ASF Flight Training Base Ashiya, Shinden, Allied Clan Worlds, 236/8/29.
Wisps of high cloud were the only thing in the sky, aside from the blazing-hot sun. It was perfect weather for flying, assuming you had access to sunblock or Shade spells, and there were plenty of people doing just that. Without any form of mechanical flying machine. Once again, the student president of the Shinden Alliance School of Sorcery was visiting the Shinden Aerobatics Competition on the penultimate day – the last day for the juniors – to cheer the school’s team on to victory. This year it seemed that the SAS2 team was more in need of the morale boost.
‘We didn’t do so well in the obstacle courses,’ Francis Goretti explained, ‘though the speed runs were still comfortably ours. As for the freestyle… The Daison team have markedly improved from last year and we have not.’
‘We have gone backward,’ Carlton Horne said, less charitably.
‘Oh,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Prognosis?’
‘If everything goes perfectly, we’ll still take first place. If everything goes perfectly.’
They were speaking in the tent the school had been provided with to coordinate their efforts. It was large, and it was as busy as the year before, but there was a definite atmosphere of depression about the place which had not been there a year ago.
‘I haven’t had much time to watch the teams this year,’ Nava said. Unlike the year before, she was in her school uniform, the new one with the gold trim of a student official. She was now the captain of the School Security Force and figured that she should show it.
‘The SSF kept you busy,’ Francis said. ‘And it’s not your job to watch them. We could have used you at the war games. With Naomi no longer participating, things there got tight. We scraped first place.’
‘Unfortunately, had I been entered into the competition, I’d have had to drop out. We had a rather busy week just before the games.’
‘We were off-world,’ Melissa said. ‘We actually got back the day before the war games started.’
‘Sounds interesting,’ Francis said, ‘but since you’re not giving much detail, and Nava is involved, I’m going to assume you can’t talk about it.’
‘Why because I’m involved?’ Nava asked.
‘Well, you are a Greyling…’
‘That’s probably a valid point. Anyway, I would have been pushed to attend the war games.’
‘I thought this year’s team looked a little less put together than last year’s,’ Melissa said. ‘I’m not the best judge, but there’s room for improvement. We lost too many good flyers to graduation, I think.’
‘Correct,’ Carlton said. He was chairman of the Flight Club while Francis was the head of the overarching Extracurricular Activities Committee. At this time of year, Francis was a sort of over-leader for both the Flight and MagiTag clubs. ‘Unfortunately, the new influx needs more time to catch up to the ones we lost.’ He paused, frowning. ‘The business with the drugs did not help in the least.’
‘It sounds,’ Mitsuko said, ‘as if I’d better go around and give some pep talks.’
‘That would probably be welcome, Suki,’ Francis said.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Nava said. ‘If I give them pep talks, they’ll likely end up doing worse.’
‘You just don’t want to do it.’
‘Well, you’re not wrong…’
~~~
The SAS2 team were in the air and, as far as Nava could judge, they seemed to be doing pretty well. Melissa seemed to concur.
‘They’ve improved since I last saw them,’ Melissa said. ‘Precision is good. Bryana has really got the lead out of her flight suit since the end of term.’
‘Bryana?’ Mitsuko asked. They were in the stands to watch the display. It was better than watching on a screen in the tent.
‘Bryana, uh, Ilbert Morgan. Fairly small girl with short, blonde hair. She was the weakest on the team. Now she’s looking pretty good. Amazingly good.’
Mitsuko frowned. ‘I hope that isn’t indicative of us having a Crystal Mana problem again.’
‘I won’t say it’s impossible,’ Nava said, ‘but there have been no signs of it. Perhaps your pep talk had a miraculous effect.’
‘Well, it would be nice to think so.’
‘I wonder what they’ll end on this year,’ Melissa mused. ‘I doubt they’ll want to repeat the passing heart from last year.’
‘I’d imagine we’ll find out soon enough.’
And then something happened that meant they did not. The team were performing some sort of crossing manoeuvre. Three flew in from each end of the field with the intention of passing each other over the centre at some speed. Nava’s somewhat accelerated perceptions caught the first sign that something was wrong before it became obvious, and she was rising from her seat before everyone else knew what was happening. One of the girls, not especially large and with blonde hair, shifted slightly as the gap closed. Her pose changed from a streamlined dart into something less aerodynamic as she bent at the waist, her arms lifting toward her head. Then she was falling, dropping out of the air and narrowly missing a second girl just below her and to the left. It was an entirely uncontrolled fall, and she was falling over thirty metres toward the grass below.
‘She’s going to crash!’ Melissa exclaimed.
‘What–’ Mitsuko began. ‘Where did Nava go?’
Melissa pointed out to where the blonde girl had hit the grass. ‘She’s out there. But a fall from that height… I don’t think even Nava’s magic is going to be enough.’
~~~
‘The probable cause of death was a broken neck,’ Nava said. ‘She hit the ground headfirst. Humans aren’t designed to take impacts like that.’
‘Uh, no,’ Francis said. Nava suspected that her flat delivery was causing him some disquiet. She had expected him to have worked out that she talked like that at all times by now.
‘The cause of her cause of death is another matter.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘She appeared to be in some discomfort before she fell. I believe she was reaching for her head. As though in pain. I’ve requested that the autopsy results are passed on to the SSF. It’s a courtesy thing since we really have no jurisdiction here, but there seemed to be no issue. When those arrive, it’s possible that we’ll know more.’
‘I’d appreciate being kept up to date on the matter.’
‘I’ll brief the student council at the first opportunity.’
Francis nodded. ‘We’ve had to withdraw from the competition, obviously. The officials suggested we forfeit the freestyle and be judged from the score we have, but we’d gain nothing and, frankly, the entire team is crushed. I would very much like to know how Bryana Ilbert died.’
‘Both the ASF and SSF will investigate,’ Nava said. ‘If there’s anything to discover, we’ll find it.’
‘Meanwhile,’ Mitsuko said, ‘I’ll go talk to the team. Melissa, would you accompany me? You have a very sympathetic face and I think that will be needed.’
‘And once again, I’m let off a task I’m entirely unsuited for,’ Nava said.
‘You could be sympathetic if you wanted.’
Nava shook her head. ‘I am sympathetic, to some extent. However, no one would believe it if I showed it.’
Trenton Mansion, 236/8/32.
The chime of Nava’s ketcom seemed loud in the relative silence of the sun terrace. Nava did not frown, because frowning was not something she really did, but she turned her head to look at the offending device where it lay on a table just out of reach. She would have to get up to see what it wanted and, right now, she did not want to.
‘Going to see what it is?’ Melissa asked.
‘I’m considering the matter,’ Nava replied.
Melissa’s ketcom was considerably closer to her because, despite the fact that Melissa was just as bikini-clad and relaxed in the sun, she was being disturbed more often. There was not much summer holiday left and, as the student council’s secretary, Melissa was being bombarded with information from the administration. ‘I don’t see why I’m the only one who should have to get up every two minutes,’ she said.
‘We enjoy the view when you do,’ Mitsuko said. ‘It’s all good.’
‘Huh.’ Everyone had been a little surprised when Melissa had decided that topless sunbathing was acceptable this time. Melissa had a voluminous bust, double-D and very rounded. Spectacular, when she could be persuaded to show it off, which was infrequently. Her shyness was fading, slowly but surely, and might even have been shifting toward mild exhibitionism under the right circumstances. Like in complete private on a walled terrace on a massive estate where she would only be seen by close friends.
Courtney had joined her three friends in partial nudity, though her enthusiasm was not that great. Her boyfriend, Kyle, had returned to the ASF following a two-week convalescence at the mansion. She missed him horribly and was still waiting to hear whether he would be returning to Beherbergen.
Nava swung her legs off her lounger and picked up her ketcom. Responsibility was sort of a basic in her personality and she had known she was not going to be able to avoid it for long. ‘It’s from the ASF officer handling Bryana Ilbert’s case. The autopsy report.’
‘What does it say?’ Mitsuko asked. Despite her comment about viewing Melissa, she was lying on her lounger with her eyes closed. She was also coated in enough sunblock to resist a radiation accident.
