***

A few days after the briefing, we get our first orange alarm - magical incident with harm to persons. Since the magic is low-level, and it’s been a single burst, our team goes alone, and we get another quadcopter ride.

“Mission control to Team Blue - apparently we got an anonymous call,” a sleepy Aeniki says on voice comms, while we’re landing, “the caller claims he’s been attacked by a mage who tried to rob him in the metro system, with an accomplice. He refused to provide details or identification, and won’t go to a hospital, despite claiming he’s seriously hurt.”

“What the fuck?” Kaelich answers. “Is this some kind of prank?”

“More likely, the victim is either another mage or a criminal,” I suggest. You can rely on people sucking. “Did he describe the attackers?”

“He spoke with CivInt, I just got the recording, and they woke me for that,” Aeniki groans. “I’ll see if I can ID the caller from voice data.”

We rappel down from the helicopter - which, I must admit, is somewhat cool - and Althea floats down, as if she were falling through water, engulfed by green light. I look at her, transfixed, partly because I’ve never seen magic used so casually, partly because she looks like a movie star, in her wildly-weather-inappropriate green dress and perfect hairstyle.

Civilians point and gawk at us – but mostly at Althea. A few people make the sign of the Officers, others simply stare in disbelief, and two young women scream encouragement like it’s a fucking concert.

“Was that use of magic necessary, Althea?” Sorivel asks, grumpy. “Mages could perceive it.”

She laughs. “It won’t corrupt my soul or break the moon, it’s magic so simple, it’s basically a party trick,” she says. “Also, we came in a fucking chopper. Everyone knows we’re here, and it’s not like my training included rappelling.”

Sorivel mumbles something involving Navigator and Heretics, but leaves it at that, and we walk into the station beneath which the magic was detected. People point and whisper at our passage. I resist the urge to snap at them - it’s not us they should worry about.

“What if it is a setup, though?” Sorivel asks. “Metro tunnels are great for ambushes, and they used only very weak magic, so we didn’t bring reinforcements.”

I stop in my mental tracks for a moment. He’s right, and I hadn’t thought about it.

“Come on, who would ambush ThauCons?” Kaelich says, “even if it worked, it would attract the whole Agency's attention.”

“The Syndicates ambush ThauCons,” I answer. “And the anonymous caller, combined with the underground location, is concerning. Corporal, should we wait for reinforcements?”

Through the helmet’s visor, I see Kaelich bite xir lip. A brief pause, then xe answers. “Your point is noted, but I think we’re safe. Syndicates have never been active in this city, and if they’re setting up shop, we don’t know about them yet. They’d be stupid to attack us.”

“You worry too much,” Althea adds. “The Syndicates are spineless vermin. They rarely fight. And they’d need serious muscle to deal with three agents in full armor. Not to mention me.”

Kaelich nods, looking relieved, and leads us toward the escalator.

“Let’s go downstairs. But send your scout drones ahead, Sori,” xe adds, “better safe than sorry.”

“Heavenly Doctor, save us from optimists and fools”, Sorivel grumbles. He flicks his wrist, and two small, flying drones detach from his backpack and go whirring down the escalator.

“All clear,” he reports a few seconds later. “Truth still detects some residual Theta activity. Do you think you’ll be able to get a signature, Althea?”

She scoffs, as we go down the escalators. “Of course I’ll get their signature. I’m not a useless slime like Jaeleri, you know. We’ll catch them soon.”

Below, we find a depressing, dilapidated periphery station, with a closed-off cafè, wheezing air circulators and two broken information screens out of three. An orange no datasphere connection blinks at the corner of my eyes.

The loudspeakers are repeating a warning to leave the station due to an ongoing criminal investigation. The few people left are leaving in a hurry, and hasten their pace when they see us - but there are no obvious signs of a magical fight.

“Mission control, can you give us the exact location of the incident?” Kaelich asks.

“Do I look like a fucking prophet to you?” Aeniki answers, “Our theta detectors are museum pieces, they give me a fifty meters spatial resolution. Be grateful I can tell you it happened near the station. That said, the anonymous caller said the attackers dragged him to the maintenance sidewalk going west - that’s toward an abandoned station.”

