The Lightning Conjurer

by Rachel Rener

  n what some scientists are calling the greatest miracle of humanity’s two- hundred-thousand-year existence, the Yellowstone eruption halted as quickly as it started, with the entire event lasting just under seventeen minutes,” the anchorwoman was speaking into the camera. “Due to an unexpected winter storm front, the entire park had been evacuated mere hours before the eruption, which occurred with almost no tell-tale tectonic activity leading up to the cataclysmic event, leaving local geologists baffled. But that’s not even the strangest part. Across the world, scientists and laymen alike are scratching their heads as they wonder: where is the fallout from the blast? What triggered the sudden eruption, and what caused it to cease so quickly? And most pressing of all, what force of nature kept the eruption, which registered as a staggering level six on the VEI, or Volcanic Explosivity Index, to such a limited radius? While scientists scramble to find answers, clergymen and religious scholars across the world say there’s only one answer—”

  “Balls,” Eileen muttered as she rubbed her eyes with bandaged fists. “How much longer until we land?”

  “Less than an hour,” I replied, patting her knee gently. The poor girl had burns and bruises over the better part of her body. She and the rest of us, I suppose.

  While all the other first-wave Elementalists had relocated to a remote Asterian camp erected just outside of Yellowstone to treat their injuries, and the second-wave dutifully remained at the park to watch for aftershocks, the rest of us piled onto a private jet to Washington, D.C. – “Us” being Eileen, Aiden, Ted, Mr. Gauthier, Daichi, two Parliament members, a handful of Chapter officers, and myself. We were all a bit scuffed up and worse for the wear, but as we all watched the TV screen at the front of the jet broadcasting the good news, the mood was more or less cheerful. At least, it was until we started our final approach. At which point, the mood shifted to what lay ahead: a whole lot of unknowns.

  “Has anyone been in touch with Ori?” Aiden asked from the row in front of us. “Unsurprisingly, I can’t get a hold of Aspen. I’m wondering whether he’s joined back up with her yet.”

  “No,” Ted replied. “Haven’t heard from Elizabeth, either. Last I heard, they were on their way to the Summit. After that, she said they’d have to go radio silent. But that was hours ago.”

  “Hey, um, Archenbaud?” Eileen spoke up after being uncharacteristically quiet for the better part of an hour. “Um, I wanted to ask… The news mentioned that there were no recorded fatalities at Yellowstone. However – and um, I’m kind of hating myself for only now remembering this. I guess I must have hit my head a little harder than I thought…”

  “I’m so sorry again,” I winced. That had been entirely my fault.

  “Oh my God, stop. You were amazing!” She kissed my cheek, then turned across the aisle again. “Anyway, shortly before I jumped off the cliff and my brilliant, incredible wife expertly saved my ass, I thought I heard, well… screams. They were coming from the evergreen forest below the cliffs and across the basin. And I don’t know whether that was a trick of the ear, or maybe just a weird echo from our own people yelling—”

  “It was no trick of the ear,” he replied. From the seat beside him, Daichi had lowered his head.

  “Oh.” Eileen blinked.

  “Our air team located a small group of Obsidian members who had remained on-site after triggering the eruption. They had been concealing themselves less than two miles south of our position, combatting our efforts to contain the eruption. The orchestrator, we believe, was an old colleague of mine – an extremely powerful Terramancer… and a very old friend.” He grew quiet for a moment, then cleared his throat. “Mademoiselle Dumont, I launched the attack, despite Mr. Ito reminding me of the minister’s orders not to harm Obsidian members unless absolutely necessary. In my mind, I was protecting the needs of the many by cutting off the eruption’s agonists.”

  Daichi’s mouth was pressed in a thin line. “I assisted you in that attack, sir. We share responsibility.”

  Mr. Gauthier gave him a tired smile. “Merci, mon ami.”

  Aiden, on the other hand, was frowning deeply. “Does Asp – sorry, the minister – know about this? She could be marching into Obsidian right now. How do you think this might affect their reception of her?”

