Deadly Magic

by Skye Melki-Wegner

  ‘I can do that,’ Phoenix said. ‘We did a session on fake magical effects in Disguises the week before you joined HQ.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t move, though?’ Riff said. ‘I mean, what if he sees our “ghost army” and just stays with the jet anyway?’

  ‘At least he’ll be distracted,’ I said. ‘Better than nothing, right? If there’s fake danger everywhere, he’ll be less likely to notice the real danger under his nose.’

  Orbit raised a nervous hand. ‘Er … Pardon me, but I’ll need to get close enough to access the jet’s inner mechanisms. If the guard maintains his quintessic shield over the jet, my approach may prove impossible.’

  ‘The shield goes over the jet.’ I said. ‘It’s the shape of a dome … but how far does it go down? I can’t see anything below the water.’

  ‘It would only reach the surface of the inlet,’ Phoenix said. ‘He wouldn’t extend the shield underwater, the sorcery would get diluted too quickly. It’d waste too much power, even for him.’

  ‘All right, so the shield goes over the jet.’ I turned to Orbit. ‘That just means you’ve got to go under it.’

  Orbit looked down at his bandaged wrist. ‘Er, I hate to be a nuisance, but I’m not sure I can swim too well tonight …’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I said, instantly. ‘I’ll help you swim.’

  ‘I’m a better swimmer,’ Phoenix countered.

  ‘Yeah, but we need you for the lightning effects,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how to do it; it’s got to be you.’

  Phoenix opened her mouth to argue, and then closed it. She knew I was right. Besides, she might have practically grown up on a boat, but Hollingvale was a seaside town. I was a decent swimmer, even if I wasn’t as good as she was.

  ‘We don’t have time to argue,’ I said. ‘As soon as Nephrite finds the Sunrise Vial, she’ll bring it back here and fly off in the jet before we even have a chance to sabotage it.’

  ‘What about breathing?’ Orbit said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Well, if we approach the jet from underwater, we’ll need to hold our breath for quite a long time. It’s a fair distance to the middle of the inlet …’

  ‘Bubble ball!’ Riff said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘From our Sorcery briefing, remember? Zephyr told us how to make a mini shield across our mouths. You know, to trap an air bubble. It had some fancy-schmancy name, but I dunno what it –’

  ‘A respiratory shield,’ Phoenix said.

  My heart hammered. I knew the shield diagram and remembered Zephyr’s lecture about its diverse uses. With a respiratory shield across my mouth, I could trap a pocket of air to breathe underwater. I’d never tried it before. But if the principle was the same as a full-body shield …

  ‘Oh, I can do that,’ Orbit said, brightening. ‘Last month we built a few waterproof devices in the DEG laboratories. Our tutor taught us how to craft respiratory shields so that we could test them underwater.’

  ‘Can you do it, Nomad?’ Phoenix asked.

  I hesitated. ‘Should be the same as a full-body shield, right? Just smaller?’

  The others gave a helpless shrug. Apart from Orbit, none of us had ever tried to construct a respiratory shield before, but there was no time to worry about it now. Either it would work, or it wouldn’t.

  ‘Righty-o,’ Riff said. ‘We’re running out of time. I reckon we should just go for it.’

  With a knot in my stomach, I realised that this might be it. Riff and Phoenix were about to leave, and this might be the last time we saw each other alive. The idea sent such a horrible lurch through my body that my knees almost buckled. The idea that I might never see Riff’s grin again, or Phoenix’s scowl of disapproval …

  ‘Be careful,’ I whispered. My voice cracked a little, and I wet my lips to try again. ‘Be safe.’

  They nodded.

  ‘You too, Nomad,’ Riff said.

  And then they were gone, vanishing into the trees.

  Orbit and I hid behind an outcrop of boulders, right on the shore of the inlet. The waves were gentle, but seawater still foamed over our ankles with every slosh. I tried to ignore the bite of the cold – and the fact that I was about to throw my entire body into the freezing liquid.

  ‘Wait until Riff does his fly-by,’ I whispered. ‘We’ll move while the guard’s distracted.’