‘I read very quickly, Suki. I don’t absorb the electrons through my skin.’
‘I’m suddenly disillusioned.’
‘Hm.’ There was silence for another couple of seconds. ‘As I suggested, she died when her spinal column was disrupted.’
‘But what caused her to fall?’
‘That’s the thing. If she hadn’t hit the ground like that, there’s a fairly high chance she would have been dead soon anyway. There’s evidence of severe neurological damage. She might have lived, but it seems relatively unlikely.’
‘She was on Crystal Mana?’
Nava shook her head. ‘No evidence of any drugs in her system and, while Crystal Mana overdose does result in neurological collapse, this was not the same thing. The report states that large areas of her brain were, well, burned. The suggestion is a major electrical discharge, but there are no signs of such a discharge hitting her and the pattern suggests the origin of the discharge was within her brain.’
‘Magic then,’ Courtney said. ‘That’s not a spell I’ve ever heard of, but it sounds like she was murdered.’
‘The ASF are considering it a suspicious death and looking into it further, but at this point, if sorcery was used to kill her, it’s unlikely they’ll get very far. They’ve never encountered a spell like that either.’
‘Dana Hillam all over again.’
‘Hopefully without the stalking.’
236/8/32.
Michiko was at breakfast in a one-piece swimsuit with a scarf atop it, knotted over her chest and falling to her knees. She looked cute enough to rot teeth. Melissa sort of melted on seeing her, especially when the diminutive copy of Mitsuko executed a perfect little bow on the group’s arrival.
‘Good morning, Onee-chan,’ Michiko said, all formality. ‘Good morning, Courtney, Melissa, and Nava.’
‘Good morning, Michiko,’ Melissa said. ‘You look very sophisticated in that outfit.’
‘Thank you, Mel,’ Michiko replied. ‘I intend to spend today with my Onee-chan, so I have to look like I belong.’
It was the four friends’ last day at the mansion before they returned to school. Courtney had no real reason to before term started, but she had little else to do with Kyle back at work. Mitsuko and Melissa had council business to take care of. Nava had both council and SSF business. Michiko had been enjoying them all being there, especially Mitsuko, and this last day was to be spent together since she might not see her beloved older sister for a while.
‘I’m sure you will,’ Nava said. ‘You look… cosmopolitan.’
‘I don’t think I really know what that means,’ Michiko admitted.
‘Well, that makes two of us.’
~~~
‘Has anyone measured her capacity?’ Nava asked. Michiko was demonstrating that she could lift more than a sponge with her telekinesis.
‘I believe she’s reached forty Tammys,’ Mitsuko replied. ‘She’ll be well into the qualification range for the school by the time she can enter.’
‘That’s enough to learn basic Flight,’ Melissa commented.
‘I want to learn to fly,’ Michiko said. ‘I’m not allowed to until I’m older.’ She did not have to concentrate too hard to float a plastic bucket.
‘That’s probably wise. Maybe next year.’
The tiny sorceress nodded. ‘It’s my birthday soon. I’ll be twelve.’
‘It won’t be too long before you can go to SAS-squared.’
‘She’ll enter in two forty,’ Mitsuko said. ‘I’d say “assuming she does,” but stopping her is likely to be a futile enterprise.’
‘I’m going,’ Michiko affirmed. ‘I shall replace Onee-chan as student president.’
‘I have no doubt you will,’ Nava said. ‘The school will be in good hands.’
‘Will you go with the combat stream or support?’ Melissa asked.
Michiko let the bucket fall to focus on considering her answer. Waist deep in the pool with a concentrated expression on her face and her pink swimsuit featuring frills around the legs, she looked incredibly cute. ‘I think I shall go with support. I may change my mind, of course, but I think the support stream offers more variety. I do not think I will turn to academic studies at the end, however.’ She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Metaphysics is boring.’
‘That’s because you haven’t got to the interesting parts,’ Nava said. ‘And, to be quite honest, neither have we.’
‘It’s a long way off anyway,’ Melissa said. ‘You have many years to reconsider, Michiko.’
‘Yes,’ Michiko replied. Her bucket lifted into the air again. ‘I don’t want to grow up too fast. Nava says so.’ In truth, it was more than her sorcerous capacity which had grown. She was around twenty centimetres taller than she had been when Nava had first seen her hiding behind her brother’s legs. Her face was starting to narrow, her body was beginning to lose some of its roundness, and there were hints that training bras might be in her near future. Little Michiko’s body was catching up to her personality.
‘So I did. I stand by my advice.’
‘Of course you do,’ Michiko said in all seriousness. ‘You wouldn’t be Nava if you didn’t.’
~~~
‘Pull.’ Nava spoke, but it was Zackery, Mitsuko’s father, who raised his shotgun and reduced the ‘pigeon’ to dust some thirty metres from where they were standing on the mansion’s clay pigeon range.
They had decided to take a leisurely hour shooting things before dinner and, to spice things up a little, they were calling for each other’s pucks to give a little more challenge. So far, that was not proving to make things excessively difficult for either of them.
Technically, Zackery was shooting in a leisurely fashion while Nava was training. She had memorised the Magic Bullet schema at rank two over the past few weeks, as well as making a few other adjustments to her memorised spells, and she wanted to fully familiarise herself with the more powerful spell. She could do that with Magic Bullet; some of the other changes were more difficult to test without demolishing the scenery.
‘Your turn,’ Zackery said. He backed away from the firing line to allow Nava to step up. She had no sooner done so when he called out ‘Pull!’ Sneaky.
A small plastic projectile was fired from a hidden launcher to Nava’s left. She raised her SAH-301 to the level of her hip and fired. Without aiming, the spell did not have its guided aspect, but even so the target exploded twenty metres out as the ‘bullet’ of magical energy hit it.
‘That was mean,’ Nava said.
‘You still hit it,’ Zackery replied. ‘Without aiming. You said the memorised version was more powerful?’
‘Yes. I shot someone on Beherbergen and he lived.’
‘Ah.’ Generally, when Nava used a lethal spell on someone, she expected it to be lethal. As an ex-marine, Zackery could understand that at least to some extent.
‘He’s blind in one eye and has some cognitive impairment, but he survived to be tried for treason. I’m told that’s better, but I’d have preferred that he died under the circumstances.’
‘Of course. Long pull.’
This time, Nava raised her pistol and took a second to aim. It meant that the clay was at a hundred and fifty metres when her bullet hit it, but distance made no difference for aimed shots. The pigeon detonated in a puff of red dust.
‘I think that spell is quite lethal enough,’ Zackery commented.
Nava nodded. ‘It should do the job.’
Shinden Alliance School of Sorcery, 236/8/34.
The SSF headquarters room was basically empty. Nava sat at the head of the conference table, but the only other person in the room with her was Vance Shepherd Fosse. He was a fourth year, a veteran SSF member, and the man Nava had left in charge while she was spending some time at the mansion. He had also covered for her while she was on Beherbergen.
‘Well, I didn’t get any urgent messages,’ Nava said, ‘so I’m assuming that nothing major happened.’
‘Nothing minor happened either,’ Vance replied. He was a typically handsome young man. His skin was a darker shade of white; his build was athletic rather than muscular. His hair was a sandy blonde sort of colour, cut into a short but fashionable cap. His best features were probably his eyes which were a lovely shade of deep blue. ‘Well, things happened, obviously, but it’s been quiet. Things will liven up this week as the students start returning.’
‘That’s what I thought, but it’s nice to have my suspicions confirmed.’
‘We heard about the death at the aerobatics competition. You were there, right?’
Nava nodded. ‘I’ll be briefing everyone at some point, but it’s been declared a suspicious death. We will be investigating.’
‘Right. Crystal Mana again.’
‘Unless it’s some new variant, no. Have you heard anything suggesting we may have another problem with it?’
Vance shook his head. ‘Nothing. And no one’s mentioned anything in my hearing. It’s usually more of an issue before the summer holiday. People take it hoping to do better in the summer competitions. This year, there hasn’t been even a whiff of trouble. But if it wasn’t that, what was it?’
