‘And that’s saying something,’ Phoenix put in.
‘I told him that,’ Dragon said, shaking her head. ‘But Mariner reckoned he could hide the three vials in different locations, impossible for anyone to find. Even I don’t know where he kept ’em.’
‘There’s always been rumours,’ Phoenix said, ‘that the weapon still existed …’
Riff nodded. ‘Yeah, but no one actually thought it was true.’
‘Exactly,’ Dragon said, looking grim. ‘Even Okeanos thought it was just a myth. I had to break the truth to him yesterday, and he damn near blew a gasket. If Mariner hadn’t just popped his clogs, I reckon he’d be on his way to Global HQ for a court martial.’
‘But you think the vials are still in New Zealand?’ I asked.
‘Well, it’s a starting point,’ Dragon said. ‘That’s where Mariner lived.’
‘And where he died,’ Nephrite said.
With an uncomfortable twitch, I remembered that Mariner had been Nephrite’s grandfather. It must be painful to listen to our criticism, especially when he’d just been murdered.
‘My grandfather only worked a few more missions after the Auckland job,’ Nephrite said. ‘He’d had enough of fighting, of risking his agents’ lives. He retired early and spent a decade on the sea, sailing around the world. When his body grew too frail, he moved to his cottage near Otorohanga. He spent the last couple of decades teaching at the campground, whenever the New Zealand branch sent their cadets there.’
‘The camp where we’re going?’ I asked.
Nephrite nodded. ‘He kept the Sunset Vial there with him, in a safe in his cottage. He was a pretty clever chemist himself, and he said it was the most stable vial to experiment on. He studied it a lot when I was a kid. According to his notes, he had a few theories, but he never quite managed to figure out how its sorcery worked …’
‘And now it’s gone?’ Phoenix asked.
Nephrite nodded. ‘Whoever murdered him must’ve known he had the Sunset Vial. They took it with them.’
‘And you reckon they know where the other vials are stashed?’ Riff asked.
‘We can’t rule it out,’ Dragon said. ‘Not much point nicking one vial without the other two, and it was a heck of a risk to murder such a celebrated agent. I’m sure they searched Mariner’s cottage for clues about the other vials. They’ve clearly got a plan.’
‘And you want us to stop them?’ I said. ‘I don’t know if –’
‘No!’ Dragon said sharply. ‘No, of course I don’t want you to stop ’em. You’re a bunch of kids, and I won’t put your lives in danger again.’
‘What’s our mission, then?’
‘Inspect Mariner’s cottage,’ Dragon said. ‘Have a look for clues, or hidden codes. He must’ve left something to tell us where he hid the other two vials. Find out the locations of the other vials, and then send the information to Nephrite.’
‘That’s it?’ Phoenix said. ‘Our entire mission is just to look around a cottage?’
Dragon gave us a sharp look. ‘That’s it. And it’s a damn important job too. We’ve got to find those vials before the Inductors get their hands on them. Teranis is already the most dangerous sorcerer on the planet. If his lackeys bring him those vials …’
We all nodded.
‘Nephrite will fly you all to Otorohanga,’ Dragon said, ‘but she can’t risk getting too close to the campsite. Mariner’s killers are already hunting her.’
Nephrite gave a slow nod. ‘The Inductors seem to think I know the location of the other two vials. I’m sure they’ve laid a quintessic-ID alarm to recognise my magical signature. That’s how they tracked me down in the first place. I can’t risk going back to my grandfather’s cottage to search for clues.’
‘So we’re going instead?’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ Nephrite said. ‘I can’t go near the cottage, but you can. When you find the clues, you’ll contact me, and I’ll hunt down the vials.’
‘How?’
‘I knew my grandfather better than anyone; I’m sure I can decipher his codes. When I was a kid, I used to spend summers at his cottage, chatting about his old adventures and flicking through his scientific notebooks …’ Nephrite looked almost wistful. ‘He was always trying to get me interested in his hobbies – science, poetry, sailing. I know how his mind works.’ Her face fell. ‘I mean, worked.’
‘But that’s the end of our job?’ Riff asked.
Dragon’s lips thinned. ‘Aye, that’s the end of your job. Got a problem with that, kid?’