  As we waited, I plunged into the tenebrous shroud. My quintessence flowed around me, fizzling in streaks of nervous red. I plucked several tendrils of light and braided them together. It took all my focus to keep my hands steady, and my fingers from shaking. Beside me, Orbit was doing the same.

  After building a wire of quintessence, I began to paint its light through the air. Carefully, as if I were making the delicate first strokes of a new sketch, I drew the lines of a shield circuit. A circle, scarred by a diametric slash. I drew it smaller than usual, with a careful finesse that left my fingers shaking. If this shield had even the slightest fault, my oxygen would leak away and –

  There was a flash overhead. Riff.

  ‘Go!’ I hissed.

  We plunged into the water. For a terrifying moment, we were fully visible, staggering through the shallows. But the guard’s attention was fixed on Riff, and he hollered a furious cry as he fumbled to load his torpefier.

  I smeared the respiratory shield across my nose and mouth. The magic latched onto my face and skin, sticking like a suction cup. My breath seemed to tickle, bubbling in my throat, as fizzy as a carbonated drink. Were drops of sorcery leaking into my air supply? It didn’t matter. No time to try again.

  With a determined gulp, I slipped beneath the waves.

  Cold. The entire world was cold, as sharp and shocking as a punch in the gut. I almost choked from the shock of it. I forced myself to open my eyes, ignoring the burn of salty water on my pupils.

  Orbit’s respiratory shield looked strong and steady; I could tell he’d practised the circuit before. By contrast, my magic quavered, and I could feel my quintessence draining rapidly. The water was diluting my quintessence, unravelling my careful wires of sorcery. Although my shield was tiny, it was leaking fast. I could only hold it for a minute, or maybe two, before my power was entirely erased.

  Awkwardly, we scrambled across the shallow inlet. Orbit performed a sort of half-float, half-bounce, repeatedly kicking down on the sandy floor to propel himself onwards. I hauled his good arm to help speed him along. With every lurch, my magic quivered. With every kick, the world grew darker, as we moved into deeper water. The Chameleon’s wings extended over us, drawing lines of shadow through the moonlight.

  Finally, we were underneath the aircraft.

  I kicked upwards, dissolving my respiratory shield, and burst through the surface. A thin layer of air lay between the water and the underbelly of the jet. With a heaving rattle, I sucked down a gasp.

  I was dizzy. My entire world was spinning, broken by exhaustion. I clung to the Chameleon’s nearest leg-pad, too dazed to keep myself afloat. With my quintessence almost drained, it was an effort to simply stay conscious. Every inch of me longed to slip into the dark, into the slumber that my body needed to replenish its magical energy …

  ‘No!’ I whispered, my voice hoarse and broken.

  I could vaguely sense Orbit’s presence beside me, rasping for air with a terrible wheeze. I remembered his asthma, and turned to him in alarm, but he shook his head.

  ‘I’m … all … right,’ he whispered. ‘Just … just open … the hatch.’

  ‘Hatch?’

  I glanced up. The Chameleon’s underbelly arched above us, sleek and dark as a starless sky. Once I blinked the stinging drops of seawater from my eyes, I could just make out the shape of an access panel, built into the bottom of the plane. Clearly, that was our way inside.

  ‘It’s screwed on!’ I whispered. ‘I can use an unscrewing circuit, but …’

  I faltered. My quintessence was almost completely spent, down to the final dregs of its power. If I used to
o much creating this circuit, I would die.

  With a shaky breath, I tightened my grip on the jet’s floating leg. I forced my vision back down into the shroud, encouraging darkness to bloom around me.

  My quintessence was pathetic. Only a few feeble strands remained, twisting and flickering like candle flames. I reached for the closest tendril, too weary to weave a proper braid, and smeared it into the shape I’d learnt after Zephyr’s mini-mission. A circle, with a circumference formed of curling loops. Before too much of my power could be drained, I reached up to smear the circuit across the hatch.

  I fell back into the water, cowering slightly. Orbit shrank down beside me – and a moment later, the hatch exploded into light. A shine rained over us, cool and damp, as the screws of the hatch began to turn. They unscrewed themselves, silent and gentle, before each of them plopped into the water.

