Chapter 271: It Would Be Weirder If Magic Wasn’t Responsible (2/2)

Taika laughed as he handed Jason the phone.

“I put my number in the contacts, along with your uncle and current numbers for your parents, your sister and your brother-in-law.”

“Not my brother, or my sister-in-law?”

“Mr Asano said that might be touchy.”

“It’s fine,” Jason said. “Put them in.”

“No worries,” Taika said. He took back the phone and programmed in two more numbers from a piece of paper.

“All done,” Taika said. “Mr Asano never did say what the issue was exactly,” Taika said leadingly.

“I used to be in a relationship with my now sister-in-law, before she married my brother,” Jason said.

“Your brother married your ex? That’s not cool. How longer after you were with her did they get together?”

“During.”

“Oh, damn. That sucks, bro.”

“Agreed.”

“So is there anything you want to do today?” Taika asked. “I’ve set up an appointment with a lawyer this afternoon so you can sort out the legal stuff about you not being dead anymore. Mr Asano wants to have dinner with you, and you can talk about what you asked him for then.”

“Thanks,” Jason said. “I think I’ll spend the day on the internet, catching up on what I missed.”

“You’ve been away for a year and a half, yeah?” Taika asked.

“Yep. No TV, no movies, no internet. Not even a radio.”

“Damn. You missed the last season of Game of Thrones.”

“Was it any good?”

“It was real good. Extending it to thirteen episodes so they could properly develop the climax was a smart move, after how much they’d been rushing things.”

“Last I heard, they were cutting it down to six episodes.”

“Someone leaked the scripts and the internet went crazy. They rewrote the whole thing and everyone really liked how it turned out.”

“Nice.”

“Okay. I’m going to go. You need anything, give me a call. Otherwise, I’ll pick you up for lunch before I take you to see the lawyer, yeah?”

“Sounds good,” Jason said.

Taika called Hiro, neither aware of the shadowy creature hiding a body in each of their shadows.

“Are you getting Jason settled?” Hiro asked.

“No worries, Boss. Well, maybe some worries.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Your nephew’s weird.”

“He’s certainly different to what I remember. You think there’s a problem?”

“It’s just a lot of little things. He disappeared, yeah, and now he’s back and all mysterious and stuff? What if he’s EOA?”

“Clearly he’s been through something,” Hiro said. “It’s a big leap from there to the EOA, though.”

“We know they’ve been sniffing around,” Taika said. “You saw how jumpy it’s made Growl. What if your nephew is their foot in the door?”

“That wouldn’t be their style. They’re known to be domineering. What makes you think Jason is EOA?”

“When I checked on him this morning, I saw someone had put all the weights up to maximum. You nephew isn’t exactly a huge bloke.”

“You think he’s one of the EOA’s juiced-up thugs?”

“I like your nephew, Boss, but he feels dangerous.”

“He’s not one of their juicers,” Hiro said. “That drug cocktail they put them on messes up their heads.”

“Like brain damage?” Taika asked.

“Exactly like that. Did Jason seem brain damaged to you?”

“No, Boss; he seems pretty sharp. I can’t help but feel like he seems dangerous, though.”

“I thought the same thing. Keep an eye out, but make sure nothing happens to him. If the EOA do get it in their heads to make use of him, it’ll be by grabbing him, not recruiting him.”

“No worries, boss.”

The abandoned hospital’s helipad was still serviceable and Annabeth Tilden’s helicopter landed mid morning. She was dressed in a sensible suit, as was the woman waiting for her with a powerful torch in hand. They looked like government functionaries, which was exactly the intention.

Annabeth didn’t bother asking questions over the noise of the winding down helicopter, instead letting Ketevan lead her inside, guiding the way by torchlight. They went downstairs and set off down a corridor.

“What do you have, Keti?” Annabeth asked. “I’ve got the Engineers of Ascension pushing into Sydney that I have to keep an eye on, now the Children’s Hospital miracle debacle and whatever this thing here is.”

“The hospital miracle thing is ours?”

“A hospital full of kids were mysteriously cured by an angel made of stars, Keti. It would be weirder if magic wasn’t responsible.”

“That really happened?”

“Yeah. The media doesn’t even need to sensationalise. Not that they aren’t trying, bless them. Whoever’s responsible clearly doesn’t give a crap about the mess they’re making, but that’s Aram’s mess to sort through. What do you have for me here?”

“It definitely wasn’t a glitch in the grid,” Ketevan said. “The magic event is over, but it was so powerful that we can still read the residual magic like it just happened. After our investigators picked up on it, I sent in an after-action team to see what we could learn.”

“And?”

“Well, you remember that I told you the event was localised?”

“No. You woke me up in the middle of the night.”

“Sorry, Ma’am. Well, it turned out to be very, very localised.”

Ketevan turned off the torch when they reached the maternity ward, where a number of lamps had been set up to illuminate the area. The after-action team looked like a forensics team as they bustled about. In the maternity theatre, a flat board had been set out and a magical diagram drawn onto it. Floating above the circle was a horizontal figure that looked to be made of fire.

“What am I looking at?” Annabeth asked.

“As best we can tell,” Ketevan said, “this is the echo of a variant incursion event.”

“That’s a rather extreme variant,” Annabeth said.

“Yes,” Ketevan agreed. “I told you about the rated strength, which still registers above five in every test we run. The proto-astral space existed for less than a second, which is quite a lot less than the usual forty-three hours. And, of course, instead of covering kilometres, it was the size and shape of a person.”

“You’re suggesting a person came through,” Annabeth said.

“Or something person-shaped,” Ketevan said. “Maybe it was an angel made of stars.”