The Chief Warden of Shar-Kattori watched the monitor as the Weavers submerged the catatonic body of prisoner Randolph Quentin into the holding tank that would become his cell for the next 58 years. Randolph, a class 4 mage and notorious child rapist would never see the light of day until he was one hundred and one years old, his sentence also carrying with it, a sanitation order twenty four hours after revival. It didn’t really matter whether his body lived out the sentence; he was a dead man anyway. The two Weavers lowered and sealed the tank, then turned to the watchman on duty and nodded, who was monitoring Quentin’s vital signs making sure they were all green The watchman then turned and faced the camera.
“The tank is secure Chief Warden.”
“And his vitals?”
“All signs are stable sir."
“Well done everyone. Continue on.”
“Yes sir.”
The Warden nodded then turned away and walked to the opposite end of his office and stood in front of the window that over looked the ocean. Today the Cook Strait was calm and the sky clear and you could just make out the dark silhouette of land off in the distance. It was days like this that Chief Warden Shamus Adwin knew he had made the right decision when he accepted the job as master and executioner of Shar-Kattori prison. A buzzing sound interrupted his thoughts, sighing, he walked to his desk, sat down and pushed the flashing button.
“Yes?”
“Chief Warden, you have an incoming conference call from the Collective. Madame Secretary said to inform you, that representatives from The Hive and the Ops Division of Wellington Metro Police Department, Black Serenity will also be attending.”
“Thank you Lily. Is there anything else? “
“Yes Chief Warden. Madame Secretary would also like Arc Sentinels Gabriele and Zephon present and that you should perhaps have some refreshments brought to your office. She said its going to be a long conference.”
Groaning out loud, the Chief Warden pinched the bridge of his nose and frowned.
“Sir? Would you like me to have the kitchen prepare a lunch for you and have it brought up?”
Squeezing the bridge of his nose as hard as he could, he felt the onset of a dull ache forming behind his left eye. Shutting his eyes and sighing loudly he answered the voice that belonged to his secretary.
“Yes please Lily, that would be great. And get someone to bring Gabriele and Zephon to my office please.”
“Yes sir. Putting Madame Secretary through now sir.”
“Thank you Lily.”
Standing up behind his desk with his hands clasped behind his back, the monitor he was viewing before blinked into life along with four others. Modern technology had come a long way, but it could still do with some vast improvements, he thought. He stood in silence, waiting for all the parties involved in this conference to connect.
“Ah, Chief Warden”
“Madame Secretary. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I’m not so sure a pleasure is quite the words to use Chief Warden. It’s a pity when we connect with Shar-Kattori that it is never on pleasant terms. But then again, there really isn’t anything at all pleasant about Shar-Kattori now is there?”
“We are a prison facility Madame Secretary not a creche.”
“Indeed Chief Warden and a damn good one. I must warn you Shamus; Superintendent Loren York of the Ops Division will also be attending this conference. Which is part of the reason why I asked for the Arcs’ to be present, not so much Zephon but Gabriele. I’d rather Gabriele knew from the beginning who she was going to be working in close quarters with for the next few weeks, rather than have her find out later on.”
Shamus frowned and stepped out from behind his desk and walked a little closer to the screen. It was common knowledge among those at Shar-Kattori that Arc Sentinel Gabriele and the now Superintendent Loren York had a history together, one that saw a jealous lover try with sheer determination to kill his Arc. But what was most concerning, was the Collectives decision to appoint her to Superintendent and if he was correct with the assumption he had quietly came to in his mind, involve his Arc in what would surely be a manhunt with the woman who tried with sheer determination to kill her.
“I’m not so sure I want Gabriele to be present Madam Secretary let alone a part of whatever it is you would like my team to be a part of. LorenYork tried her damnest to kill Gabriele out of rage and jealousy, I hardly think. .”
“What you think Shamus, unfortunately has no sway with how things will proceed. Arc Sentinel Gabriele will be a part of the operation I am about to brief you on and as far as the Collective is concerned, she will be the Arcs’ liaison between WMPD and Black Serenity. I’m sorry Shamus but the Collective have all agreed that she is the right choice and the agreement has been sanctioned. Besides, you and I both know that Superintendent York never stood a chance against Gabriele.”
Drawing himself to full height and wiping his face of any expression the Chief Warden conceded to the Madame Secretaries wishes.
“Very well Madame Secretary, you have our full cooperation. Shar-Kattori is at your disposal.”
“Thank you Shamus and I am sorry it had to be this way.”
Without replying, he watched the rest of the screens connect and four faces appear. He began his play of pleasantries as they waited for the Arcs’ to arrive. As he was greeting the last of the Ministers the door to his office opened and closed and he felt the bristling power of both Arcs pressing in against him as they took up their positions behind him. He allowed himself a brief smile, raising his head, as pride washed over him. It felt good to have two of the most powerful beings in the world standing in the same room as him and he knew it was the same for every Chief Warden across the globe. The Arcs were every Wardens pride and joy.
