The Seeking Serum

by Frank L. Cole

  Once this war begins, it will take many months to complete, but eventually the dust will settle and there will be peace. Then you and I will find each other, and we will live the life we always should have. The mightiest of Elixirists. The ones destined to stand atop the pillar.

  I look forward to the day where we might brew together. Oh, the things we shall concoct! But until then, take care.

  Your loving grandfather,

  Mezzarix Rook

  Gordy finished reading the letter and set it down. He looked at the others, uncertain of what to say.

  Adilene carefully picked up the paper and, with Sasha and Max crowded behind her, perused Mezzarix’s words in silence.

  “Why do I need this weapon?” Gordy asked once they had finished.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Sasha replied. “We’re going to be attacked. We already have been attacked. You saw what they did to my parents. That’s what your grandfather wants. I think he intends to Blotch the whole city.”

  “But why go to all that trouble?” Max plopped into a chair, running a hand through his hair so it stood on end like a fauxhawk.

  “Because he’s looking for somebody.” Adilene smoothed the crinkles of the letter. “That’s what Zelda said earlier, and Mezzarix said so just now.” She ran her finger along the words until she found what she was looking for. “‘I know my Scourges will be ruthless as they tear apart that little town of yours on a mission,’” she read. “That’s the mission.”

  “But who could they want who’s that special?” Max asked.

  “Me.” The announcement came from behind, just outside the kitchen.

  Gordy spun around, his chair falling back with a thud.

  A sallow-skinned, middle-aged woman stood in the kitchen doorway. Clearing her throat, she smiled at Gordy. “They’re looking for me.”

  Calm down, children. I’m not here to harm you,” the woman said with a strong Southern accent. Dressed in dark clothing, she displayed her empty palms to the four of them.

  Shoving away from the table, Max stood up, his chair immediately crashing to the floor. Gordy and Sasha grabbed potions while Adilene snatched up the letter and held it behind her as though concealing a piece of evidence.

  “I heard your voices, and I thought the ghost had finally decided to speak to me,” the stranger said. “Then I feared the Scourges had somehow broken in. Your wards are quite strong, I must say. Someone went to great lengths to keep this house a secret.” Eyes flickering toward the stairs, the woman sighed. “Believe me, I hadn’t planned on taking shelter here. I’d much rather be home, but I had no time. The streets were crawling with criminals, and I was not operating at full strength.”

  She leaned against the doorway, and Gordy noticed her right leg was heavily wrapped in some sort of splint, down along her shin.

  “I gathered linens and made myself a little space in your laboratory,” she continued. “Though the only things left in the lab are empty bottles and the faintest hint of residue on the countertops. That would be my fault, of course.”

  Sasha raised her bottle of Torpor Tonic higher. “You’re Iris Glass.”

  The woman gave a strained smile. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Sasha. How’s your mother fairing these days?”

  “She’s been Blotched.” Sasha’s tone darkened. “Along with my dad and everyone else in this stupid town.”

  Iris nodded. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  Sasha moved around to the front of the table, next to Gordy and Adilene. “You should take that weapon and use it on this woman right now!”

  Gordy blinked rapidly. “Um . . . do what?”

  “Iris Glass is a Chamber member,” Sasha said, raising her voice. “She’s the enemy!”

  Gordy remembered having heard that name before. A few weeks ago, his mom had made him memorize the names of all the Chamber members. She had wanted to prepare him should he ever come across one. The Stitsers were wanted criminals, and right now, standing in his kitchen, was one of B.R.E.W.’s leaders. Was this what Mezzarix had been talking about in his letter? Was it already time for him to defend himself against an enemy?

  Gordy touched the rod and instantly felt heat and pressure trembling beneath his skin.

  “I’d be careful with that. Wouldn’t want an accidental ExSpongement to happen, now would you?” Iris’s eyes locked on the weapon at Gordy’s side.

  “ExSpongement?” Gordy repeated in confusion.

  Iris nodded. “That’s a Decocting Wand.”

  “A what?”