‘A very good question, Vance. No one appears to have an answer, though someone must know. Unless this was some sort of weird neurological condition, I suppose.’
‘Drugs still seem pretty likely.’
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s the most likely cause. Keep your ears open. We’ll have everyone checking their sources when term starts.’
Vance grinned. ‘Our sources? Makes it sound like we’re really cops with snitches to give us the low-down on the streets.’
‘I intend to start wearing a fedora and trench coat when I’m sitting at my desk which I will be storing a bottle of cheap whiskey in.’
‘You know, it’s really hard to tell when you’re being sarcastic.’
‘You would not be the first person to tell me that, Vance. If you’re the last, I’ll eat my fedora.’
~~~
‘Well, we have the Winter Ball coming up, and the Drama Club will be putting on another production. Those are both a way off.’ Melissa was going over the calendar for the benefit of the school’s student council. As secretary, she was responsible for keeping the other members up to date on things like that. She was good at it, and even capable of telling them face-to-face to get their act together now. When she had started, she had handled most of the council’s scheduling by messaging.
‘Do we have anything still hanging over us from last term?’ Mitsuko asked.
‘The summer dance’s finances are all done with,’ Marie said. Marie Royce Sonkei was the treasurer. She was almost back to behaving like her old self after the stalking incident the year before. However, her mission to bed every male student she could find seemed to have slowed down considerably. ‘All in all, our budget is balanced and we seem to be doing pretty well.’
‘It’s not from last term,’ Francis said, ‘but the death of Bryana Ilbert at the aerobatics competition is going to hang over the Flight Club for a while.’
Mitsuko frowned. ‘Yes. We know it wasn’t Crystal Mana. It might be an idea to let that be known to a wider audience. Whatever killed Bryana Ilbert, it was not taking drugs.’
‘That’s conjecture at this point,’ Nava said. ‘We know it wasn’t any known type of Crystal Mana. I’d keep it to that. The ASF are continuing to investigate on their side. We’ll begin a proper investigation here next week when everyone’s back. I plan to interview people at Flight Club on the twelfth. It’s the first day they’ll be meeting after term starts.’
‘There’ll be some flying this Sunday,’ Melissa said.
‘Yes, but I’d prefer to wait until everyone is back. Unless we get another incident, obviously. But then we’ll likely have more to go on anyway.’
‘What do you think the chances are of us finding a culprit?’ Francis asked.
‘Slim to none. At this point, we don’t know whether there is actually a culprit to find. It’s possible that Bryana Ilbert had some exceptionally rare neurological condition and this really is an unfortunate accident.’
‘But you don’t believe that.’
‘No. No, I don’t believe that, but in our line of work, the ridiculously improbable is almost routine. I’m keeping an open mind.’
236/9/6.
‘I am required, once again, to make an announcement on Crystal Mana,’ Luca Newton said. It was the first day of term and homeroom. There was the usual rash of announcements to be made, but this one was a little out of the blue and came as a surprise to Nava. Not that Nava showed any surprise, but surprised she was. ‘Normally we only need to make this announcement after the spring break, but–’ The teacher spotted Nava’s hand in the air, frowned, and said, ‘Captain Nava Greyling?’
‘Is this prompted by the death of Bryana Ilbert Morgan, Miss Luca Newton?’
Luca winced. ‘We were avoiding giving any names.’
‘Whether you do or not, most of the school either knows of her death or will know of it soon, including the circumstances. Making an announcement like this, especially prefaced by “I am required, once again,” makes the strong implication that Bryana Ilbert was abusing drugs. There is no evidence that she was doing so. Neither the SSF nor the ASF are investigating this matter as a drug-related crime. Were I the Ilbert Morgans, I would be seriously considering suing the school for defamation of character at this moment. I would be willing to testify on their behalf.’
The homeroom teacher opened her mouth to respond, paused, frowned, and then looked down at her lectern’s screen.
Nava took this as an indication that she should continue. ‘There has been no evidence of Crystal Mana use on-campus this year, Miss Luca Newton. I am not naïve enough to believe that no one has used it, but anyone doing so did it privately and without coming to the attention of the SSF. We do not have the mass use we did last year. Drug tests carried out during Bryana Ilbert’s autopsy showed no evidence of any known drug in her system. The circumstances of her death have some similarities to a Crystal Mana overdose, but they are not the same when examined in detail. I don’t understand how the school came to the conclusion that a warning regarding Crystal Mana was required.’ Nava looked around the room at the faces looking her way. ‘We all know that Crystal Mana is not a good idea, do we not?’ There were various affirmations from around the room. Most importantly, no one looked sheepish or avoided Nava’s gaze.
‘The statement came directly from the principal’s office,’ Luca said. ‘I assumed…’ Her back straightened, even if the slight hunch had not been previously noticeable. ‘An object lesson for you all. Never make assumptions.’
‘I’ll contact the administration and find out where this assumption began,’ Nava said.
In front of her, Melissa winced. Nava had sounded just as calm and indifferent as ever, but Melissa knew her very well. Someone was going to get it in the neck for this one.
~~~
‘So, I have a meeting with Miss Joslyn Harris in twenty minutes,’ Nava said. Then she took a bite out of the sandwich she was eating for lunch.
‘The VP?’ Carina asked. ‘Scary. Uh, not that you would be scared, Champion of the Light, for your courage in the face of–’
‘I love it when she forgets her Key to Darkness act and then tries to catch up,’ Melissa said. Carina scowled at her. ‘However, you’re right, Cari, it’ll be scary.’
‘For Joslyn Harris,’ Mitsuko said, nodding. ‘I must say, Cari, that I’m not really convinced that Nava is a champion of light. She’s really more of a dark goddess.’
‘I try,’ Nava said.
‘Try to leave Joslyn alive.’
‘There will be no visible wounds.’
‘That is not as encouraging as it might sound, Nava.’
‘I’m aware.’
~~~
Seeing Joslyn Harris Daison without the principal was something of a new experience for Nava. It sometimes felt like they were attached via some invisible chain. Then again, Nava had the deep suspicion that Joslyn refused to allow Auberon Ewart Orlando out of her sight for fear of what he might get up to. Today, however, Nava was meeting the vice principal in the VP’s office, which was substantially smaller and more business-like than the principal’s office. Here there were actual filing cabinets and a desk which could have been in any office in the building. The guest chairs were harder than the ones in Auberon’s refuge as well.
‘I understand you’re concerned by today’s announcement regarding Crystal Mana,’ Joslyn said.
‘No, Miss Joslyn Harris,’ Nava replied. When they were around the principal, he insisted on informality. At those times, Joslyn was Joslyn and Nava was Nava. Nava suspected that Joslyn preferred a more formal approach when Auberon was not around and, judging from Joslyn’s reaction, she was right.
‘No, Captain?’
‘No. I am concerned for the reputations of the school and of a student who has not been determined to have committed any form of crime. Bryana Ilbert is dead and unable to defend herself. So, it seems, I must step forward to defend her instead. Rather me than the Daison clan’s lawyers, I think.’
‘I read your report. Bryana Ilbert showed sudden improvement in her sorcery prior to neurological collapse. We specifically avoided mentioning her name in any announcements, but it’s clear–’
‘I am glad that the reports I spend hours crafting get read by someone,’ Nava said, ‘but disappointed that they only read the first few paragraphs. There is no evidence that Bryana Ilbert died due to any known form of Crystal Mana and the evidence suggests something other than that drug caused the damage to her brain. It’s in the report, Vice Principal. Not mentioning her by name is not going to stop the association being made. I would suggest that a… clarification be issued tomorrow, stating that Crystal Mana was not involved in her death. The warning can stand. We always get one, and I’m not going to say that it’s unnecessary. However, the timing is not appropriate.’
A little surprisingly, Joslyn picked up on three words and ran with them. ‘“Any known form.” New formulations are not uncommon, Captain. This could easily be one which escapes the normal methods of detection and presents variant symptoms.’