“Now that everyone is here, shall we begin.”
It was the House Minister of the Hive that spoke first and started off a briefing that in the end would lead them on journey that could very well, destroy them all.
“As of twelve hours ago, we received information that Hive Minister Madison Tate, a political representative of the Porirua district and the active CEO of Trans InterIsland, has been implemented in the murder of Stewart Embridge and his family. We also have in our possession video footage that confirms this information. Due to the nature and political ramifications that could arise from this incident, the Collective and House representatives of the Hive have agreed this situation be given a status of the highest priority.”
“So in other words, you want this covered up as quickly and as quietly as possible?”
“Chief Warden, I will remind you of who you are talking too.”
“My apologies Madame Secretary, I was only voicing the obvious which I’m sure has crossed the minds of everyone present, including House Minister Alverson.”
“You must realise Chief Warden, such things are delicate and need to be handled with the utmost delicacy. Our country's political structure is somewhat fragile at the moment and a portion of the country’s population is looking for an excuse to destabilise it further. I, for one would not like to hand them that opportunity.”
“House Minister, Madison Tate is a murderer and should be treated as such. Just because he is a Minister of the Hive, special privilege should not be granted him. It’s a perversion of justice when you grant such to someone of higher status than the general populace.”
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s a perversion or not. There’s more at stake here than the countries political standing. Madison Tate is a class 7 mage and the only representative your kind have Shamus in the Hive. So, in light of everything, it is imperative that we proceed with swiftness in apprehending Tate before more significant damage can be done. So if we could all get past the need to voice our opinions and concerns, I would like this briefing to continue and everyone remain focused on the situation at hand.”
All heads nodded in unison and a brief silence ensued. Madame Secretary studied the faces of the people who stared back at her from their designated offices, she wondered silently if they had made the right choice in bringing aboard the Shar-Kattori mages. She sighed inwardly at the responsibility ahead of her and everyone who was involved. It didn’t really matter now anyway, the order had been put through and she had no choice but to relay the wishes of the Collective. It was the Collectives job to direct the flow of law and order in the southern, western and eastern continents. Without them the world would revert back to its chaotic war-mongering ways. She nodded her head in reassurance more to herself than anyone else.
She had a job to do, and that job was to recruit the very people on this planet that were capable of catching and bringing to justice a mage of exceptional power. She focused her eyes on the screen that had the Chief Warden and looked past him at the two Arcs. Yes, the right choice had been made. The Arc Sentinels of Shar-Kattori would be the ones to hunt down a ruthless killer, a killer who had spilled the blood of innocent human beings.
* * * * * * * * *
Detective Mike Kelleher stood in the lounge of Stewart Embridge’s big six-bedroom home, looking out the window onto the front lawn watching in mild frustration as members of his homicide team, tried desperately to secure down an evidence tent. Over night the weather had turned nasty and the high winds were wreaking their own kind of havoc, making it a mission for his team to cover the twisted and dead body of 10 year old Sebastian Embridge. He looked at his watch and frowned, he had just under an hour left on the clock before Superintendent York and her troupe of Neanderthals came stomping through this place and messing up his crime scene. He cursed under his breath at the crappy weather and at a man who thought Miramar on Wellington’s eastern section of the city, was a good place to settle down in.
His team had been working non-stop since they were assigned to the investigation by the Collective and they all looked like they could do with a few hours sleep. Unfortunately for them, that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. People in higher places wanted answers, preferably yesterday rather than today. He watched on as his team finally managed to secure down the tent and gave him the thumbs up. He nodded then turned away and surveyed the rest of his team going about their jobs. He moved toward a man known as Grim, his teams’ own version of a criminal analyst who had an uncanny ability to read a crime scene like a palm reader could read your hand.
“Hey Grim, found anything yet?”
“If you're asking if I’ve found anything that would hint at a motive for all this carnage…then no, I haven’t.”
“Care to share any thoughts you might have then?”
“God, I wouldn’t know where to begin. There’s just so much destruction here I just don’t know where to start. We’ve been over this house with a fine-toothed comb and there’s just nothing here to suggest that Embridge and Tate were enemies. Its pretty obvious they knew each other to a certain extent but not enough to be walking in the same circles or having beers down at Ponte’s after work. We’ve sent his computers from his study and his office as well as his and his wife’s laptops in the master bedroom to the PC geeks at Metro. So far, they haven’t come across anything significant that could point us in the right direction. Even they are feeling a little frustrated at the lack of juicey tidbits that is on the Embridges computers.”