  Iris looked disappointed. “How is it the son of Wanda Stitser doesn’t know what a Decocting Wand is? B.R.E.W. uses them to ExSponge Elixirists.”

  “That’s not what this is,” Sasha said confidently. “My mom had one, and it didn’t look anything like this.”

  “Well, it’s been modified, now hasn’t it, child?” Iris explained. “The Scourge of Nations has littered the city with these horrific tools of destruction.”

  Gordy gaped in shock at his grandfather’s gift. That was the weapon? Something that could take away someone’s potion-making abilities? The tingling in Gordy’s fingers made him want to chuck the wand into the garbage. Images of Sasha’s mom being ExSponged flooded his memory. He saw Madame Brexil dropping to the floor in the basement laboratory, her arms falling limp as though her very soul had been snapped away.

  “Passing judgment upon some poor soul is not for the faint of heart,” Iris said. “Besides, I’m not here to harm any of you.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Sasha hissed. “She was at my house, right after it happened. Right after they kicked my mom out of B.R.E.W. Iris signed off on the order to have you captured.”

  “I did,” Iris admitted, bowing her head and pressing a hand to her chest. “We made that decision together, but that was before we realized the magnitude of Mezzarix’s escape. And now I regret my mistakes.”

  “Where are the others?” Sasha squeezed the bottle in her hand. “Are they all upstairs hiding?”

  “The other Chamber members?” Iris looked perplexed. “My dear, the entire Board has fallen at the hands of the enemy. I am the only one left.”

  Gordy suddenly felt boxed in with the table behind him and the enigmatic Iris Glass standing in the doorway.

  “You see,” Iris said. “ExSponging me would be a horrible idea. Once I’m eliminated, there will be nothing standing in the way of Mezzarix’s global, chaotic reign. The beginning of the end. The full realization of his Manifesto.”

  “The what?” Adilene stood closer to Gordy, her shoulders shaking.

  “No more prisons. No more government,” Iris began, her voice smooth like a batch of roiling Certe Syrup.

  “And no more secrets,” Gordy finished, remembering Yosuke’s words.

  “What, is that a song?” Max snapped his fingers next to Gordy’s ear. “Are you under her spell?”

  Gordy swatted away his hand. “It’s my grandfather’s plan of chaos.”

  “Indeed,” Iris said. “We’ve had to deal with Mezzarix before, but now that he possesses the Vessel, he’s far more equipped to see his plan through to the end. Of course, your grandfather did experience a slight hiccup. After Esmeralda’s attack on B.R.E.W., the Chamber realized we lacked certain safeguards. We added an extra element into the Vessel, further linking the seven Chamber members to its power and ensuring it could not be transferred without our unanimous consent. Never in three centuries has such a bold addition been necessary, but then B.R.E.W. has never seen the likes of your family before.”

  “But Mezzarix has the Vessel,” Max said. “He’s using it.”

  “Mezzarix can cause mayhem even with the instrument’s limited capacity, as you can see,” Iris said. “To fully take control of the Vessel, however, and therefore ultimately destroy it, he needs all seven Chamber members to willingly pas
s off on that decision.”

  “Or have you all ExSponged,” Sasha added.

  Iris winced, her eyelids tightening. “Your mother was the first to go, and then Straiffe Veddlestone received a mysterious gift. A promise of power and wealth—and a Decocting Wand like the one beneath your hand.” She pointed to Gordy’s weapon. “Straiffe had always been the weakest of our Chamber. Easily persuaded. He led a group of Scourges to our secret Board meeting and ExSponged the lot of them. I barely made it away, but not without injury.” She glanced at her wounded leg and suddenly laughed. “The scoundrel hit me with a Mangle Potion. Ironic, don’t you think? A member of the Chamber using an outlawed potion to disable me.”

  “I could make you some Boiler’s Balm,” Gordy offered.

  “I’ve used plenty of that already, but thank you, Gordy.” Iris bowed politely. “Numbing tonics will only ease my suffering for a short time. I’m sorry to use your house as my hideout, but I honestly didn’t have anywhere else to go. Like you said, Sasha, everyone’s been rounded up and Blotched. It’s only a matter of time before I’m found.”