“Why would the mage do that?” Kael asks, overlooking her staggering lack of professionalism.

“No idea, but I’m pretty sure the guy was lying anyway.”

“I think I found something,” Sorivel says. His tone is strange. “Wisdom followed the theta residual activity and there’s some… what… oh, sweet Doctor, help us. Yes, I found the crime scene.”

“Active threats?” Kaelich asks.

“Not that I can see. No current theta activity, and no people in the vicinity,” Sorivel says, sounding dazed. “It’s just… well, come and see.”

He leads us to the dark, empty tunnel leading to a dead station. Even in this wealthy city, metro lines are being cut and stations closed, one by one. It's hard to escape the reminders of our civilization’s slow death spiral.

“Everyone be careful,” Kaelich says, “the mage almost certainly left, but you can’t be too cautious with a Destructor. Can you make some light, Sorivel?”

“No need,” Althea says. She waves a hand, and a line of glowing green squares appears on the tunnel’s wall, casting it in sickly green light for several dozen meters.

“Wisdom has a flashlight,” Sorivel says, sounding exasperated, “one that is white and doesn’t cause theta background.”

As he says that, one of his drones - the small, flying one which he insists to call Wisdom - flies back to us and starts circling around Sorivel like an overly excited pigeon. Those things are annoying.

“My own magic’s background isn’t a problem,” Althea says, dismissively, “since I’ll be the one doing the reading. Now what… oh, fuck, is that a finger?”

It takes me a moment to see it, and - there’s a gun on the ground, sliced neatly in two. There’s still a finger on the trigger, with a surprisingly small pool of blood where it was cut.

For a moment, my head is light, and the station seems to spin. I take a deep breath - it’s just a finger. A minor wound, as far as magic is concerned. True, this is my first violent crime scene, but I’m not going to feel sick like some amateur.

“Elsefire, obviously,” Sorivel says, contemplative - Wisdom buzzes around the gun, and another, spider-like drone that might be Truth scurries down Sori’s leg and scuttles toward the crime scene. “There’s some blood on the floor, careful not to step on it. Also, did our anonymous caller mention carrying a gun?”

“No,” Aeniki answers, and for once she actually sounds lively. “Look, it sliced the finger and the metal so cleanly! That’s cool! Anyway, our source was full of shit, that’s obvious.”

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“My bet is he tried to rob a mage,” I say. That’s so deeply unsatisfying. This mage is exactly the kind I’m supposed to protect the world from - a rogue using deadly power to harm and kill. But the fact that it was in self-defense against a lying robber takes something away from the righteous feeling.

“Wait, it gets even better,” Aeniki says, and from her sudden cheer, I expect her to announce there’s an eviscerated corpse in a side tunnel. “I got access to the security cameras and ran a quick scan. Our friend Korentis left from that tunnel, about seven minutes ago. You almost bumped into xem on the way down.”

“Wait, the fuck? This isn’t the same mage who robbed the Jewelry, right?” Kaelich asks.

“I wasn’t there, so I can’t tell you for sure,” Althea says, “but theta signal analysis should have told you, if it was the same person. Anyway, I’ll collect the signature here, and see if I can get an idea of what happened.”

She walks to the gun, careful not to step on the blood, and her eyes glow green. Sorivel turns away, counting the Officers on his fingers. I stare, transfixed - I studied magic, watched videos, even trained with some Council mages, but I’ve never watched a mage working from this close. Well, if you don’t count Jaeleri, but it’s not like he did anything.

Fascination with magic probably isn’t the best trait for a ThauCon agent. And it is scary, in a way – the green is too green, the light doesn’t behave as light should, it moves and clings to objects like a sticky fluid. It’s wrong. Otherwordly.

But it’s also beautiful, and fascinating. I can’t take my eyes off Althea’s fingers, where soft, brown skin gives way to hard light. How can something so dangerous look so good on her?

Althea moves her fingers, as if drawing in midair, or tying invisible knots. Small dots of lights form in midair - no, not dots, cubes, like a child’s construction blocks, arranging and rearranging themselves, until they form the fuzzy outline of a scene.

