Chapter 14
Gwendolynne
When I come around, I’m slumped against the wall, my body still throbbing with pain.
I’m cognizant of that fact that Darghan Briggs must’ve hit me with some sort of stunning spell.
It had knocked me out for long enough for him to restrain me, because I’m now tied up, my wrists bound together with one of the electrical extension cords.
I struggle against my restraints, to no avail. Raising my hands before my face, I squint at the bindings, my vision hazy.
“Who are you?” Darghan Briggs is oddly calm. He’s pulled a chair up in front of me and is leaning back in it, his legs crossed at the ankles. A gun lies across his lap. “Where are you from?” If he genuinely doesn’t know, maybe Harrisford isn’t working with him?
“No one.” My voice is raw and scratchy, my words sounding choked. “I’m no one.”
“Are you from the Magical Liberation Organization?” He shifts in his chair, one hand palming the handle of his gun. His eyes—so pale blue, like two chips of ice—are fixed on me.
“What? No!” He’s jumped to that assumption so quickly; maybe, despite what Harrisford thinks, there’s some merit to the idea that the MLO was behind the gala explosion.
His eyes burn. “Then which organization are you from?”
I chafe at my bindings, the cords pinching my skin.
“I’m not from any organization,” I grit out, wincing at the pain.
“I’m just—” I pause, trying desperately to figure out the best angle; how I might get him to talk.
“Hani…was my mother. And when she disappeared I—” I take in a big, exaggerated sniffle.
“I just wanted to know what she was working on.”
Mr. Briggs’s expression softens, just slightly. “Well, I can assure you that you won’t find anything here.”
“I was just curious, you know, to see if there was a reason for her disappearance.”
He’s silent for a moment. “People run away all the time. Does there have to be a reason?”
I swipe at my eyes, wiping away nonexistent tears. “She would never, though…She’d never leave. My high school graduation is coming up soon and I…” I cover my face with my bound hands and heave a great, shaking sob.
My captor lets out a sigh. “Listen, Miss Nguyen. I imagine that it’s difficult to accept your mother leaving.
But you never know what someone is going through internally.
She might have been deeply unhappy. She might have had a breakdown.
She might have needed to escape.” He adds, his voice gentling, “Wouldn’t you want your mother to be happy? ”
A trickle of cold floods my insides and I shake my head, letting out a shivery breath.
Darghan Briggs acting all sympathetic now, after everything else he’s done, is confusing me.
“It’s not that. It’s just—I don’t buy her missing it on purpose.
She was so excited to see me graduate! I was wondering whether it, you know, had anything to do with the surges. ”
Harrisford’s father’s eyes immediately harden to flint. “The surges? Whatever do you mean?”
I raise my face. It’s already tearstained from before, so it’s not too hard to look miserable.
“The surges that are happening around London. I was wondering if…” I trail off, because Mr. Briggs has risen to his feet and is now pointing the gun at me.
Dread slithers up my spine, and my pulse begins to hammer.
Harrisford’s mother’s suit is swelteringly hot, the collar of my buttoned shirt too tight.
“You can stop now,” he says. His voice has turned acidic, a sinister whisper that slides effortlessly beneath my sticky, sweat-laced skin. “You can stop lying, girl. Did you really think I would believe that ridiculous sob story?”
And then I realize: He’d been humoring me, all that time.
I start shaking. All I can see is the barrel of the gun.
Deep inside it, there’s a tiny glow—the kernel of magic that will explode if he pulls the trigger.
Magical guns are much like normal guns, bullets and all, except they’re triggered by magic instead of gunpowder.
“I’m not lying,” I say, but the words are weak and lack conviction.
Mr. Briggs adjusts his grip on the gun. “Oh, drop the charade. You really think I don’t conduct background checks on all my employees?
” He tilts his head to one side and regards me through narrowed eyes.
“I know that Hani Nguyen didn’t have a daughter.
And I know her ID was locked in my study.
I don’t know how the fuck you got it, but you can stop lying and tell me where you’re from. ”
That’s it. My cover is blown. My pulse is racing, and my mouth has run dry. But a reckless sort of abandon is tearing through my body. The adrenaline, probably—my sympathetic nervous system has kicked into overdrive.
I know the signs: the effects of adrenergic receptor activation. My pupils are dilating, my heart rate is increasing, my lungs are expanding to full capacity. Blood is being diverted from my extremities and pooling at my core.
I know the adrenaline is clouding my mind and my judgment and giving me courage I don’t possess. Logically, my brain understands this—that my bravery is artificial…But honestly, in this moment, I don’t even care.
Physiology fucking rules.
I raise my chin, glaring at him. “Where is Hani Nguyen, Mr. Briggs? You say she’s no longer here. What does that mean? Is she dead?”
“You’re riding a dangerous wave, little witch,” he spits out. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”
I struggle against my bindings again. “I know that you’re responsible for the power surges, Mr. Briggs. I know that you’re involved in a cover-up. I know that Magecorp is killing people—”
“No.” He takes a step closer, still holding the gun with both hands. A shadow slides across his face, his pale eyes gleaming in the dim light, but I don’t fail to notice that his hands are shaking. “You know nothing.”
I swallow. My heart thumps louder. My eyes lock on the gun.
It’s probably just the adrenaline talking, but if I might die here, murdered by Darghan Briggs in the Magecorp HQ vault, I may as well make sure he knows his actions aren’t going unnoticed. “Are you going to kill me like you killed Hani, Mr. Briggs? Elouise Forrester? Benjamin Purcell?”
