Chapter 7

I didn’t have a weather incident right there in the meeting room. Stormbringer had no emotions to feed off of. I was too shocked, too numb, as my mind teased apart the implications. No wonder Albert hadn’t responded to my chats or calls in more than a month. It wasn’t unusual to lose contact with my brothers when they were on assignment, but he had never ghosted me from the hospital before.

I was there because Albert was… not. His plane had passed through the danger zone in the Spratlys and had gone down without a trace. Rear Admiral Rintaro and Lieutenant O’Connor nearly got into another fight about the cause of the crash, but I think they held back this time on my account.

They were treating me with kid gloves. I hated it, but I wasn’t going to snap at them for being too considerate. They weren’t the ones who had lied to me, after all.

They filled me in on the rest of the mission. I absorbed it, even if my mind was miles away. I had a few days of downtime before we set out on the recovery vessel. Lieutenant O’Connor would stay in Labuan on other business, but Zakariah would accompany me as a liaison and translator, as needed.

I think I held it together pretty well. It was a good thing O’Connor had put me through my paces before with the weather practice. There was less energy to spill out of me.

Though apparently, I wasn’t completely out of wild magic. A spark of lightning might have left my fingertip when they were scanning my finger and shorted out the fingerprint scanner on the way out. Or possibly, it was faulty device made by the lowest bidder. I’d believe either one.

“I am sorry, miss,” said the same guard from before. “I am not sure what is wrong with the machine. We will have to wait for another fingerprint reader.”

“Are you serious?” I growled. “You scanned me on the way in. I’m still me, I promise.”

He looked at me warily. “I apologize, but it is regulation with wizards.”

I jabbed the guard in the chest with my finger. “Now you listen—”

“Rose, please.” Zack stepped forward and had a brief conversation in Malay with the guard. I didn’t get most of it, aside from the words ‘cadet’ and ‘Cooper’, and it involved him flashing his credentials at the guard.

Lieutenant O’Connor stood behind me, looking pleased at the dressing down. “I picked you out a good liaison.”

“Why, what is he saying?” I asked.

“If he wanted you to hear it, he’d be speaking English,” he replied. “Let’s just say it’s fierce.”

After a minute, the guard relented, pressing a button on his console, opening the turnstile so I could pass through. “Right this way, miss.”

“What did you say to him, Zack?”

“Please call me Zakariah in front of the locals,” he whispered. “There’s a bit of a bias against Malaysians who have an English nickname.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “What did you say to him, Zakariah?”

“I might have threatened his career,” he replied.

“Can you do that? You’re from a national navy, and he’s League Allied Navy.”

Zack smirked knowingly at me. “I didn’t say I could carry through on the threat. However, he didn’t seem to know that.”

I murmured a thank you.

From there, it was a matter of picking up my suitcase from the security check-in at the front of the building, and we were on our way.

The rain had finally abated while we were in the briefing room. “How long were we in there?” I checked my watch. “It’s barely evening, but it’s so dark out!”

“That’s life near the equator,” said O’Connor.

“Where am I staying?” I asked. None of the concrete blocks looked especially inviting, but I needed a rest.

“Not here,” said O’Connor as another taxi pulled up. “We didn’t have a second limo in the budget, but I did get you into one of the tourist hotels nearby.”

“That wasn’t the plan, was it?” I asked.

O’Connor shrugged. “Plans change.”

“When did that happen?”

“While you were busy frying the guard’s equipment. It cut into the limo budget, but I’ll live.” The older man looked down on me, his green eyes full of sympathy. “Rose, when we enter the Wizard Corps, our lives are no longer our own. We serve at the pleasure of the Anti-Demonic League High Command. It comes part and parcel with the privileges we enjoy as members of the Corps.”

No tears. Not in front of a commanding officer. I didn’t want him to think I was some emotional little girl. “Wh-what does that have to do with it?”

“Whoever decided to keep that information from you was dead wrong,” he continued. “I don’t know why the League or the Corps did that, but I’m going to find out. From everything I heard from your brother Jack, Albert was a good man. I know you were close. You set out on your mission in two days. I can’t give you more time to grieve, but I can put you somewhere where you have some privacy.”

“I don’t want to be completely alone,” I said, hating the whiny tone of my own voice.

“The Leftenan will be in the neighboring room,” said O’Connor.

“I will be?” he asked.

“You better be, or their booking app sucks. You’re assigned to be her liaison and go where she goes, after all. Just turns out it’s going to be in an off-site hotel.”

“Th-th-tha—” I couldn’t get the word out properly. I sniffed. No tears. No tears. No…

“Oh, just cry already, for chrissakes,” snapped O’Connor. “That’s an order.”

If he insisted. With a crack of thunder, the rain resumed. It didn’t come down as hard as before; most of the moisture in the atmosphere was depleted by the earlier storm. Still, it wasn’t long until we were soaked. At least, until Zack and I were; O’Connor still had his umbrella from the limo. Leave it to a spook to be prepared.

I hurried into the taxi, with Zack shortly behind.

“Are you coming with us?” asked Zack.

O’Connor ignored the rain, leaning in through the window. “I have other business to attend to, but let me know if there’s anything I can do. And Rose?”

“Yes?”

“This is all still top secret.” He squinted at the taxi driver, who was doing something on his phone I couldn’t see. “I’m sorry, but you have to keep everything to yourself, and I mean everything.”

I nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

“Just make sure your head’s on straight when you depart.” With that, he walked away.

I wasn’t sure I dared call any of my friends; I’d spill the whole thing to them in a heartbeat. I sent some texts to tell everyone I had made it safely. Most everybody got the same message, with some different emojis (Yukiko got some hearts, Soren got some little crows, and so on).

Mum and Dad, though? They got a special message just for them.

“Landed safe. Checking in soon at the hotel. When I get there, we need to talk.”