It’s hard to make out faces in the glowing green light. It’s like watching a grainy, single-color video. But I can tell there’s a group of three people standing by the sidewalk, facing two more, who came from the dark tunnel. One of the three holds a gun. Another one holds something - a stick? A knife? And definitely looks threatening toward the two.

Althea moves her fingers, and the images move in jerky fits, like a fast-forward. The pair and the trio seem to be talking mostly – pity we can’t hear sounds. The shorter of the pair raises a hand. A color that is not green bleeds into the image: a faint dark red glow on the shortie’s fingers.

I startle when the other figures move, one taking out a gun, the other lurching to stab the mage. Then something like blood-red lightning explodes from the mage’s hand. Althea moves her fingers, and the image freezes like that.

“I’d say we have a pretty clear picture, at least of the immediate situation,” she comments, with satisfaction.

“Can you tell what they were saying?” Kaelich asks. “Also, whoa, this is amazing. I didn’t know mages could see the past. Why don’t you do this for regular murders?”

“You can only go back a few minutes, unless you have a Sight-path mage,” Althea answers, with a smile. “But using it for non-magical crimes would violate the Council’s charter. Even if that’s obviously stupid.”

I studied magic in much greater detail than most, and while I knew mages can extract a magical signature from a past event, I didn’t realize they could do this. I studied almost exclusively how mages fight. That looks like a worse mistake every day.

I guess I could do my next career-ruining essay about the need to involve Sight-mages in regular police work.

“So, do we have a signature?” Sorivel asks, clearly ill at ease with the magic in front of our eyes.

“Yes,” Althea says. “When we’re at the base I’ll reproduce it for the theta scanners.”

“Well, mission accomplished,” Kaelich says, relieved, “it’s nice having a mage that can actually do their job. And if Korentis was really one of the two mages involved, we might catch them together, with some luck.”

“Can’t say I’m enthusiastic about that,” Althea says. “The mage was clearly being threatened. But it still counts as a violent crime, there’s no self-defense clause for rehab sentencing.”

For a moment, I’m surprised that she voices concern for mages’ punishment - that’s just not something you do in ThauCon. But of course, she’s not ThauCon.

“The Navigator offers us a choice, and they’ve chosen the Dark Power,” Sorivel says, grimly.

“They’re mages and didn’t turn themselves in. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” Kaelich adds.

Althea looks at them, says nothing, and then looks at me.

I’m not full of sympathy for poor rogue mages who steal expensive jewels and get into fights with gangs. They could learn basic control, get their tattoos and go back to their lives in a month from the moment they discover their powers.

But maybe we don’t know the full story here, and I don’t want to antagonize new team members, especially really attractive ones, so I choose the path of wisdom and say nothing.

***

Soon we have the newcomer’s magical signature, and we easily spot him in the station security footage: he’s walking side by side with Korentis. He’s not in the citizens database, however - probably a recent immigrant, since Vorokan kids get registered by schools. Aeniki finds a few frames where you can see a complex tattoo on his arm, which looks like a bunch of snakes, and apparently it means he’s Kalestran.

Were we in Ter Valentis, we could trace their movements through street cameras and catch them by tomorrow morning. But Vorok has a lot of annoying privacy laws, so we can’t do that. We’ll have to find them with a real-world search, like it’s the fucking middle ages.

On the other hand, I don’t think we’ll need to search very hard. Those mages caused two major magical incidents in two weeks, they’re not keeping a low profile. And with the full signature, as soon as the Kalestran boy uses any magic, we’ll get him.

Not a bad start for our first case, even if I won’t say that aloud until we have them in silver shackles. But Kaelich must think the same, because xe’s in a good mood too – which means in the evening xe drags us to do some extra training.

“What am I even supposed to train on?” Sorivel, who’s in bed, reading, objects. “I already spend way too much time practicing my drone link.”

“You could try and shoot something, for once. You’re supposed to know how to do that in a pinch, you know.” Kaelich says, shrugging. “Or you can cheer for us.”

“Captain give me strength, and Surgeon give me a lot of patience,” Sorivel answers, but he gets dressed and follows us from our bunk room to the Base Core.