‘Easily?’ Joslyn faltered a little under Nava’s stare. ‘Do you have information relevant to this case, Vice Principal? If you know of some new drug, you should–’
‘Of course I don’t!’
‘Then, if I may be direct, I don’t understand why you’re clinging to this with such tenacity, against all the evidence and with the possibility that the Daisons could win a lawsuit against the school should they choose to file one.’
The VP was angry. Nava could see that from the glare she was getting across the desk. Joslyn had, perhaps, not had sufficient time to realise that glaring at Nava was useless. Maybe she was just that angry. However, there was another emotion hiding behind the anger and Nava was not quite sure what it was yet.
‘Ah! How do you keep such a straight face at all times?!’ Joslyn broke first, of course.
‘Long years of practice.’
‘You’re not even seventeen.’
‘I started very young and had considerable incentive to achieve my goals.’ Nava took a leap of logic, otherwise known as a guess. ‘Someone you know fell victim to Crystal Mana.’
Briefly, it looked a lot like Nava was not going to get confirmation of her assertion. ‘My eldest brother was having difficulty with his studies. He became addicted and, when he finally sought help, the withdrawal destroyed his ability to use sorcery entirely.’
‘I’m very sorry.’
‘He eventually killed himself. The shame was too much for him.’
There was not much Nava could add to her previous commiserations, so she moved on. ‘I understand your concerns, and I believe I now know why you have such a formidable reputation as a stickler for the rules. However, in this case, you have ignored them, Vice Principal. At the very least, you’ve bent them as far as you could, and you’ve begun the process of ruining the reputation of a woman who, so far as all the evidence suggests, did nothing wrong.’
‘I’ll have the clarification put in the morning announcements,’ Joslyn said.
‘Thank you, Miss Joslyn Harris. I shall do my best to find out what was responsible for Bryana Ilbert’s death. If it does turn out to be a new drug, I’ll personally draft a warning for you to put out. I know someone who was hooked on Crystal Mana too.’ Nava got to her feet, turning toward the door to leave.
‘What happened to them? The person you knew.’
‘They died. Heart failure.’
‘I see. I’m sorry for your loss, Nava.’
Nava considered the statement. Losing Maya had been a loss, even if Nava had been the one who killed her sibling. ‘Thank you, Joslyn.’
~~~
‘There will be something in the morning announcements about it,’ Nava said over dinner. ‘Hopefully, the Daisons won’t be tempted to do anything after that. And I learned something about our VP I didn’t know.’
‘It had to be tough,’ Melissa said, ‘watching one of your family go through that.’
‘I would imagine it was. However, she shouldn’t have gone off half-cocked about Bryana Ilbert’s death.’
‘Do you think some dark magic was involved?’ Carina asked. She looked a little too enthusiastic about that idea. It probably fitted nicely with her delusion.
‘I have no idea. If it was, it’s a form of spell no one’s seen before. And this is hardly good dinner conversation.’
‘I asked, I suppose,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Things are going well for you in class, Cari?’
‘Uh, I suppose. Yaeko, Sommer, and Dove are back to thinking I’m pond scum, so that could be better.’ Carina straightened her back. ‘I have endured worse and come through unscathed.’
‘Perhaps, but if their bullying gets too bad, come to me or Melissa. Or your homeroom teacher. The school does not condone bullying.’
‘It does not,’ Hoshi said, feeling that the word of a postgrad might add weight.
‘Perhaps,’ Rochester said, ‘but it’s bad at dealing with it, which is why the combat stream still gets away with being obnoxious.’ He glanced at Mitsuko and added, ‘Some of the combat stream students, anyway.’
‘Thank you for the clarification, Chess,’ Mitsuko said. ‘I’m aware that we don’t live in an ideal society, however. Equality is a work in progress. Also however, in this case it would be support-stream students picking on another in their class. If it gets bad, Cari, report it.’ Mitsuko developed a slightly malicious smile. ‘If I really have to, I’ll get my father to mention it to Misaki.’
‘You don’t think getting the Secretary General involved might be overkill?’ Nava asked. Carina blanched visibly, which was impressive considering how pale her skin was.
‘That depends,’ Mitsuko replied. ‘It might be just enough kill, and you’re hardly one to talk about overkill, Nava. Your idea of excessive violence is strategic nuclear weaponry.’
‘You may have a point…’
236/9/12.
It was Sunday afternoon and Flight Club was in session, but Nava was not flying, a fact which was mildly annoying her. She was also a little annoyed at how difficult it was to get people to talk to her about Bryana Ilbert.
Carlton Horne was not exactly helping. He was fired up after the competition, very keen to see improvement in the skills of the members. That meant he was keeping people in the air as much as possible, especially those on the competition teams who might have known Bryana the best.
‘It’s almost like you don’t wish to find out what happened to Bryana Ilbert,’ Nava said when her frustration had reached boiling point. Of course, she said it in the same manner as she might have discussed the weather, but Carlton caught the jibe easily enough.
‘Of course I want to find out what happened!’ There was anger on his face and his teeth were gritted. ‘I also want to be sure our next competition–’
‘Which would be next summer.’
‘Our next competition goes better than the last.’
‘When it happens next summer. In almost twelve months. When several of your current team will have graduated and there will be many new people in the team.’
‘Yes, but–’
‘Carlton Horne, do I have to remind you what happened last year?’
‘No! What does that–’
‘You had nothing to do with the previous EAC chairman’s activities, but the appearance of trying to squash the investigation is likely to make people wonder why you’re doing it. I understand that you’re disappointed with the club’s performance this year. Stopping me doing my job is not going to help. Do I really have to order everyone to SSF HQ for interviews? I have the authority to do so, if required.’
‘I’ll have them come your way in groups.’
‘That will be fine. Make the freestyle team a priority.’
~~~
‘She was not our strongest member,’ Rokurō Yamasaki Sonkei said. ‘Frankly, she was borderline. We almost went with another girl, but Bryana was a bit more of a team player. She struggled to keep up. That being said, she did struggle. She fought to meet the challenge.’
‘And, on the day, she seemed to be nailing it,’ Nava said. They were out on the field, watching the rest of the aerobatics team running obstacle courses. Rokurō was their captain at the competition, though he was now stepping down since this was his final year at the school. ‘Until she fell out of the sky, obviously.’
‘Yes. Yes, she was. The improvement was…’
‘The kind of thing you’d expect from a Crystal Mana abuser?’
‘The thought crossed my mind when I was watching her, but Crystal Mana doesn’t produce an effect that pronounced. And the tests came back negative, you said.’
Nava nodded. ‘I did and they did.’ A more pronounced effect than Crystal Mana. Nava had suspected the same, but it was good to have someone else confirm it. ‘You said she was stressed about the competition. Struggling to compete.’
‘I didn’t say stressed, but we all were.’ He gave Nava a sidelong glance. ‘You’d know if you competed.’
‘If you say so, though you make my case for me, Rokurō Yamasaki. I fly to relax. Was she stressed, or struggling, enough to try something new to boost her talent?’
‘I don’t think so, but you should ask Eunice Payton Kinnari. They were friends. I brought both of them onto the team this year.’
‘Thank you, I’ll make Eunice Payton my next interviewee.’
~~~
Eunice Payton was a tall, shapely girl who probably looked good in the skin-tight flight suits the club had made for competitions. That was probably not why she had been selected for the team, however. She was a good flyer, a talented sorceress, and committed to the team. She was also committed to her dead friend.
‘People are saying she took drugs or something. She wouldn’t do that. Ever. She was getting stronger without. People will see that next year. Would have seen.’
Nava nodded. She had found that nodding to people making unsupported statements was a good way to get them to continue without actually agreeing to anything. ‘There’s no suggestion that she did take drugs.’
‘There are rumours. Lots of rumours.’
‘There always are. When we’ve uncovered the truth, we’ll put them to rest. Bryana Ilbert was not acting differently before the competition? No signs of increased or excessive stress?’
Eunice shook her head. ‘I’d have known. She was stressed. We were all stressed. Bryana wasn’t any worse than anyone else. She was determined to do her best. She did do her best in the prelims.’
‘Are you aware of any medical condition she might have had? Anything the school may not know of.’