‘Nope,’ Riff said quickly. ‘No problem at all.’
‘Good. Then if I were you, I’d go and start packing.’
We met on the rooftop at 5.45 pm.
The autumn sky was halfway through its sunset routine, spilling fiery rays across the city. I squinted as I crossed the rooftop, dragging my luggage with one hand and shielding my eyes with the other.
An enormous hangar perched on HQ’s rooftop. Inside lay a trio of Chameleon jets, powered by a mixture of machinery and quintessic circuits. Like their reptilian namesake, Chameleons adapted their colour to match their surroundings, rendering them almost invisible during flight.
And of course, they were fast.
The jets flew via telluric currents, following lines of energy across the globe. As a result, Chameleons could fly much faster than a regular jet. If all went well, we should reach our destination in just over an hour.
A cluster of cadets had gathered outside the hangar, forming a flock of whispers, giggles and suitcases. As Nephrite strode towards us, the chattering increased – rolling upwards like a tidal wave – and then slumped away as she raised a hand for silence. She wore a loose overcoat now, but I could still make out the awkward bulk of her combat vest beneath the fabric. A secret uniform, I thought, for a secret mission.
‘Good evening, cadets,’ she said. ‘I’m here to fly you to your Wilderness Camp.’
She led us to the third Chameleon jet, which looked slightly longer than the others. According to the number on its side, this model was a Chameleon S-311. It was black and glossy, with the bulk of a bus and the sleekness of a bird of prey. Inside, the jet was fitted with about thirty narrow seats: fifteen on each side of the aisle. Since a few cadets were away on exchange, and some of the Eighteens were staying home to study, there should be just enough seats to carry us.
A row of lights glinted and flashed along the ceiling, pulsating in a strange rotation of colours and winks. The cockpit lay ahead, separated by a sliding pane of glass, and a small bathroom sat behind a nearby door.
‘Wow!’ whispered the cadet behind me.
With a start, I realised that some of these cadets had never boarded a Chameleon before. Those who had travelled overseas on exchange would have – but for those who had been born and raised in Melbourne, this was an entirely new experience.
At Nephrite’s command, we each selected a seat and belted ourselves into position. I took a moment to adjust my seatbelt, double-checking that the latch was secure. From experience, I knew the Chameleon would lurch upwards quite violently on take-off, and I wasn’t keen to smash my brains across the ceiling.
Riff sat at the front of our group, stretching his legs across the aisle with a lazy grin. He had already reclined his seat – much to the disgruntlement of Phoenix behind him – and slumped back with his hands folded casually behind his head.
Orbit was fiddling with a button on his sleeve. His face was strained in concentration, and I knew better than to interrupt. Although modern technology was forbidden on camp, I suspected the button did more than just hold his sleeve shut. Orbit was a gadgeteer, not a field agent, and I couldn’t imagine him spending a week cut off from machinery.
In my own bag, I’d hidden a small plastic pouch in a bundle of t-shirts. It was a gift from Dragon, and it contained three items we might need on our mission. The pouch was coated with a mixture of shielding technology and sophisticated quintessic circuits, so the metal detecto
r wouldn’t reveal its contents upon our arrival at camp.
The first object was a credit card, to be used only in emergencies. The second was a camera, to record what we found in Mariner’s cottage. The third – and most critical – was a small metal device called a Converator, with a button to connect us to Nephrite. It was the same technology that was hidden in my HELIX medallion, allowing it to bypass the HQ firewall from a short distance.
‘Take damn good care of this thing,’ Dragon had said, pressing the Converator into my hand as we left her apartment.
‘Can’t we use a phone?’ I’d asked. ‘I mean, if we head outside of the camp’s firewall, surely we could just call Nephrite.’
‘Too risky.’ Dragon shook her head. ‘We don’t know who killed Mariner yet, and we don’t know who to trust. For all we know, the other agents working at the camp might have been involved.’
That wasn’t a comforting thought.
‘I reckon the Inductors have tapped the town’s landlines, they’d know the campsite is affiliated with HELIX,’ Dragon went on. ‘They’re probably scanning the mobile and internet traffic in the area, too. I don’t want you to trust any phones while you’re over there. Got it? Just use this Converator.’