  “We made sure to notify her immediately,” Mr. Gauthier replied in a grave tone while rubbing the bridge of his nose. After returning his phone to his breast pocket, which had been buzzing nonstop for the better part of an hour, he let out a slow sigh that I felt more than heard. “Returning to the subject of the Global Summit, I received several unsubstantiated reports from our ground team shortly before we boarded the plane.”

  “And you’re only now telling us?” Ted demanded.

  “I’ve only now obtained validated intel, which I’m about to share,” Mr. Gauthier sniffed. “As I was saying,” he continued, looking particularly tired, “shortly after eighteen hundred hours, a powerful Electromantic signature erupted from inside the ballroom where the event was taking place, causing our logistics team to temporarily lose all communication with Alpha Squad – before you start shouting, once again, I had every intention of telling you. I just needed to verify the information to avoid sending you into a panic.”

  About six people started shouting at him at once.

  Mr. Gauthier held up his hands in a frazzled gesture meant to placate us. “First of all, it does not appear that our team suffered any casualties—”

  “Thank God,” Ted scrubbed a hand down his face.

  “Once the primary aggressor had been neutralized – a close relative of Obsidian’s new leader, I have been told – our main concern quickly became the sheer number of witnesses within the event itself, including the President of the United States.”

  Aiden’s eyes grew wide. “We wiped another president’s memory?”

  “Actually, no,” Mr. Gauthier replied, surprising everyone. “One of the last orders we received from the minister was to retain his memories and for the alpha team to attempt to open a frank dialogue.”

  Complete silence overtook the cabin as we all struggled to extract the meaning from those loaded words. Elementalists – Ori and Elizabeth, to be sure – were having a chat with the president himself? To what end? And then my thoughts settled back to the wording Mr. Gauthier had used, bringing about an uneasy feeling.

  Aiden must have had the exact same feeling. “What do you mean, ‘one of the last orders’ you received from the minister? How long ago was that?”

  “More than a half hour ago.” Mr. Gauthier cleared his throat. “Now, I must emphasize that the intel I’m about to pass along has not been verified, and is indeed shifting very quickly as we continue to receive—”

  “Where’s Aspen?” Aiden growled, rising from his seat. Ted was quick to follow suit.

  “At Obsidian.”

  “With her security team?”

  “No. She dismissed her team and went alone – despite my warnings.”

  At that, the entire cabin – us, the representatives, officials, and even the flight attendant who had been listening from behind the beverage trolley – erupted into overlapping shouts.

  “Are you joking?”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “They just lost dozens of members!”

  “She’s walking into a lion’s den!”

  “S’il vous plaît!” Mr. Gauthier rose from his seat to address the entire cabin. “I am about to break security protocol and relay all of the information I have been provided directly to you – after that, I am just as much in the dark as the rest of you.” He cleared his throat as he held up his phone to read the message on the screen. ‘The minister, after proceeding with her original plan for sole diplomatic proceedings, stated she successfully met with representatives from Obsidian. Through official channels, she described the encounter as productive and peaceable. However, after dismissing her entire security team to pursue a lead on the WMD’ – that means weapon of mass destruction –
‘that she herself substantiated, the minister has not followed up with more information in the last thirty minutes despite several communication attempts. We are currently pursuing aforementioned lead northbound on I-95 while awaiting further orders. No sign of assailant or weapon as of the timestamp on this message.’ …And that is all I know,” he finished, collapsing back into his seat while the rest of the cabin devolved into chaos once more.

  “Let me get this straight,” Aiden asked through gritted teeth. “After everything that’s just transpired, she decided to waltz into Obsidian headquarters unaccompanied?”

  “Yes.”

  “How could you let her do that?” Ted blustered.

  “I had nothing to do with it!” Mr. Gauthier snapped. “I was right here with you, stopping a volcano!”

  “And now she’s gone silent?” I asked.

  “Apparently.”

  “This cannot be happening,” Eileen was muttering into her hands as she rocked back and forth in her seat. “Damnit, Aspen! Why does she always do this to us?”

  Ted was shaking his head furiously. “Why hasn’t she learned? After all this time, why is she still pulling this lone wolf shit?”