‘I thought this was being treated as a suspicious death.’
‘If it were not, I would be in the air and not down here keeping you from your training. However, we can’t entirely discount the possibility of some medical cause, so I’m asking you, and the ASF have requested Bryana Ilbert’s medical records from Randalhome.’
‘Okay. No. If there was anything, she never mentioned it. But the Morgans aren’t the strongest of clans. Their genetic screening may not be the best.’
‘True. Have you seen Bryana Ilbert speaking or otherwise interacting with anyone new? Maybe someone you don’t know from around the school.’
Eunice shook her head. ‘No one. Well, I did see her talking to someone at the competition, but that was like they had bumped into each other randomly.’
‘What did this person look like?’
‘Uh, a woman. A little taller than you. Um, blonde hair… Yes, blonde. Pretty but not exceptional. I only saw her for a couple of seconds. Sorry.’
Nava waved the apology away. ‘It’s probably not important anyway. Thank you, Eunice Payton. Your input has been very useful.’
‘Has it? Really?’
‘Of course.’ Well, all information was useful, even if all it did was suggest that there was absolutely no reason for a young woman’s death.
236/9/14.
‘The ASF tell me that there’s nothing in Bryana Ilbert’s medical records suggesting a potential problem,’ Nava said. It was not the best lunchtime conversation, but it was hardly the first time they had discussed death over food and drinks. ‘Which leaves us with…’
‘Magic,’ Melissa said.
‘Or something we have no idea about,’ Courtney added.
‘That about covers it,’ Nava said. ‘Magic seems unlikely. Why would someone target Bryana Ilbert? She was not important in the grand scheme of things.’
‘It took SAS-squared out of the competition,’ Melissa said. ‘Maybe one of the other teams wanted to win really badly.’
‘I hope that’s not the case,’ Mitsuko said.
‘It would be up to the ASF to uncover that if it were,’ Nava said. ‘I don’t think that’s what happened. Call it a gut feeling. I can’t shake the feeling that Bryana Ilbert’s death was a side effect. I think the intended result was her enhanced performance. Still, speculation is not especially worthwhile without more data. To move the conversation along, why are you so quiet, Cari?’
Carina looked up from her food, blinked at Nava, and said, ‘I’m not–’ Then she stopped in the face of Nava’s gaze. ‘I got a message from home.’
‘Normally a cause of celebration. Melissa frequently regales us with news from Avorna. Admittedly, Courtney’s news from home–’
‘When I get any,’ Courtney threw in.
‘–is generally less pleasant, but you’re not estranged from your family.’
‘They want me to go back. My betrothed has been making a lot of noise. He’s an Adair and–’
‘You have a fiancé?’ Mitsuko asked.
‘I think “betrothed” is a better word for it. It’s been arranged since I was five or something. Even after I sealed my power away, they still want to go through with it.’
‘Your mother was an Adair,’ Nava said.
‘Yeah, Felix is my mother’s brother’s second son.’
‘Your cousin.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘It’s not actually illegal under Alliance law,’ Mitsuko said. ‘It is heavily frowned upon.’
‘Tell that to the Garavains,’ Courtney said. ‘My clan thinks interbreeding is only a problem if you’re impregnating yourself.’
‘Such an entertaining image,’ Mitsuko said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Get Kyle to propose and you can stop being a Garavain entirely.’
‘Working on it.’
‘Anyway,’ Carina said, ‘it’s been arranged. He’s already seventeen, so we can’t get married until I am, but the Adairs are shouting for me to go back to Grimalkin now because reasons. But they won’t send anyone out to get me because they’re scared of Nava, so I’m not really worried.’
‘Yes, you are,’ Nava said.
‘I’m n– How can you tell?’
‘You didn’t say they were scared of the Champion of the Light.’
~~~
‘Kyle is going into the Diplomatic Protection Unit,’ Courtney said, her eyes on her ketcom.
‘So is Naomi,’ Melissa said. ‘Four months of training followed by two of on-the-job training.’
‘And then,’ Courtney went on, ‘they decide whether they like it. Or they get moved because they’re bad at it.’
‘Naomi did mention that as an option,’ Mitsuko said.
‘I was under the impression that Kyle wanted a more active role in policing.’
‘He did,’ Courtney replied. ‘He still does. Beherbergen shook his confidence. He’s trying something new.’
‘Naomi said that Kyle’s decision finally pushed him into the DPU,’ Melissa said. ‘They can go through training together.’
‘I can see them both doing well there,’ Nava said.
‘And it’s relatively safe. Let’s not discount the fact that it’s relatively safe.’
‘It is,’ Mitsuko said, ‘until it isn’t.’
‘I’m trying to ignore that part.’
236/9/17.
‘Sitrep,’ Nava ordered as she marched up to the two SSF officers standing outside the senior refectory.
Skylar Keyes turned to face her commanding officer with a look of consternation on her face. ‘One of the fifth years went nuts,’ she said.
‘That’s not helpful, Sky.’
‘Sorry, but it’s true. She’s got six people trapped in Lightning Cage spells and she’s throwing Slice at anyone who gets near. She’s been ranting about them having it coming. She’s throwing some really nasty stuff around. High-rank spells. We’ve got several injuries. No one dead yet, but the ones in the cages aren’t going to last much longer unless we get them out.’
‘Do we have a name?’
Theodore Garver replied. ‘Samanta Quintana Espanola. I checked her records. Combat stream, fifth year. No problems before this, though there is a note that she may be being bullied.’
‘Okay. I’ll deal with this. Hold here and, if she somehow takes me down, hit her with everything you’ve got.’
Skylar managed a weak grin. ‘If she can take you down, boss, I don’t think anything we can do can stop her.’
‘Hm,’ Nava said. Then she vanished. Invisible, she drew her SAH-301 and started into the refectory. As she did so, she cast Armour and then Active Recovery on herself; her standard battle-set in place, now all she needed to do was handle the situation.
The refectory was a shambles. There were only seven other people in the room, everyone else having cleared out when the trouble started. That likely accounted for a number of overturned chairs and fallen trays of food. It did not account for the damage to some of the serving counters and a couple of tables. Something had sheared right through the metal in several places. There was a leg gone on a table and several slashes in the front of the serving stations which seemed to indicate one spell had gone through several places. If that had been Slice, it had been Slice at a ridiculous rank.
Toward the middle of the room, six people were standing inside big bird cages made out of bands of electricity. Lightning Cage looked like it should be a support spell, something meant to capture a target. In fact, the electricity was live, and anyone caught in it would slowly die of electrocution. Or not so slowly if they struggled too much. Another delightful feature was that it was contagious; if you touched the cage, perhaps to free its occupant, you ended up in a cage of your own. It looked like two of the victims were there because of that.
Pacing in front of the cages was Samanta Quintana, a tall, thin girl with long black hair that seemed inclined to hide her face which was rather gaunt looking. She was pacing and ranting, though the muttering was largely indecipherable due to the low volume. Only the odd word made it to Nava’s ears: ‘… bitches… bitches… coming… never again…’
Well, the first thing would be getting those people out of the cages. From the looks of them, they were not going to be interfering when they got free. They were already unconscious, if not dead. She wanted it done quickly, so she improvised a higher rank of Dispel Magic than she normally deployed and dropped it over the caged people and the caster. To her slight surprise, only three of the cages vanished, but what was probably an Armour spell on Samanta broke in a flare of magic.
Instantly, Samanta whirled around, arm raised, looking for whoever had demolished her spells. As she let out a shriek of frustration at not finding anyone, Nava dropped another Dispel Magic on the area. The remaining cages popped and dropped their unconscious contents onto the refectory floor.
‘Where are you?!’ Samanta screamed. ‘Show yourself so I can–’
Nava was in the process of getting an attack spell ready when Samanta cut off in mid-shout and crumpled to the floor like a rag doll. She might have been faking it, but Nava doubted it. She cancelled her Invisibility spell and raised her voice. ‘Sky, Theo, get in here and start checking the victims.’ Then she stepped closer to Samanta and dropped to one knee, reaching for her neck.