‘It’s a secure connection?’ Phoenix asked.
Dragon nodded. ‘Converators come in pairs, and Nephrite’s got the matching twin. Only got a range of about five kilometres, but the connection’s completely secure.’
Phoenix frowned. ‘Is that far enough?’
‘I’ll be hiding nearby,’ Nephrite said. ‘Once you’ve found my grandfather’s clues about the vials, press the button and call me.’
It wasn’t much of a mission, really. Yet as the Chameleon rolled through the hangar and out onto the rooftop, I couldn’t suppress a surge of excitement. The final dregs of sunset had dissolved, and the city lay dark and cold around us. Lights flickered on in nearby office buildings, painting yellow squares upon the metal shells.
In those buildings, countless people were working into the night. Lawyers and bankers, accountants and bureaucrats. They couldn’t see past the Chameleon’s protean disguise; from their perspective, this was just another rooftop, and the hangar was just a storage shed. They would spend their evenings trapped in those tiny yellow boxes, checking documents, preparing affidavits, adding and subtracting numbers …
And in the meantime, we would fly.
Outside, the Chameleon’s wings flashed like a bolt of lightning. The air flickered around us and excitement tingled in my veins. I had never been to New Zealand. In fact, apart from a brief stint in Sydney, my mum had tried to avoid the South Pacific throughout our years of travel. Perhaps it was a subconscious desire to stay as far away from my dad as possible.
‘Belts on?’ Nephrite called from the cockpit.
We all shouted our confirmation.
The Chameleon shot upwards. Magic quivered and engines spun, cogs turned and motors churned – and with a rush of wind, we blasted into the night.
Darkness roared, the lights of the city plummeted beneath us, and we burst into a mountain of clouds. I pressed my fingertips to the window. Melbourne sank far beneath us, vanishing into the abyss, like a shipwreck sinking into the sea. One by one, the lights winked out, swallowed by cloud.
All was dark.
Any remaining light was inside the plane itself: reading lamps, the fluorescent lights of the cabin and the little flashing trail of emergency blinkers. On the black glass of the window, my own reflection stared back at me. I could see the interior of the plane mirrored there: rows of cadets, nervous grins, mixed with excitement and adrenaline, and …
A face, watching me.
One cadet was not talking to his peers. He wasn’t laughing, or smiling, or babbling about this new adventure. He stared straight from his row into mine, and his face reflected like a pale mask on the window as he watched me.
It was Steel.
I whipped my head around, but he had already looked away. He was too quick. He had turned to speak to the beautiful girl across from him – and for a moment, I thought I had imagined the entire thing. The girl was older than us, with a peroxide pixie cut and dark red lipstick, and I vaguely recognised her from the cadet lounge.
‘Who’s that with Steel?’ I asked.
Phoenix’s lip twisted. ‘Oh, she’s in the Sixteens. Her codename’s Ultra.’
‘Ultra?’ I blinked. ‘Ultra what?’
‘Ultra nasty, if you ask me,’ Riff put in, twisting his head to face me.
‘She’s going out with Steel,’ Phoenix said, in a tone of pure distaste. ‘And let’s just say they suit each other perfectly. Everyone knows that Ultra’s clever – but she likes to lie, to twist people around her little finger.’
I kept my gaze on Steel, and he continued chatting to his girlfriend. But when I glanced back at the window, his reflection turned slowly back towards me.
Watching me.
My skin crawled. I knotted my fingers in my lap, and told myself not to be stupid. Steel was just another cadet, all puffed up with childish resentment. Surely, he wouldn’t dare attack a fellow cadet. And besides, I had a real mission to focus on: a mission assigned by Dragon herself.
‘All right, Nomad?’ Phoenix asked.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Just thinking about the mission. There’s … It’s just, there’s a lot at stake, I guess, if we stuff this up.’
In the ensuing silence, I thought of the Red Sky Virus. It wasn’t just a sickness. It was a sickness designed to target HELIX agents. A sickness designed to target my friends. I couldn’t waste time on Steel’s petty rivalries.
We had to focus on the real danger ahead.