  Aiden, no longer speaking to any of us, was raking his fingers through his hair, eyes squeezed shut.

  Part of me wanted to sit down beside Eileen and cry. How many times had Aspen frightened us like this? She’d broken into the Asterian Chapter to steal her own file, rushed into a Containment Center to free Aiden’s sister, chased after Keres and the other corrupt Prelates all by herself after exposing them for murdering the Magistrate… The wheels in my head were spinning furiously. Yes, Aspen had done impulsive, reckless things in the past, like putting herself in danger to get answers or to protect someone else. But she’d grown so much since then. She wasn’t the same desperate girl she’d been when she thought she was all alone in the world. She had us now. Her friends, her family, her new husband. Not to mention an entire community that was relying on her to keep them safe.

  Something wasn’t adding up.

  “Excuse me,” I started, my voice getting lost among the exclamations of anger, dismay, fear, and disbelief. Not even Eileen heard me. She was muttering curses into her hands.

  “Everyone!” I tried again. No luck. “Hey!” I shouted, amplifying my voice over everyone else’s. “Shut up and listen!”

  The booming sound of my own voice startled even myself. A dozen sets of eyes turned to stare at me in shock, Eileen’s widest of all.

  I felt the blood rush to my face, embarrassment making my knees weak. “I-I’m sorry for yelling, but, um…” I cleared my throat, doing my best to organize my thoughts. “Listen, Aspen – the minister – she wouldn’t thrust herself into danger. That’s not who she is anymore.”

  “But that’s exactly what she did,” Mr. Gauthier replied. “She disregarded our recommendations after we had to take down yet another of Obsidian’s members in D.C. She knew the risks, and she insisted on handling it herself. And now no one has heard from her in,” he glanced at his watch, “nearly forty minutes.”

  “No,” I replied, surprising even myself. “I refuse to believe she would do something like that – barge into enemy headquarters, dismiss her security team, and then leave everyone hanging. She wouldn’t do that to us.” My eyes fell squarely on Aiden’s. “She wouldn’t do that to you.”

  Aiden regarded me for a long moment, his eyes full of agony and worry despite the neutral expression he’d forced onto his face. Finally, he shook his head. “Sophia’s right. Aspen wouldn’t do something so reckless. Not when so many people are counting on her.”

  “Something must have happened to her,” I mused out loud. “Either the person they spoke to wasn’t actually Aspen, or she was forced into lying to her security team. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Which means we need to break down the door of Obsidian the second we land,” Eileen announced, her face finally abandoning the inside of her hands.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s the right approach. I think they’re sending us on a wild goose chase to stall for time, knowing we’d turn around and come right back as soon as we realized…” I chewed on the inside of my lip, hating the words as they came out of my mouth. “No… If this is all a ruse, they wouldn’t linger at Obsidian, waiting for us to make an about-face. They’d take her far away while they had the chance.”

  “So, what do we do?” Mr. Gauthier asked. He and everyone else in the cabin were staring fixedly at me, which made my cheeks flush even hotter. But I couldn’t let my resolve waver.

  “We start heading in the opposite direction that Aspen told us to go.”

  One of the officers was looking at me as though I were crazy. “We’d be disobeying a direct order from the minister, potentially allowing terrorists to set off a nuclear bomb, unhindered.”

  Self-doubt made me falter – if I was wrong, and we baselessly disobeyed the minister’s orders to track and dismantle an actual bomb, the entire world might pay for my mistake. My eyes met Aiden’s once more, and once again, I knew we were thinking the same thing.

  “Forget orders,” I replied, once more eliciting shocked stares. “The moment we land, we’ll track her down, just like we did in Paris.” I couldn’t help but smile at the memory. “I did it once – I’ll be able to do it again.”

  “I stand behind Sophia,” Aiden announced. “With or without anyone’s permission.”

  Mr. Gauthier cleared his throat. “While I would normally advise against such proclamations of insubordination, in this particular instance, I couldn’t agree more. Bomb or no bomb – we must track down the minister at all costs.”