‘What about her?’ Skylar asked as she and Theo ran up to the little tableau.
‘Well, we won’t be charging her,’ Nava said.
‘What did you hit her with?’ Theo asked as he checked another girl’s pulse.
‘I didn’t, but I have a really bad feeling I know what the autopsy is going to say killed her.’
~~~
‘Four dead,’ Nava said, ‘including Samanta Quintana. One of Samanta’s original victims seems to have managed to cast Armour, which kept her alive. The two men cast Armour on themselves before they tried to free the women, which was what kept their heads above water long enough for my Active Recovery to save them.’
‘Your power overcomes all once again, Champion of the Light,’ Carina said. Once again, they were discussing death over a meal, this time an evening one.
‘Yes, I suppose, and also no. I took two goes to dispel all the cages. Dispel Magic is a contest of will and talent. The school records on Samanta Quintana suggest that she was a mediocre sorceress, for a fifth year at SAS-squared, but it took me two attempts to dispel her magic. Her last capacity measurement was one hundred. She should not have been able to throw around the Slice spells she was using, and her cages were more powerful than her records indicate she could cast.’
‘Still, you did bring them down. You–’
‘You think this is related to the Bryana Ilbert incident,’ Courtney said.
‘I know it is. I asked them to put a bit of a rush on the autopsy. Her brain looks like someone wired it up to a fusion plant. Whatever killed Bryana Ilbert also killed Samanta Quintana. It enhances both capacity and talent, and then it burns out your brain.’
‘Doesn’t that make sense?’ Carina said.
‘Please explain, Cari,’ Nava said.
‘Well, the ability to process spells, capacity and talent to some degree, is based on your ability to process information. If you increase the firing rate of neurons, you increase your capacity to process spells, but it’s bound to put some stress on your neural tissue. So, you get a big boost in ability, but eventually it’s going to take its toll.’
‘Makes sense,’ Courtney agreed.
‘Yes, but if it’s not some sort of chemical enhancement, what is it?’
‘And what’s the link to SAS-squared?’ Mitsuko asked. ‘Two of our students have been affected. That suggests a link to the school.’
‘Two data points does not a pattern make. However, I think we can make a leap in logic here and assume that the school is being targeted or the school is the source of the problem.’
‘Then this won’t be the last, will it?’
Nava shook her head. ‘I think we’ll be very lucky if we see no more bodies.’
236/9/18.
Taryn Borchardt Firmin was having a bad day. It was Saturday, and she played MagiTag on Saturdays, and that meant Saturdays were usually good, but not this one.
First, the senior refectory was shut down for repairs. That meant that everyone was trying to eat lunch at the other one, which resulted in horrendous queues. The SSF had had to put on extra people to supervise. It was not so bad at breakfast and in the evening when people used the smaller refectories around the campus and closer to their apartments, but lunchtime was bad. It had taken forever to get something to eat, and she had ended up rushing to get changed and head to the MagiTag Club.
Second, her team was getting roundly trounced by one of the other teams in a capture-the-flag match. That should not be happening, but someone on that team who had not previously been such a beast with a MagiTag pistol was slaughtering his opponents. She could not even remember the guy’s name, he was that unmemorable. Normally anyway. At this rate, he would–
She noticed her shoulder pads turning red and turned to look at the source of the spell which had killed her. It was the unmemorable guy and he had headshotted her with a pistol at twenty metres. That was just… just… gah! He grinned at her. Grinned! Bastard! Then he turned around, took a step away, and collapsed onto the floor of the simulation room.
Taryn was not the most compassionate of people, but that had not looked right, and she was out of the game anyway. She rushed over toward the fallen player and pressed her fingers to his throat. Then she cast Active Recovery on him, even if she thought the chances were pretty slim that it was going to do anything. And then she raised her voice. ‘Man down over here! Man down! I think he’s dead. Someone better get Nava Greyling in here.’
~~~
Nava looked down at the body of Evander Windsor Daison with resignation in her heart. ‘He was showing unusual ability and then he collapsed.’
‘He one-shotted me from twenty metres with a pistol,’ Taryn replied. ‘That’s your kind of accuracy and I didn’t even remember his name until Sara said it. He was not that memorable prior to today.’
Sara Janvier Sonkei, captain of the club, nodded. ‘He was enthusiastic, but not really that good. He was on fire today.’
‘I’ll get the autopsy rushed through, but I think I know what we’re going to find,’ Nava said.
‘Crystal Mana?’ Taryn asked. ‘I don’t think that stuff accounts for–’
‘It won’t be Crystal Mana. I don’t know what it is, but it’s lethal and our students keep dying from it. I need to talk to his friends. Anyone who’s been with him today before the match started.’
‘I’ll get them organised,’ Sara said. ‘But I’ve not even heard a hint of anything new that gives this kind of enhancement.’
‘No,’ Nava said, ‘neither have I.’
~~~
‘It could be a new drug,’ Melissa suggested. The evening meal was being eaten around the table in the lounge, but the discussion was death again.
‘It could,’ Nava agreed. ‘It has to be something that’s been kept amazingly secret, but it’s not impossible.’
‘Pretty unlikely,’ Courtney said.
‘Agreed, but I think I’ll get additional tests run anyway. Maybe they can find some sort of residue if they look hard enough. I’ll ask the ASF to do the same with Bryana Ilbert, if they haven’t already.’
‘We could get the university to run some magical analysis tests on the bodies,’ Mitsuko suggested. ‘I know it’s unlikely this long after the event, but they may find traces of magic.’
Nava nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘We could get Chess to run a search to see whether there’s anything in the literature about this kind of thing,’ Melissa said. ‘He’ll rope Hoshi in. Between them, they could find a two-sentence mention about anything in a couple of days.’
‘Still not over the break-up then, Mel?’ Mitsuko asked.
‘Of course I am! But I don’t mind giving him extra work now and then when the situation demands it.’
‘She used to be so innocent.’
Nava nodded. ‘I blame you. You’ve corrupted her.’
‘I have not! I’m innocent too!’
There was a second of silence before Courtney said, ‘No one is buying that, Suki.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
236/9/20.
‘You didn’t need to spend all of Sunday doing this, Chess,’ Nava said.
It was Hoshi who actually answered. ‘It was interesting. A-and we didn’t spend all of Sunday searching the academic document lists.’
‘We took breaks,’ Rochester said. ‘For coffee and such.’ His cheeks suggested that Hoshi was referring to something else entirely. ‘It was, however, interesting. There have been multiple attempts to produce a systematic increase in the capacity of magicians. One such, of course, was discovered by you last year, Nava.’
‘Hugo Milton,’ Nava said.
‘Precisely. Obviously not relevant in this case since these people were not attached to a massive computer. However, Hugo Milton did make some other suggestions earlier in his career. Some of those were among the reasons his clan exiled him.’
‘Oh?’
‘He suggested introducing electrodes into the brain and stimulating the nerves directly,’ Hoshi said. ‘It’s not an uncommon idea. We found multiple instances of it being proposed, far fewer of it actually being implemented.’
‘Those that were implemented at best gave no positive results,’ Rochester continued. ‘Most resulted in permanent loss of brain function in one way or another. The magicians involved frequently lost the ability to use magic or had it severely reduced.’
‘We really have to find better things to talk about while eating,’ Melissa said, though it did not seem to be stopping her from finishing her lunch.
‘Probably true,’ Nava agreed. ‘None of the victims so far have shown any signs of having electrodes inserted into their brains. It’s difficult to see how that could have been done in the timeframes we’re talking about, to be honest.’
Rochester nodded. ‘We need a wireless approach, and it has been tried.’
‘Yes, but most of those experiments are worse than the wired ones,’ Hoshi said. ‘None of them were carried out in Alliance space, by the way. We found reports of attempts made outside the Clan Worlds. They all stem from an accident which happened fairly early on in magical history, so to speak, back on Earth. A sorcerer was hit by a massive dose of radiation because of a badly tuned medical instrument. For about sixty-five minutes, he exhibited a massively increased capacity and greater talent. And th-then he died in a lot of pain.’