By the time we began to descend, it was 9.15 pm. Although the flight had taken just over an hour, the time difference between Melbourne and Otorohanga gave us an extra bump into the future.
After adjusting my watch, I cupped a hand to the window and squinted out into the darkness. Normally, the descent was one of my favourite parts of a flight. I loved to peer out the window and catch my first glimpse of a new country: paddocks or farmland, city skylines or curving bays …
But tonight, there was nothing. The world outside was black, apart from the twinkling lights of Otorohanga far below. Clearly, we would have to wait until morning to take in the view.
Nephrite aimed for a patch of bristling darkness southwest of the town. The Chameleon was bumping now, jolting like a bucking rodeo horse, as it plunged through a final bank of wispy clouds. My stomach lurched, and a few people gave little cries of alarm as we arched around in a loop, slowing our descent.
‘No need to fret,’ Orbit said. ‘I’d say that Nephrite is simply disengaging her quintessence from the propulsion engine.’ He studied the lights on the cockpit’s glass door, his expression eager. ‘Oh, and there we go; now she’s woven a few strands of sorcery into the descent calculator, see?’
It just looked like a bunch of blinking lights to me, but I nodded. Unfortunately, Orbit took this as encouragement to rattle on about the plane’s safety features, from the engine to the cockpit door. ‘It’s a state of the art seal,’ he said. ‘Fireproof, waterproof and airproof. Once the cockpit door is properly engaged, the pilot is completely safe, sealed off from the main body of the aircraft …’
‘Very comforting,’ Riff said. ‘Apart from the bit where we’re outside the cockpit.’
As Orbit babbled, the Chameleon touched down on a gravel car park. We landed with a soft bump, almost like a helicopter, and the lights inside the cabin flickered.
Ten minutes later, we had assembled at the edge of the car park. It backed onto dark bushland, thick with bristling twigs and foliage. We dragged our suitcases behind us, and a palpable twang of excitement filled the air.
‘All present and accounted for?’ Nephrite called, as she handed out a set of torches to the oldest cadets.
Everyone hollered a general ‘yes!’ of agreement.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll be leavi
ng to fly the jet to a more secure location. Take the walking track to your right. Your camp’s about a kilometre away – you can’t miss it.’
There were a few surprised murmurs as she departed. Most cadets had expected her to escort us to the camp itself – not a shadowy car park at the edge of a forest. I exchanged a quick glance with Phoenix, who nodded in understanding. Nephrite couldn’t afford to visit the camp. As Mariner’s granddaughter, she was putting her life at risk by even being here, let alone showing her face.
‘We can’t trust anyone,’ Phoenix whispered. ‘Not even the people who work at the camp. Could have been anyone around here who killed Mariner.’
‘Great,’ Riff said. ‘Sounds like a nice, relaxing holiday.’
As we hauled our luggage down the path, a rush of wind flurried behind us. I spun just in time to see an odd flicker of light in the car park. The Chameleon had switched its colours, vanishing into starry sky as it shot up into the dark. Nephrite was gone – and now, the entire mission rested on our shoulders.
The forest path was thin and dark, as wispy as a spider’s web. Our footsteps crunched in the silence, which was otherwise disturbed only by an occasional rustle in the canopy. The air smelt damp, tainted by old leaves and wet soil.
Cadets around me pointed and whispered, and a few of them jumped at an unexpected scuffle from the bushes – which turned out to be a nocturnal bird, its orb-like eyes shining in the darkness.
‘Hey, reckon it’s a kiwi bird?’ Riff said eagerly, heading towards the creature. But his enthusiasm only caused another rustle, and the creature vanished, darting off back into the undergrowth.
‘Good job, genius,’ Phoenix muttered.
‘Well, you try to catch it, then,’ Riff said. ‘Since you’re in touch with the avian mindset and all.’
‘Are you calling me a bird brain?’
‘Nah, I’m saying that you named yourself after a bird,’ Riff said lightly. ‘Although now you mention it …’
‘Shut up!’ hissed a nearby cadet.
Riff blinked, looking like a startled owl in the torchlight. ‘Huh? Why?’
Deadly Magic Page 11