“We should practice team signals and coordination,” I say. So far, Kaelich’s practice has been only on weapons only, and I’m starting to fear that shoot things is xir whole idea of drills.

“We definitely will, I know how training works,” xe answers, with a hint of annoyance - I should also practice hiding the contempt from my voice.

“But not yet,” xe adds, cheerful again. “We must get some experience with the training facilities here, and I want to see you practice the basics - blade, unarmed combat, movement, marksmanship. Yes, you too, Sorivel, I know you’re better than the Engineer himself with your drones, but one day you might have to fight someone who’s in your same room.”

Ok, xe actually has a point, and I was being unfairly dismissive. Kaelich is only mostly stupid, after all.

We get to the door to the training facilities - it’s half-stuck, and we basically have to squeeze in - when Althea enters our same hallway.

“What are you doing? Not going out to drink without me, I hope,” she says.

“We’re training, wanna watch us shoot?” Kaelich asks, “as long as you follow safety rules. They do teach you safety in basic… in whatever beginner-level magery is called, right?”

“It’s called The Council’s Academy,” she says, putting her hands on her hips, “and to be blunt, you should practice with me. I’m part of the team, and I’m becoming an offended part of the team right now.”

“Err,” Kaelich says, with a sheepish smile, “I thought about it, honestly. I think it would be good. But you need a special permission to practice magic, and I can’t sign it, you need an officer. And I thought, uh, maybe we should ask when we move to more advanced drills.”

Some of the sourness goes away from her face.

“So, the problem is you’re too spineless to ask either Sareas or the Captain. Ok, I’ll pester them directly in the future. However, that’s only for magic, right? I can still train with you in physical combat.”

“Do you… use weapons?” I ask, honestly surprised.

“Weapons are for losers,” she says. “But I try to keep up with unarmed combat.”

Kaelich looks confused, and I’m puzzled too. I’ve no idea why a mage would learn martial arts, but I’m not going to complain one split second if it means I’ll get to spend more time with Althea.

“Cool, cool,” Kaelich says, “I’m not that good at unarmed, honestly, you can probably teach me! Sori is incredibly bad, I know that for sure. Ceri?”

“I’d be happy to spar,” I say. “I’m best with blades, of course, but I did a lot of unarmed combat and need to keep practicing. It’s great for balance.”

I stop just short of asking her what art she practices, hoping it’s one of those where you grab each other a lot. Lady of Life, I really need to get laid, if I want to keep some semblance of professionalism.

“Wait,” Sorivel asks, cocking his head, “how did you find us? You didn’t come here at random, did you? This corridor leads only here and to a storage room.”

Althea shrugs. “All places are one in the Else, my oh-so-mystical colleagues say. To me it’s more like you glow green in the Else so I can sort of tell where you are.”

Sorivel crosses his arm, his mouth in a sour line. “I don’t like that you can tell where I am. Could you avoid doing that?”

She rolls her eyes. “Could you keep your ears plugged so you don’t hear me walking? I don’t like that you can do that.”

“Chill, guys,” Kaelich says. “We didn’t know you could do that, Althea, that’s all. You… can just feel our position, right? Not what we say or do?”

For a moment, Althea looks like she’s going to go off an angry rant, but she cools down. Personally, I don’t mind that she can find me, but I’m starting to suspect that I might be biased.

“Only the position, and even that vaguely,” she says, “I only noticed because you were all moving together. I can try to avoid looking but… it’s like actively trying to ignore sounds you hear. And it’s harmless, I swear.”

Sorivel sighs, and raises his hands. “Never mind. I didn’t know about that trick, that’s all. Navigator, show me the way. Let’s go practice. I’d say I’ll have my revenge on the mat, except Kael is right, I am embarrassingly bad at martial arts and you’ll hand me my ass.”

I relax a bit - this is probably the most accommodating I’ve seen Sorivel with Althea. We might make a functional team yet, if Sorivel keeps being reasonable, Althea doesn’t antagonize him, Kaelich doesn’t get caught in a mage rights argument, and I don’t develop an ill-advised crush on our team mage.