  Instantly, I erased the circuit. But I was even weaker now, and it was a struggle to keep myself above the water. Luckily, the hatch was only light aluminium, and we managed to clumsily catch it before it could fall on our heads. Orbit helped me to shove it aside, and it sank into the dark water.

  Looking up, I saw artificial light. A passageway up into the bowels of the jet – and the machinery inside. ‘Ready?’

  Orbit gave a nervous nod.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  It was a hard slog, climbing up through the hatch. My entire body was weak and shaking, the metal was wet and slippery, and my vision kept sliding into the dark. I had to help Orbit, whose sprained wrist prevented him from climbing properly.

  Finally, we emerged into a dark corridor. A cargo hold, perhaps, with various crates and boxes strapped down in the corner. We slumped against the wall, taking a precious minute to catch our breath – and in my case, to get my shaking limbs under control.

  ‘Where to?’ I whispered.

  As Orbit looked around, a new lease of life entered his eyes. This was his element. He was inside an enormous piece of machinery, and he was going to find out what made it tick. ‘This way!’

  At the end of the corridor, we stepped into the Chameleon’s engine room. Machinery roosted all around us, blinking with electronic lights. Cables curled on the ceiling, glittering and gleaming like luminescent snakes. The entire wall was a dapple of lines and shapes, shifting from colour to colour.

  With his uninjured hand, Orbit opened a box of blinking lights. Inside, I saw only a mess of wires and circuit boards. He fiddled with the wires for a moment, and then yanked two of them out of their nest. With a burst of enthusiasm, he gestured for me to unscrew a cistern of sloshing dark liquid. Once it was open, we poured its contents across the floor.

  Finally, with a devilish grin that was most unlike the Orbit I knew, he plucked a shining sphere of crystal from the middle of the machinery. He headed back down the corridor and dropped it into the murky seawater below the plane. The crystal plopped and sank into the shadows.

  ‘Ha!’ he said, satisfied. ‘I’d like to see them get this jet into the air now. They’ll be hard pressed to find a suitable replacement for that.’

  ‘What was it?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, just a key element of the sorcerous synthesiser,’ Orbit said. ‘Without it, the pilot’s attempts to hook their quintessence into the system will lead to some … unfortunate … side effects.’

  I grinned at him. ‘Well done! Now we just have to get back to the others, and find somewhere to hide until the cavalry arrives.’

  There was a muffled thud overhead.

  I froze. ‘What was that?’

  We both peered upwards. Another thud – and this time, a faint cry. As if someone on the aircraft had been gagged, or imprisoned, and was struggling to call for help.

  ‘Steel!’ I whispered, alarmed. ‘Do you think …?’

  We exchanged a horrified look and hurried towards a ladder, which disappeared up through a hatch to the upper level. I took the rungs two at a time, pausing only to help Orbit clamber up behind me. We emerged into the passenger area, where familiar rows of seats sat illuminated beneath the ceiling’s blinking lights.

  A pair of prisoners squatted in the aisle. They were handcuffed to the nearest seats, gagged, bruised and filthy. One of them was Steel, his eyes wild in fear and relief as he recognised us in the shadows.

  The other was Nephrite.

  I stopped breathing. It wasn’t possible. Yet here she was, skinny and wretched, with matted hair and a massive cut across her face. She was shivering in a thin long-sleeved shirt, with no sign of her combat vest. The wound on her face was several days old, starting to scab, but she hadn’t had that cut when I saw her down in the caves.

  Unless …

  ‘It wasn’t her,’ I whispered, my voice catching. ‘It wasn’t Nephrite in the caves! She never betrayed us – it was someone else, someone wearing a Spectral Mask!’

  The shock was so staggering that I almost collapsed into the nearest seat. Nephrite was not a traitor. She had been on our side all along. Someone must have captured her after we arrived in New Zealand; they had stolen the Converator, and the Chameleon jet, and even her appearance.

  Nephrite’s eyes fixed on something behind me, widening in panic. I turned, whirling with a rush of shock, but it was too late.

  A second Nephrite stood behind me, unharmed and dressed in a stolen combat vest. She held a small metal box in one gloved hand and a loaded torpefier in the other, aimed squarely at Orbit’s heart.

  I froze.

