D map of the area would be priceless. As beautiful as it was, one patch of forest looked much the same as the next. Green and brown, moss and ferns, fallen logs and broken branches.
In truth, it wasn’t only the map that I missed. I missed the weight of the silver globe around my neck, and the authority it represented. I felt almost naked without it. Out here, I didn’t feel like a HELIX agent. I was just a hopeless teenager, lost in the woods.
‘Er … may I make a suggestion?’ Orbit said, after a while. ‘Perhaps we should try walking uphill? I couldn’t help but notice that the entrance for the walking tour was on the higher levels of the tunnels. If we climb upwards, perhaps we might regain our sense of direction.’
‘Worth a try,’ I said.
We curved around to where the ground was rising, and began to trek up the slope. My feet skidded on long swathes of bark and mud, and a few times I had to grab a nearby fern or tree trunk to catch myself. We all kept a close eye on Orbit, helping to support him when he slipped.
Finally, at the top of the ridge, we found a walking path. It was just a dirt trail, designed for hikers to explore the forest – but in our current state of mind, it was a magnificent freeway to rival the autobahn.
‘Ahh,’ Riff said, with a hint of his old grin. ‘Civilisation!’
An hour later, we found ourselves back at the entrance to the caves. No sign of the Inductors, which was both good and bad. Of course, I was relieved they hadn’t hung around to kill us. But on the other hand, it meant they had more important things to do – like retrieve the Sunrise Vial.
It was too early for tourists, but the lights were on in the buildings, and a couple of cars were in the car park. I guessed it was the guides from Delightful Rafting Adventures, here to set up everything for the day’s tours.
‘We’d better get out of here,’ Riff muttered, ‘before they notice their tubes are missing.’
Our bicycles still lay where we had left them, hidden in a patch of undergrowth. Leaving Steel’s behind, we wheeled them wearily onto the road and hauled ourselves up onto the seats. Orbit looked shaky, but insisted he could steer with one arm.
I took a deep breath, and then glanced at the others. My limbs ached. My bruises throbbed, and my grazes stung.
And without a word, we headed back to camp.
Back at camp, the breakfast bell had just rung, and the final stragglers were making their way into the mess hall. Breakfast ran for half an hour, and the morning roll call wasn’t taken until it was over, so we had a chance to cover our tracks.
We hit the showers, scrubbed ourselves clean, and dressed in full-length sleeves and trousers to hide our bruises. The shower revived a little of my strength – and as the horrors of the night hit home, fresh fear began to tingle in my veins. Steel had been captured. The Red Sky Vials were being assembled. For now, at least, adrenaline was enough to override my exhaustion.
We gathered in the cabin I shared with Phoenix. The other girls were still at breakfast, and we had about twenty minutes left to talk.
Orbit had retrieved a spare pair of glasses from his luggage (‘Oh, I always travel with a spare, just in case!’) and we fashioned a clean bandage for his wrist from a t-shirt. Thankfully, on closer inspection it didn’t look broken.
Orbit yelped as Phoenix yanked the fabric tight, but we had no choice. Right now, asking the camp supervisors for medical help would cause more problems than it solved.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘We’ve got to contact Dragon,’ Phoenix said instantly. ‘She’s the only one who can put a team together quickly enough to stop this.’
‘Yeah, but how?’ Riff said. ‘There are no phones at camp, and Dragon said we can’t trust the phone lines around here.’
‘The Converator’s useless,’ I said. ‘It only works with its matching pair, and there’s no point in calling Nephrite again.’
‘We’ll have to tell Pickles and Dippy,’ Orbit said.
‘Can we trust them?’ I asked.
‘We don’t have a choice,’ Phoenix said.
‘Yeah, but what if they don’t believe us?’ Riff said. ‘I mean, it’s not exactly HELIX protocol to send a bunch of underage cadets on a mission. They’ll probably figure we’re making it up, trying to get attention.’
‘And we don’t even know where the third vial is hidden,’ I said. ‘If we knew that, at least we’d have some solid information to give them. We need real proof, to convince them to put us in contact with Dragon.’