‘Massively increased?’ Nava asked. ‘Do we know how massively?’
Rochester shook his head. ‘This was before a systemised mechanism for capacity measurement was implemented. We know he was able to utilise magic he could not normally achieve.’
‘Because he used it to kill most of the staff involved in the accident and demolish half the hospital,’ Hoshi added. ‘The police couldn’t get near him because he was able to create a very effective Armour spell. Anyway, various people have tried to repeat the process without the agonising death. No one has succeeded.’
‘And no one recorded as having gone through one of these procedures has shown any increase in capacity,’ Rochester said, ‘though most of them did die, frequently instantly. We did find a doctoral thesis combining the electromagnetic process with ideas from Hugo Milton’s papers. It was written by Karsyn Spence Garnet. Apparently, he still works here.’
‘Oh, really?’ Nava said. ‘Do you know him, Hoshi?’
‘I recognised his profile picture, that’s about it. He’s quiet. So am I, but he is quiet. He’s doing pure metaphysics research. There’s no indication that he has practical engineering skills, and his thesis was also purely theoretical. There’s no indication that he even knew how to build a device which could implement his ideas.’
‘But someone else might have. I’ll speak to him. At the worst, he may have some insights into what could be doing this.’
236/9/21.
Karsyn Spence was not a big man. He was not especially fit or attractive. He was average. Average brown hair and eyes, average looks, wearing average clothes and sitting in an average office in one of the research buildings. If you managed to look him in the eye, there was a sharp intelligence there, but he avoided Nava’s eyes for almost the entire interview.
‘No, I never built a prototype,’ he said when asked. ‘Not even to try on cultured neural tissue. I was told in no uncertain terms that tests on humans would be unethical, so there was no point in implementing my ideas. I moved on.’
‘I see. That was probably good advice, considering the history of similar experiments.’
‘I believe it would have been a matter of fine-tuning. My ideas could have been made to work, but… Anyway, I’ve never been that good with my hands, if you will. Building a test unit would have been next to impossible without help.’
‘Has anyone ever shown any interest in building a practical device?’
‘Never. Frankly, I’m amazed that anyone uncovered my thesis. It was filed away as they all are. I doubt anyone else read it until you found it.’
‘I didn’t. I have some friends who know how to work the search engines. But I’m hardly alone in that. You’re sure that no one has ever approached you about–’
‘If they had, I would have told them what I was told. It’s unethical and, potentially, lethal.’
Nava nodded and turned to leave the small office. ‘Thank you, Doctor. I’m glad we’re on the same page.’
~~~
‘Bastard was lying to me,’ Nava said. The sentence was delivered in a flat tone without rancour as she forked rice into her mouth. It was almost as though she did not care. Those who knew her knew otherwise.
‘What about?’ Mitsuko asked.
‘That I don’t know. I’m not sure whether he was lying about building a prototype or someone showing an interest. He was defensive the entire time I was talking to him. Just in case he is the one behind this, I’m having him watched.’
‘That needs a lot of resources,’ Courtney said. ‘You won’t be able to keep it up for long.’
Nava nodded. ‘Agreed, but these incidents have been getting more frequent. I don’t think we’ll have to wait too long before another one happens.’
‘And, hopefully, you’ll get to him before he uses his device on anyone else,’ Mitsuko said.
‘Hopefully. That’s assuming there is a device, of course. It’s not impossible that Doctor Karsyn Spence is just a nervous man and I intimidated him.’
‘Oh, Nava, how could anyone be intimidated by little you.’
Nava favoured her girlfriend with a look. ‘I can tell when you’re being sarcastic.’
‘Me? I’m entirely innocent.’
There was a snort of laughter from Courtney. ‘Still not buying it, Suki.’
236/9/24.
‘He basically does nothing,’ Theodore Garver said. He was reporting to Nava along with the rest of the team she had put together to tail Karsyn Spence. ‘He goes to his office in the morning, eats lunch there, and then he goes back to his apartment. He doesn’t go out.’
‘It’s Friday,’ Skylar said. ‘Maybe he goes clubbing on Friday night.’
‘You think?’
‘Well, not really.’
‘Same with everyone else?’ Nava asked. There were nods from around the table. The table was, in fact, a bit small now; if the whole of the SSF were in, there were not enough seats. ‘Okay. We’ll keep this up over the weekend. If he hasn’t done anything by Monday morning, we’ll call it off.’ She looked around the table once again, receiving more nods, and stopped at a raised hand. ‘Six, you have a question?’
Sixte Wescott was one of the junior members of the SSF, even if he was a third year. His uncle was Nava’s boss in the ASF, though he never used that to gain advantage, possibly because he knew it would not actually gain him any advantage with Nava. ‘It’s not about the surveillance. I was wondering whether you’d got anywhere with replacing the members we lost.’
Nava had three people to replace after sixth years dropped out to concentrate on their finals. She had expected it to happen, but she had already brought in a bunch of new people when she took over from Courtney. Finding more was going to be difficult. ‘No. I’m considering waiting on those replacements until next year and bringing in first years. We have more people than the SSF customarily employs anyway, so it shouldn’t be a problem.’
Sixte nodded. ‘Sounds good.’
‘Traditionally, there hasn’t been much use of first years in the SSF,’ Theodore said.
‘Courtney tried to get me to join last year,’ Nava pointed out.
‘Well, yes, but you weren’t exactly an ordinary first year.’
There were a lot of nods from around the table. Nava was not sure whether to be concerned or flattered. ‘I’m going to see what talent there is and work from there. If I end up having to go elsewhere, so be it.’
‘Flexibility is always a good thing.’
‘Ooh, kinky,’ Skylar said. Her risqué joke was slightly marred by her cheeks colouring. Skylar was not really that confident, even if she looked like she should be. Being in the SSF was helping develop her personality which had, previously, been very much that of a follower. Then again, Sixte also started blushing when Skylar’s words sank in.
Nava did not help. ‘Thank you, Theo, for your endorsement. I’ve never had any complaints about my flexibility.’ Moritz Evered put his hand up. Nava nodded to him. ‘Mori?’
‘Captain, since you have a girlfriend, I believe this banter constitutes a violation of Alliance regulations on cruel and unusual punishment for all the men in the room.’
There was laughter from around the table which almost covered Skylar muttering, ‘Why’s it limited to the men?’
‘I apologise if I’m torturing you, Mori,’ Nava said, ‘but you probably did something to deserve it.’
Moritz looked like he was going to protest, but then he sagged, adding extra effort to his attempt to look downtrodden. ‘Yeah, you’re right. I probably did.’
236/9/25.
Nava was just wrapping up lunch and was about to head out to join the team tailing Karsyn Spence when her ketcom buzzed. She glanced at it, saw who was calling, and answered. ‘Theo? What’s up?’ This was different from her usual reaction to her ketcom buzzing in previous years; ever since taking over the SSF, she got a lot more calls than she had before.
‘We lost him,’ Theo said from the other end. ‘I don’t know how, but we lost him. Building security says he left his apartment about ten minutes ago, but we haven’t seen him come out. Skylar’s checking the cameras, but we’re just not seeing him. It’s like he vanished.’
‘Draft in some extra people and do a search of the building. I’m going to check somewhere else.’
‘Okay, boss. Where are you going?’
‘MagiTag. It’s Saturday afternoon. I think he’s going to try boosting someone else in the MagiTag Club.’
~~~
The problem, of course, was that he could be anywhere. For all Nava knew, Karsyn was outside the building, waiting to intercept someone going in. All she could do was watch as much of the simulation room the club was using as possible and hope that she spotted the researcher before he used the thing on someone.
She had informed Sara Janvier and Francis Goretti, and they were watching for any signs of Karsyn too. Francis was the head of the Extracurricular Activities Committee, but he had a habit of turning up to MagiTag meetings and backseat driving the club he had once run. Nava was not concerned about that now; she had more eyes on the objective, and that was what was important.
After about forty minutes, she had even more eyes as her subordinates turned up, reporting that Karsyn was nowhere to be found in his apartment building on the edge of the Estate. They had reviewed external cameras and found no sign of him, but he was not home.