“There’s gotta be something? This place looks like a tornado swept through it.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t tell us anything either. This is half the problem we face sir, especially where mages are concerned. Apart from all the blood, guts and the odd scorch marks here and there, they don’t really leave much behind except a wake of devastation. It looks like all hell broke loose but in actual fact it didn’t.”
“What about a paper trail and Embridge’s wife? Is there anything linking her to having an affair with Tate or anyone else?”
“Nope, nothing. Stewart Embridge was clean and…boring. So was his wife. She was completely devoted to Embridge, their children and the life they had. She was your typical soccer mum. Drove her kids to school took them to their after school activities. She was a member of the kids School, Board of Trustees and was a member of the PTA. She never had any affairs or any secret crushes or anything remotely wayward. She did however have a particular taste for expensive perfumes, jewellery and loved shoes. Even...”
“What? How do you know that Mrs Embridge liked expensive perfume?”
“Oh, I checked out the master bedroom once the laptops were removed to see if there was anything that could help us. The woman had taste, albeit expensive, but taste nonetheless.”
“Oook. Just..carry on. Let me know if you find anything worth mentioning.’
“Will do.”
Mike stood with his hand against his hip and began rubbing his forehead, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. He paused to look at the dead girl whose body lay in between a three-seater leather sofa and a large rimu coffee table. He frowned and bent down to take a closer look at her, he reached inside his jacket pulled out a pen, and used it to ease aside her bloodied hair.
“She didn’t suffer if that’s what you're wondering.”
Without looking at Grim and continuing to remove bloodied hair from the victim’s face he asked his analyst why he thought she hadn’t suffered.
“The angle of her body suggests she was thrown with considerable force.”
Turning and pointing toward the stairwell that spiralled upwards to the second floor that was situated on the opposite side of the large open plan lounge and back to where the body now lay.
“I’d put my money on it was from the stairwell to here judging by the way she is lying. I’m also going to bet my paycheck on the fact that she never felt a thing and was probably dead before she hit the floor. If we were to remove her clothes we would probably see massive trauma to her body and an x-ray would show considerable damage to her skeletal structure which in turn would support my theory on how she died. But you’d need an expert opinion from the ME to confirm that.”
Looking at the girl’s face he felt pity and anger stir within him. What had the world come to? Where murdering people was now as easy as getting in a car, driving to someones doorstep and knocking on the door. The world maybe safe from wars but there was a new pattern of destruction emerging which was far more sinister and with alarming frequency.
“Lucky for her then, huh? Is there anything else you can tell me about the other bodies?”
“Apart from the fact they died excruciating deaths, particularly the children and Mr Embridge…no.”
“Has anyone had a chance to check out the surveillance tapes the Collective have in their possession?”
"Not yet. Madame Secretary won't release them until SIC arrive which should be tomorrow."
"Figures. Ok, lets get the ME in here and get these bodies down to the morgue. I don’t want to keep them here any longer than we have too."
Grim nodded and headed toward the entranceway hall leaving his boss to his thoughts, to find the ME and his team. Mike remained where he was, looking at the face of a girl who looked to be no more than twenty years old. He reached out his hand and stroked the cold hard face and shook his head in disbelief. There truly were monsters out there, and like the victims whose lives they took, belonged to some mother and father who swore, they had raised their kids proper.
Detective Kelleher moved out of the way as the coroner’s team made their way through the carnage and walked into the kitchen to find Lowry his best detective on his team taking photographs of the two eldest Embridge children as if they were modelling for him. As much as he was an arrogant, cocky sonofabitch, he had to respect the man for his ability to get the job done and the dedication he had to his job. He watched as Lowry shifted positions taking shot after shot of the crumpled bodies and felt a little sickened by the smile he had on his face and because he kept saying beautiful and you're really working the camera today. Lowry wasn’t his personal choice to join his homicide team but when the order came from the top, he had no choice but to hold the door open for him.
Lowry looked up and smiled at his boss, holding up his camera as if to signal he was all done and walked over to the fridge opened it and began rummaging around. Closing the door he had a bottle of diet coke in one hand and a chicken drumstick crammed in his mouth. Kelleher was just about to walk over and say something when a voice stopped him.
“I see you’re still unable to keep your boys in check”
Lowry looked in the direction of the voice and smiled a toothy chicken grin and winked. As one of the trundlers was being pushed past him he stopped it, placed the chicken on the bag opened up the diet coke took a swig, then picked up the chicken and sauntered away. Kelleher breathed deeply through his nose, his nostrils flaring as he did so. He didn’t have to make any guesses as to who the voice belonged too, it was a voice he knew or too well. Turning around, he came face to face with a woman he had learned, would do anything to get what she wanted.
“What are you doing here? You're not meant to be here for another 45 minutes.”
“I was excused from the briefing by Madame Secretary and asked to see if there had been any developments so far. I think she was more concerned about whether or not you and your team had what it took to handle such a high profile investigation.”