  A chorus of murmurs sounded in solemn agreement.

  I sank to my seat, pressing my hands to my face as Eileen gently rubbed my back. “That was extremely badass,” she whispered, kissing my cheek. “I’m so proud of you.”

  Overwhelmed by the weight of what I’d just done, I could only nod my thanks as I sank my head against her shoulder. It had been many years since I last said a prayer; ten years, to be precise. But in that moment, I closed my eyes and clasped my folded hands in my lap. No matter what happens, I prayed, please just keep her safe. When I looked up, Eileen gave me a small nod, as though we were sharing the same thought: We would protect Aspen at all costs.

  Chapter 30

  - One hour earlier-

  pressed my heels to the floor, grounding myself as Eileen once taught me.

  I inhaled deep, slow breaths to find my center like Sophia often practiced with me.

  I projected as much confidence as I could the way Ori always did when he was around me.

  I looked inside myself and found my courage, as Aiden never once failed to do for me.

  And I checked for the chocolate chip cookie in my pocket, as Evelyn had recently reminded me.

  I did all of this as I stood in the vacant stockroom of a Costco Wholesale, tapping my heel anxiously as I prepared for one of the most pivotal moments of my life. Yes, that Costco: the bargain retail warehouse where shoppers can buy bulk goods for low, low prices.

  I had admittedly expected something a little more exciting for my first mission as minister. After all, Aiden and the others had just conquered an active volcano. Ori, my mother, and Dr. Shirvani had infiltrated and rescued the largest gathering of world leaders on the planet, successfully subduing a deranged Electromancer in the process. Half of Parliament was working to track down a homemade weapon of mass destruction. And here I was on my pitiful mission, fumbling around a big box discount grocery store. Granted, I was in the process of breaking into Obsidian’s one secret entrance that they themselves probably didn’t know about.

  Yes, less than a mile away from the United States Pentagon building, this unremarkable concrete wall on the far corner of Costco’s supersized stockroom apparently led to a staircase that descended underneath the city, far below the Pentagon itself, and right up to a forgotten door that once belonged to the U.S. Asterian headquart
ers – before Obsidian commandeered it, that is. It was the place where my memories had been painfully returned to me, the place where my mother had been contained for three years and subsequently almost died, and pretty much the last place on earth that I wanted to be.

  Meanwhile, my twenty-person security team was wandering the front of the store, pretending to look at giant cans of tuna fish and 48-count muffin trays while I stared at a cement wall, sweating through the white button-up top I was wearing because someone on the PR team said it made me look more “stately.” More than the leather jacket I’d been wearing for most of the day, I supposed – though I very much preferred the comfort and homely smell of the latter.

  You’ve got this, I reassured myself for the nineteenth time that day. After all, it was just one incredibly long, tight space to traverse. With another Pentamancer residing on the other side.

  Sucking down one last deep breath, I pressed the spring-loaded concrete stone that triggered the false wall to slide away, then stepped into the narrow opening where a dimly lit staircase dropped several hundred feet into the ground. My breath caught from the moment the stone door rumbled shut behind me. My brain was screaming at me that the concrete walls were closing in, the air was evaporating, and the ceiling was crumbling away, trapping me miles underground where I’d slowly be smothered to death and eaten by rats.

  Stop it! I chided myself. Just what kind of Terramancer was I? A claustrophobic one, to be sure. Nevertheless, I had much bigger things to worry about than narrow tunnels. Probably.

  “Minister-sama, do you copy?” Mei’s voice crackled in my ears.

  “Yep!” I squeaked, then cleared my throat. “Yes. What’s up?”

  “We’ve just received an update from Ori-san. The identity of the man who was killed at the Global Summit has been confirmed. His name was Darryl Shaw, leader of the Australian Wilders and father to their Pentamancer.”

  No. My shoulders sank. “His father? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Minister. Please, I must beg you once again to reconsider this plan. We do not yet have word on whether his son is aware of this unfortunate turn of events, therefore we cannot accurately predict what his response will be if you arrive at his headquarters, unguarded.”