Mr. Briggs’s face pales, his forehead a slick sheen of sweat. It gives me a heedless sort of courage, and I continue to push. “What about Dr. Wallan, Mr. Briggs? Or Li-wen Tan? Do all their families know they’re dead?”
When Harrisford’s father speaks again, it comes out as a whisper. “Who are you?” His fingers clasp the gun so tightly that his knuckles have gone all white. “How do you know those names? Are you a reporter? Are you from the WTS?”
I ignore his questions. “Was it the surges that killed them? Why are they happening? Does it have to do with the mines? Is there trouble with the workers there?” I am relentless, stubborn, flinging questions at Darghan Briggs as though I am not the one tied up and he’s not the one with the gun.
“Have you lost control of your magical mines, Mr. Briggs? Does Magecorp have issues the public doesn’t know about?
” I shake my head, my eyes wide. “What will your shareholders think, Mr. Briggs?”
“Mines?” he scoffs. “There are no mines.”
My heart falters for a moment, then resumes at a rapid pace. My jaw is clenched so hard it’s like I’m pulverizing my teeth to dust. “Then how do you harvest magic?” My bound hands shake, my fingers curling into fists.
Mr. Briggs huffs out a laugh, his eyes still hard and cold.
“Good grief. Mines! If only it were that easy!” He moves even closer, the gun inching incrementally closer to my face.
“There aren’t any mines. There isn’t even a reliable source of magic.
There’s only our world—the real world—and the other world…
the Void. And it’s Magecorp’s job to tear holes in the universe so that the magic flows to us. ”
I freeze, shocked into silence by this revelation. The Void? The Void is real?
All this time I’d assumed that Magecorp had some secret supply that they mined and harvested for magic. When it actually sounds like Magecorp destabilizes the very fabric of the world in order to steal power from the Void.
Since my family are not really religious, I’m not well versed in the theories surrounding the Void. I know there are certain religious denominations that worship it, but neither I nor my family ever believed it to be real. How strange that now, just as I’m about to die, I find out that it is.
“So, what?” I ask. “The magic is flowing from the Void too quickly? Is that what’s happening?”
“No, girl,” Mr. Briggs says, and frowns. “It’s that too many holes are being ripped in the world at once.”
“And Magecorp is doing that? Why? Greed?”
“God, no! You’ve got it all wrong. We don’t know why the extra holes are forming—”
“But you were willing to let your employees die to find out,” I snarl. “And cover it up.”
He lets out a disdainful laugh. “They sacrificed themselves in the name of research. It’s for the greater good.”
Right, I think. Like Percy. Revulsion rises in my throat; the Magecorp CEO and his wife considered their cat expendable, and now Darghan Briggs is talking as though his employees are, too.
“And I bet you convinced them they were safe, didn’t you?
That launching an investigation into the surges wouldn’t put them at risk.
Maybe you even promised them promotions—”
“If the surges go on unchecked,” Mr. Briggs says icily, “then many more lives will be lost. More than a few Magecorp employees.” He says it almost as though he…cares…about the threat to the greater population.
The room lapses into silence. It suddenly strikes me as ominous that Mr. Briggs is so willing to share information. “Why are you telling me this?” I ask, challenging him. Trying to sound courageous.
Mr. Briggs doesn’t hesitate. Swiftly and surely, he raises the gun and presses the barrel of it against my forehead. “Because it doesn’t matter what you know,” he says, his face a blank, emotionless mask, “when I’m going to kill you anyway.”
I freeze. My throat has seized up, every muscle tense and rigid. He’s going to murder me, I think, and bury the evidence. Just like the dead Magecorp staff. And it may be completely illogical, but my first and only thought is that I don’t want to end up as just another photo in his drawer.
You won’t, my brain tells me, stubborn and insistent. You won’t end up like them. And my brain is right, because Mr. Darghan Briggs has got one thing very wrong.
Like most arrogant men, he has underestimated me. He thinks I’m weak; that I won’t fight back.
But I’m not just some silly girl trying to play with the grown-ups.
I am Gwendolynne Chan, the smartest witch at Seamere, and what Mr. Briggs doesn’t know is that in third year I’d blitzed the Restraint of Mythical Beasts exam. And one of the sections that I’d scored perfect marks in?
The module on knot-tying.
At the time, I’d thought it was fucking useless, considering I never planned to work with livestock—but now I’m glad I put the effort into passing.
I’d recognized the knot Darghan Briggs had used on me immediately.
And while I’d kept him talking and spilling all his incriminating secrets, I had been quietly working on undoing it.
I’d drawn my knees up to my chest, as though I was simply frightened and trying to shield myself.
I’d shoved my hands between my legs to hide my efforts.
If he’d had half the knowledge we vet students have, he would’ve realized…
That he had used the wrong fucking knot.
And just as Mr. Briggs clicks off the safety, I burst out of my electrical cord restraints.
If you’ve ever worked with large animals, you’d know that controlling them is not about physical size or force. It’s about intelligence. Work smarter, not harder, as the lecturers say. Even the smallest veterinarian can tip a sheep, compel a unicorn to move, or restrain a dragon inside a crush.
So, calling on the last vestiges of my myth.creat knowledge, I use momentum to sweep Mr. Briggs’s legs from under him and then kick the gun from his grasp.
He flips over onto his stomach, scrabbling for it unsuccessfully as it skitters across the floor.
And as he reaches out, clamoring for his weapon, I slam my foot between his shoulder blades, pinning him to the ground.
My brain is nothing but static. There’s only buzzing in my ears.
And in this fractional moment I’m back in the livestock yards, about to hog-tie a beast.
I’m still holding the cord Mr. Briggs had used to tie me up. And in less than a second, I take the end of the wire and hurl it against the electric door.