  As if on cue, a sharp whistling arose outside, like the sound of a bottle rocket streaking down the road. Gordy heard an explosion erupt close to the house, and he rushed into the living room, Max right behind him.

  “I’d avoid looking out that window,” Iris warned.

  But Gordy had to see for himself. After removing the glow sticks from around his neck and burying them beneath the couch cushions to dim the light, he pulled back the curtain an inch and cautiously looked out. There were people crowded in the street at the end of the cul-de-sac. Adults and children, too many to count, walking shoulder to shoulder. They moved silently and lethargically, like a herd of ambling zombies.

  “Where are they going?” Max whispered.

  Gordy heard another whistle and saw the outline of two figures standing less than fifteen yards from his mailbox launching potions at the front door of the home three houses down. They were both holding sticks in their hands, ones with glowing tips. After the third explosion, the door opened, and three of Gordy’s neighbors emerged. They didn’t even try to run away; they simply walked over and joined the horde.

  The two figures suddenly vanished, just as Zelda had done earlier. More enemies equipped with Silt. Whatever hope he had of escaping the city was fading fast.

  Gordy allowed the curtain to fall back into place and backed away from the window. “That’s how they’re Blotching them. They hit the house with a potion, and everyone just comes right out.”

  “It’s called a Perplexity Projectile.” Sasha stood in the living room next to Adilene. “B.R.E.W. uses them to put large groups of non-Elixirists into a sort of stupor. Makes people easier to manipulate in an emergency.”

  “What sort of emergency?” Adilene asked.

  “Imagine there was an explosion,” Iris said, standing in the doorway, her injured leg bent awkwardly behind her. “Some Elixirist’s laboratory goes up in smoke, or some foolish man creates a hurricane in a public swimming pool. Folks start asking questions. Simply round them all up and erase that memory at once.”

  “Where are they taking them?” Max demanded.

  “To the school, I think,” Iris said.

  “Kipland Middle?” Adilene asked.

  Iris nodded. “They’re filing them into the gymnasium for further inspection.”

  “Why?” Gordy asked. The whole scenario was becoming weirder by the minute.

  “I suspect they have no idea who they’re looking for,” Iris replied. “Perhaps a few of the Scourges remember me from their Banishments years ago, but the Chamber members are typically away from the action. We issue punishments while someone else, like your mother, carries out the orders. These criminals may have a photo to refer to, but they don’t have the patience to go door-to-door matching up a picture with my face, like Cinderella’s prince and her shiny glass slipper.”

  “What if one of those Scourges throws something at this house?” Max asked. “Could we be Blotched?”

  Iris shrugged. “It may not do anything. Not with these wards protecting us. But, like I said, it’s only a matter of time. They won’t stop until they’ve found me.”

  “How do they even know where you are?” Adilene rubbed her forehead with one hand, eyes squinting from pain. “You could be anywhere by now. We drove to where the force field ended. It’s not far.”

  “They’re tracking me, and they’ve pinpointed my location to this general area,” Iris explained. “They don’t know the exact address of the house I’m hiding in yet, but they know I haven’t left.”

  “How are they tracking you?” Sasha asked.

  “With a potion, of course. Straiffe had plenty of my possessions. They raided my home before they sprung their trap. I suppose they did that to all the Chamber members, just in case one of us, like myself, got away. All they needed was something with enough of my DNA to add to the concoction.”

  Sasha stood stiffly for a moment, eyes darting about the room. Then she gasped excitedly and sat on the floor, pulling items from her satchel, ingredients contained in baggies and clay jars.

  “We can do it as well!” Sasha withdrew a porcelain cauldron no bigger than a soup bowl, and a hot pad with a coiling black cord. “No electricity,” she mumbled to herself. “We’ll need a heat source.” Her head snapped up, focusing on Gordy. “What could we burn here?”

  Gordy frowned. “What potion are you—”

  Sasha cut him off, pointing to Iris. “The Scourges are tracking her, and they’ve narrowed her location to within maybe five to ten miles. That’s pretty accurate, don’t you think?” She continued to lay out ingredients on the floor, stalks and stems, a container of black beetles.