  ‘Who … who are you?’ Orbit said, his voice shaking. ‘Who are you really?’

  The second Nephrite placed the metal box on the seat beside her. I knew, with a sinking feeling, that it contained the Sunrise Vial. She had found it, returned to the jet and had caught us red-handed.

  With a cold smile, the figure pulled down her Spectral Mask.

  No, not her mask. His mask.

  ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Serendipity.’

  It couldn’t be true.

  This was an elaborate hoax, surely? Dippy couldn’t be the traitor. Not this bumbling gadgeteer, who spent his time running a campsite and building mechanical sparrows …

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, it can’t be you!’

  Dippy’s mouth was a hard line. ‘Why not?’ he snapped. ‘Why can’t it be me? You’re just another one of them – those arrogant, swaggering field agents who look at a gadgeteer and see nothing but empty air.’

  Beside me, Orbit was shaking. He looked as if he might crumple, his entire world shattered by this betrayal. Dippy was his hero. A man who had helped to invent the Chameleon jet. A man whose inventions had saved lives, whose work had been critical to the greatest successes of HELIX.

  ‘You’re a hero,’ Orbit blurted. ‘You can’t … I mean, it simply isn’t possible!’

  Dippy gave a bitter laugh. ‘A hero to you, perhaps. But you’re one of us, aren’t you? A gadgeteer. You know how it works. How the rest of them see us. How the rest of them laugh at us, and snicker behind our backs.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Dippy demanded. ‘This jet? This Chameleon jet, right here? We invented it! My sister and I, we invented it together – and people still don’t take us seriously. Ditzy Dippy, always tripping over his own feet …’

  Dippy shook his head. ‘Mariner used to talk like that. Always thought he was better than us, just because he was a field agent. He wasn’t so smug when I walked into his cottage wearing his granddaughter’s face … or when I fired a dissection circuit straight at his heart.’

  Silence.

  With a horrific chill, I remembered what Pickles had told us at breakfast. Several weeks ago, a young female agent had visited the camp and Dippy had ‘accidentally’ lost control of a swarm of mechanical bees. She had been injured, but everyone had dismissed the incident as ‘Ditzy Dippy’ making a fool of himself again.

  Now, I realised, the agent must have been Nephrite. She had stopped by the camp to visit her grandfather. Dippy had deliber
ately injured her, so that he could harvest some of her quintessence for a Spectral Mask. Dippy was tall and thin, with long legs and slender hands – just like Nephrite. With the Spectral Mask, a voice modulator and a more confident stride, his disguise had been complete.

  Then he used this disguise to gain entrance to Mariner’s cottage, and killed the reclusive old man while he wore his granddaughter’s face.

  My fingernails dug into my palms.

  ‘There are no awards for gadgeteers,’ Dippy hissed. ‘No one gives us honours, or holds ceremonies for us. But everyone knows about Dragon, don’t they? The noble adventurer, the agent who dedicated her life to HELIX and saved the world, over and over. A famous hero, rewarded with cushy jobs and shiny medals …’

  His lip curled. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what! I worked with Dragon and Mariner on the Auckland job, and my gadgets saved their lives. That mission would have failed if it weren’t for me.’ Dippy’s hands shook in anger. ‘I’ve dedicated my life to HELIX too, you know. But ninety-nine per cent of its members will never even know that I exist.’

  I reached for my quintessence, ready to erect a shield. But my fingers met empty air, and my stomach shrivelled. Only a few dregs of sorcery remained, swirling like droplets of water in the bottom of a drain.

  If Dippy attacked, I had no way to defend myself.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It isn’t fair. Gadgeteers should get more recognition for their work. But that doesn’t mean you should betray everything HELIX stands for! Do you have any idea how many people will die, if you unleash that virus?’

  ‘Oh, I know.’ Dippy’s mouth curled. ‘I know exactly how many. I’m the one who ran the calculations in the first place. That’s all gadgeteers are good for, isn’t it? Doing the maths, crunching the numbers …’

  ‘So you sold yourself to Teranis?’ I said in disbelief. ‘Just because a few idiots in HELIX picked on you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not working for Teranis,’ Dippy said. ‘I’m working for myself. And for a certain … benefactor.’