The note of sarcasm didn’t escape Mike as he eyed the Superintendent with contempt. His jaw tightened as he silently grinded his teeth, his hands balling up into tight fists turning his knuckles white. Loren smiled at him giving him a look of satisfaction.
“Oh come on Mike, don’t be like that. No one likes a pouter. Besides, this is bigger than you and I remember.”
“Oh wow Loren your powers of deduction are astounding. Oh my god, you could be a mage! Oh no wait…that’s right. You prefer to try and kill them don’t you Loren or would you like me to call you Superintendent York?”
He stared at her intently daring her to say he was wrong, instead she narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips into thin lines of pink flesh, inhaled deeply then smiled.
“No. You may call me Loren Detective Kelleher.”
“Whatever, I’ve got an investigation going on here now if you don’t mind I’d like to get on with it.”
Gregan Warren Theodore Hutch or more commonly known as Grim among his peers and colleagues came into the kitchen gasping for air and gripped onto the dining room table and tried to steady his breathing. He looked at his boss and then at Superintendent York and cocked an eyebrow at the way they were standing, looking at each other. To him it looked like Superintendent York was going to scratch his bosses’ eyes out, while his boss looked like he was going to shoot her on the spot. He thought about asking if everything was okay, but the need to live a long and happy life overruled that foolish thought.
“Um, sir…you might want to come and see this.”
Pushing past the woman standing in front of him, Kelleher approached Grim who took a couple of unsteady steps backwards.
“See what Grim?”
“Ah, I think I may have found that link you were looking for”
“What?”
“The kid sir, Sebastian?”
“What about him?”
Rolling his eyes at his boss, he shook his head, slumped his shoulders and motioned for them to follow.
“Just come and take a look. You too Superintendent York. The whole time we've been here, we've looking in the wrong place.”
All three people hurried outside and stepped through the flap of the tent that kept the boys body housed from the elements. Two other detectives were standing inside with their arms folded just looking at the kid. Grim looked at the Medical Coroner and waved him aside then knelt down beside the boy and began explaining himself in a more excited tone.
“You asked me inside if I had found anything to explain the tornado right and I said no?”
“Yeeaah. I still don't see how this kid has anything to do with it or how you think we were looking in the wrong place.”
“Well sir, its not your job to think its mine, that’s what you hired me for.”
A few chuckles came from some of those present which were cut off by the cold glare aimed at them.
“The link please?”
“Oh..right. Sorry sir”
Grabbing a pair of clean latex gloves from his pocket and putting them on, Grim reached out with both hands, and gently pried the boys eyelids open then motioned for the ME to shine his penlight into the kids eyes. Both the Detective and Superintendent leaned in closer and looked at the small boy’s eyes then at each other.
“Exactly what are we looking at or for?”
“His eyes Superintendent York”
“Loren, will do. Okay, so we are looking at his eyes, they’re very pretty, unusual colouring, but…?”
“Exactly Super..I mean Loren. The colouring of his eyes.”
“Grim make sense will you. What about his eyes?”
Sighing loudly while giving his boss an are you serious look, Grim wondered to himself how this man had ever gotten a job as a Detective. A thought he was more than happy to keep to himself.
“Well, to date we haven’t made any significant leaps and bounds into the genetics of a mage as they have virtually the same gene sequencing as us except for a few variables. We have however, found that there is a kind of hierarchy that sets some mages apart from others and since that discovery we have termed that hierarchy as a “class”. Now, it’s my belief sir that there are certain markers, which establish among the mages, where they actually sit on the hierarchal ladder. And it’s these markers which suggest that this boy was a mage of considerable power.”
Staring in disbelief at his crime analyst Kelleher looked back down at the boy.
"Whoa Nelly now, back up a sec. Did you just say this boy is a mage?"
"Yes sir, I did."
Frowning at Grim, then looking back at the boy’s eyes, a thought kept nagging at the Detective about something he felt he should know or probably did know. The only problem was he didn’t have a clue as to what it could be. But the more he looked at the boys eyes the more prominent the nagging feeling became. He turned his attention back to Grim and nodded for him to continue.
“Okay, say for argument sakes that this boy had lived and not died. As he got older his power level would increase exponentially and his eye colour would also change dramatically from the silvery grey they are now to a mercurial grey. These changes would have made it unmistakable to anyone that came in contact with the boy and if his parents had also lived even they would not have been able to deny or hide what their son was from anyone. The genetic markers that made him what he was, would have been irrefutable, to his parents, doctors, us, even others of his kind.”
With the creases deepening on his forehead he looked from Grim to the Superintendent who was staring at the boy with a knowing look on her face, he turned back and asked his crime analyst in a barely audible voice,
“What are you trying to say Grim?”
Grim looked his boss in the face and answered.
“Sebastian Embridge sir…was an Arc.”
Wow. Verrry cool.
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