  “Yeah, it’s accurate,” Gordy said. “That’s why we need to keep moving.”

  Sasha snapped her fingers in annoyance. “Come on, Stitser, think about it. What if we could pinpoint your grandfather’s location to within five or ten miles? Wouldn’t that be worth trying?”

  “But you need something with his DNA,” Max said. “Where are we going to find that?”

  Gordy’s eyes suddenly widened, and he looked at the folded piece of paper clutched in Adilene’s fingers. The letter from Mezzarix.

  Gordy tore open his satchel and dropped to the floor alongside Sasha. “I’ve got matches and iskry powder. That should start a pretty good fire.” He pointed at the end table next to the couch. “Max, bring me all those magazines.”

  “Okay, I guess.” Max looked grumpily at Adilene as he carried over a dozen past-issues of Mr. Stitser’s subscription to Royal Dishwasher Magazine and dropped them next to Gordy.

  Sasha had her face almost buried between the pages of her notebook, flipping rapidly from recipe to recipe. “It’s called the Seeking Serum,” she said. “With the right ingredients, it’s supposed to be foolproof.” She looked at Gordy, lips pressed together, breathing rapidly. “I think we have the right ingredients now.”

  Sitting down and crossing her legs, Adilene gaped at the assortment of ingredients. “Why didn’t my blood work?”

  “It did work, but just not good enough. I suppose the amount of Silt in your blood was too faint to narrow down the location,” Sasha said distractedly.

  “Perhaps you should do this in the lab,” Iris suggested. “You’ll burn straight through the carpet.”

  Realizing how much trouble he would be in if his mom found out he had set fire to the living room, Gordy and the others hastily gathered up the items and charged up the stairs.

  Where it had been dark earlier, morning had announced its arrival, and the laboratory had taken on a grayish hue. The glow sticks had finally run out of juice, making them look like yellowed fangs dangling around Sasha’s neck. A handful of empty vials and pieces of cork had settled into the grooves between the wooden floorboards. Gordy spotted a blan
ket and a pillow nestled in one corner of the room where Iris had been hiding. How long had she been sleeping there?

  The lab was almost completely empty, and Gordy felt a twinge of anger. This was his mother’s second laboratory that had been demolished, and the person doing it stood in the doorway, regarding the barrenness with indifference. Though she had treated him cordially, Gordy didn’t trust Iris. But for now they needed to work together if any of them wanted to survive.

  Sasha ignited the iskry powder, and the stack of magazines instantly burst into cream-colored flames. The pungent scents of vanilla bean and scorched horsehair filled the room. Adilene coughed as she fed blank pages from her notebook into the fire, stoking the heat beneath the porcelain cauldron.

  Lips pulled into a taut line, Sasha began to brew, scraping the bark from a forked branch into the mixture.

  “What is that?” Gordy asked, curious.

  “Dowsing rod,” she answered tersely.

  “What does it do?” Max peeked over Gordy’s shoulder.

  “Locates water in the ground. Please, stop talking,” Sasha instructed.

  She smashed several shark’s teeth with a mortar and pestle and dropped the misshapen pieces into the tumbling liquid. She added pickled piranha scales swimming in a clouded mason jar and wiggled her hands above the bowl. The potion began to smoke, responding to her rhythmic thumb twitches. Once the contents inside the cauldron resembled the consistency of stale oatmeal, Sasha tore Gordy’s letter from Mezzarix in half and rested it lightly on top.

  After several seconds, the ripped section of paper liquified, sinking into the mixture, and steam rose from the cauldron. Sasha hurriedly gathered the steam into a glass container and screwed on a lid. Then she brought out a world atlas from her satchel and a magnifying glass. The map of the islands off the coast of Florida had been dog-eared.

  “How do you know for sure he’s close to Florida?” Max asked. “Maybe he’s somewhere—”

  Sasha’s eyes whipped up, glaring at Max, and he stopped talking.