And it was twenty minutes after that when Nava spotted the blonde. A blonde woman a little taller than Nava herself, pretty but not exceptional, and dressed as a student. Nava could not recall ever seeing her before, but she matched the very broad description of the woman Eunice Payton had seen talking to Bryana Ilbert at the aerobatics competition, and she was doing nothing aside from watching the club members as they ran about shooting each other with magic bullets. There was something distinctly off about her, but then you got spectators at club meetings from time to time, people watching to see whether they might want to join. And ‘pretty blonde’ was not much of a description to work with…
~~~
The blonde pushed away from the wall she was leaning against and started walking toward the side of the room where a group of ten players were getting ready for a battle royal match. As she walked, she pushed aside the left side of her skirt and took a small pod-like device from beneath it. The pod had a single button on it, and it fitted into her palm such that it was barely visible. She walked toward the group of players with a slightly uneven gait, as though she was unused to walking in heels which every female student was required to, much to Nava’s consternation. You got used to it, however, and this woman had not.
As she approached the group, she raised her arm, pointing the pod at one student standing near the edge and grinning at a joke someone had just told. The woman’s thumb moved over the button, and then her arm was twisted and wrenched upward. There was a hum from the pod, but whatever energy it had discharged was spent on the ceiling. The arm moved down again sharply and, to those watching, it seemed that the woman pivoted about something which was not there to land hard on her back.
Nava appeared, still holding the blonde’s wrist. ‘I suggest you stay down,’ she said, ‘because breaking your arm would make my day. Now, let’s see who we really have here…’ There was a flicker of collapsing magic and the blonde woman became a brunette man, still in the uniform of a female student. Karsyn did not fill out the bodice anywhere near as well as his alternate form had. He glowered at Nava. ‘Karsyn Spence Garnet,’ Nava said, ‘you are under arrest for multiple counts of murder and probably something to do with illegal human experimentation. Also, learn to walk properly in heels before you pretend to be a SAS-squared student. That was a dead giveaway.’
‘A Disguise spell?’ Carlton asked as he arrived from the control room at a dead sprint.
‘Yeah. But transforming yourself with illusions doesn’t help if you can’t act like whoever you’re imitating. Could you retrieve that gadget of his?’
Carlton picked up the pod and turned it over in his hand. ‘Did he use it on anyone?’
‘The ceiling,’ Nava replied. ‘No one’s dying for one of his trials today.’
‘That’s what you think,’ Karsyn said. He raised his left arm and pressed the button on a second pod before anyone could stop him. His eyes wild, he smiled at Nava. ‘You’re going to pay for interrupting my work.’
‘Fuck!’ Carlton exclaimed. ‘We need to get you to the infirmary.’
‘There’s nothing they can do,’ Karsyn said. ‘Can you feel the power coursing through you, Nava Greyling? Your capacity has increased to two hundred and fifty Tammys. Your ability to manipulate quintessence has been maximised. Can you feel it? What will you do with it before your time runs out?’
Nava looked down at him for a second, considering. ‘Well,’ she said calmly, ‘the first thing I’m going to do is punch you in the face.’
‘What?’
Nava drew back her arm…
~~~
Nava sat in a room in the infirmary, atop one of the beds, wearing a cap with wires coming out of it. The wires were connecting her to a machine beside the bed which was showing a number of traces on a screen. Other wires were connected to a more standard ECG machine, showing heart rate, blood-oxygen level, and blood pressure. Everything looked normal though…
‘Your EEG is not normal,’ Tanzi Royce Sonkei said. She was probably the best medical technician the school had, and she was disconcerted at Nava’s calm demeanour.
‘With respect,’ Nava replied, ‘you have nothing to compare it to.’
‘That’s true. Magicians generally show elevated brainwave activity, but this is something else again.’
‘But Nava’s ab-bility to process information is r-rather high,’ Melissa said. She was in a chair at the side of the room, looking nervous. Compared to Mitsuko, however, Melissa was a study in calm.
‘I called my parents,’ Mitsuko said, not pausing as she paced the end of the room with a scowl on her face. ‘We’ll get the best neurologist there is out here. I just hope it’s fast enough.’
‘Unlikely,’ Nava replied. ‘No one has survived more than about an hour after he’s used one of those things on them and it’s been…’
‘Seventy-five minutes,’ Tanzi said. ‘That’s since you were brought in.’
‘Add another ten. I believe his device malfunctioned. Or perhaps he missed.’
‘Hm. I want to keep you in here overnight to be–’
‘I am not spending the night wearing this cap, Tanzi. I very much doubt that complete neurological collapse is something you can treat, even if you are monitoring me when it happens.’
‘Well, no…’
‘We wait for the neurologist,’ Mitsuko said. ‘We’ll see what they say.’
Nava considered sighing for effect and rejected the notion almost immediately. ‘If it makes you feel more comfortable.’
‘It does.’
‘Very well, but if nothing’s happened by now, I really don’t think it’s going to.’
~~~
‘I don’t want to say “I told you so,” but I told you so.’
Mitsuko scowled at Nava across the coffee table, and their evening meal. ‘I was worried.’
‘I noticed.’
‘You might have died.’
‘That was very unlikely.’
The neurologist had turned up after another thirty minutes. He was an older man, one of the Maki Sonkeis which Mitsuko’s mother had belonged to before her marriage. There had been tests. Lots of tests. All the results had come back the same: Nava was as fit as the proverbial horse. There was no sign of neural injury.
‘Okay,’ Courtney said, ‘why didn’t it affect you, Nava? I don’t think you believe that stuff about it misfiring.’
‘No, you’re right, I don’t,’ Nava replied.
‘I’d have thought impending death might have made your icy mask break,’ Mitsuko said. ‘You didn’t seem scared at all.’
‘I admit to a moment of panic when he fired the thing.’
‘Then–’
‘But then he explained what was going to happen to me, and I stopped panicking. I suppose I wasn’t absolutely sure it wouldn’t kill me, but I had a strong belief that it would not.’
‘Because?’ Courtney asked.
‘As Karsyn Spence explained it, my sorcerous capacity would rise to two hundred and fifty and it would maximise my ability to manipulate quintessence.’
There was silence for a second while Nava’s housemates tried to work out why that had been enough to make Nava think she would be okay. Melissa got there first, at least partially. ‘But your capacity is three seventy, and if your quintessence manipulation isn’t already at maximum, there is no maximum.’
‘Precisely. While it would take some analysis to work it out for sure, I suspect that the victims died because their brains couldn’t handle the processing speed the device forced on them. My brain already processes information faster than that. Ergo, it was unlikely that I would suffer the same effect as the others.’
‘Huh,’ Courtney said. ‘In a reverse of the usual saying: no gain, no pain.’
Nava nodded. ‘Perhaps if a greater amplitude were used, I might have been in trouble. As it is, I think there are other students here who could have survived it. Not that I plan to test that theory. I’d rather his “capacitator” was destroyed along with all his research notes, but I think the cat is out of the bag on this one.’
‘Someone will try to continue his research.’
‘Probably.’
‘But it kills people,’ Melissa said.
‘So do nuclear weapons, but that did not stop their development.’
‘I… suppose not. Did he really call it the capacitator?’
‘He did.’
Now that the demise of her friend was off the table, Melissa’s nervousness was gone, mostly. She giggled. ‘That would never have worked. His marketing team would have had to come up with a better name.’
‘The brain-burninator,’ Courtney suggested.
‘I don’t think that would help sell it. The enlarginator, because it enlarges your capacity.’
‘You do not have a career in marketing, Mel,’ Mitsuko said. ‘How about… the navainator, because it makes you about seventy percent as good as one Nava.’
‘You’re all mad,’ Nava said. ‘Why do they all have to have “inator” at the end?’
‘I don’t know,’ Melissa replied. ‘They just do.’
‘Oh. Well, that’s probably why Karsyn Spence’s idea sounds wrong. He should’ve gone with capacitinator.’
‘No… No, I don’t think that works either. What would you have called it?’
‘That’s easy. I’d have called it trash.’