NOT EVERYONE WILL ACCEPT YOU as you are. That was a hard truth Santiago had learned over and over again. People want to feel safe.

Santiago was not safe, for anyone.

He had done a lot throughout these years to keep his mother and himself above water. Santiago made friends and even more enemies. Whether in the schoolyard or on the streets.

It did not matter if he did not go looking for a fight. A fight would find him one way or another.

Santiago would never back down.

It was hard to turn that off. Not to take every push as a challenge.

Santiago had no problem hurting anyone who deserved it. Hurting those that did not deserve it, that did not sit well with him.

It still did not stop it from happening.

This power inside him, he could not control terrified him. As much as he tried to bury that fear, his dreams were plagued with fractured memories of the people he had harmed. He did not understand what was happening inside.

How much worse would it get before he could control it?

How many more people would be hurt in the process?

It was always going to end this way. When they realized he would not be what they wanted him to be. Could not be. Santiago was discarded like a broken toy.

These people did not understand him. Santiago did not understand himself.

The only people who understood what that is like were across the bridge, back home.

He would show up in the middle of the night without a call or an explanation tapping on the window to not wake up the whole house. They would welcome him in without a question or judgment because they knew that he would do the same for them.

Except for maybe Marisol who would lecture him regardless of if he was right or wrong. It was how she showed she cared. There was a part of him that felt a sense of comfort getting back to them. Back to the only family he had ever known.

Zipping up the bag he slung it over his shoulder. He flicked off the light, making his way quickly down the steps towards the door. He had a hand on the knob when he heard her voice from the doorway.

“Santiago, where are you going?” Rosenia’s hair hung loosely around her shoulders. The floral ankle length nightgown peeked out from the rose colored bathrobe.

This is exactly what he was trying to avoid.

He didn’t want to argue. He was tired. He wanted to go someplace where he wasn’t the problem anymore.

“I don’t belong here. I’m not trying to hurt anyone.”

“I know that sweetheart. You are wrong about not belonging.” She glided over to him to rest her palms on his shoulders. “What happened was not your fault.”

Santiago could not help the incredulous expression at her nonsensical response. There was no way she could believe that when they all saw what he did. He blasted the poor girl across the yard.

“I did that. I was trying to do what she asked and it— I couldn’t control it.” Santiago bowed his head, “If I don’t control it, I hurt people. I try to control it, I hurt people. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Rosenia could see the turmoil behind the boy’s olive eyes. He was too young to be shouldering the weight of a responsibility he did not ask for.

“It was unfortunate that Sylvia was hurt. She is on the mend. The wound was superficial. She’s asleep in her room.” Rosenia trailed a finger down the chain to the pendant that hung down his chest. The brass circlet that had hung from his neck for so long. Every line of the rosevine cross carved as deeply into his memory as it was in the pendant. “This is the problem, Santiago.”

He stepped back. “The problem, the hell does my chain have anything to do with my magic.”

“How long have you worn this?”

“Always, my dad left this for me.”

“Were you wearing it during the incident Thompson had you sent here for?”

“No, that was why—” Santiago stopped, his hand resting over the pendant. “I don’t understand.”

There were times when he would take it off when he slept and showered. It was a simple piece of jewelry he had worn for as long as he could remember. His mother always told him it would keep him safe.

Was that more than a mother comforting a son?

Without it he always felt more on edge. The world around him seemed so much more. Anxiety is all it was and despite his knowing better the brass pendant was a placebo.

“Remember what we talked about, in how magic is obtained.”

“Inherited, gifted, or taken.” Santiago thought back on it. He had fought plenty. He had never killed anyone. Even receiving powers from another required effort and skills that he did not possess. Unless it was in his blood. “My dad had powers.”

“Yes, and it seems he tried to protect you from them.”

“Protect me.” Santiago echoed.

The world was spinning too fast for him to keep up. There was not too much that he knew about his father. It was always hard for his mother to talk about. The happy memories brought tears to her eyes, the bad ones were a hand around her throat.

She never mentioned powers.

“There is always a danger Santiago for a power to be too much for one to control. Even if you inherit the power, it doesn’t guarantee your body will be able to support it.” Rosenia gave his shoulders a squeeze, “That pendant is a binding. It prevents you from being able to release the power within you outside of your own body.”

“When Sylvia tried to let me mold her powers. It triggered the binding.”

She nodded, “This is why you haven’t been progressing.”

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More akin to a shroud than a true binding which would have inhibited the boy's powers and can grow to be painful as they bloomed. It did not interfere with the flow of magic with the child, only preventing any from spilling out.

Rosenia had never seen anything quite like it though if anyone was capable of crafting such a binding it would have been Vicente.

If it had not been for Sylvia’s interference she would not have realized for some time.

Unwittingly, forcing her energy past a barrier that was only meant to keep magic in circumvented the pendant's purpose. Reaching through enough to allow Santiago’s own energy to exit triggered the binding severing the connection and stemming the breach. The recoil of that disruption was what injured the girl. Neither one of them could have prevented that.

“I can learn to control it.” Said Santiago.

Rosenia said. “Yes, you can.”

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In this day and age there was no vanishing without a trace. When you had kids who spent their entire lives embedded in a city like Santiago there was always going to be breadcrumbs. Bennett intended to follow them.

A boy vanished under his watch. Not only had Thompson signed off on Santiago’s transfer to someone unknown facility he refused to provide any other details. HIPPA he said.

Bennett did not trust the man. Anyone who could look upon a child and call them evil should not be allowed around children. Thompson was a superstitious coward. Bennett was not.

Yes, he knew something was off with Santiago. The kid had some kind of wild magic in him he could not control. He had seen plenty of grown soldiers come undone with powers they never should have gotten their hands on. Bennett had seen the destruction left in the wake of those who lost themselves to the power inside.

The Gulf War or as most knew it America’s “Good War" compared to the colossal failure of an invasion in 2003. Both wars were launched by a George Bush. Whether or not the senior was better than the junior might as well have been a debate between getting shot in the face or the back of the head.

Both were built on lies fed to the public. Both prominently featured Saddam Hussein as the downfall of America. In reality the war amounted to yet another oil grab and an excuse to throw young boys into the throes of war.

Depending on who Bennett talked to, Desert Storm was a resounding success in halting Hussien’s invasion of the Middle East and expanding his tyrannical regime. Sure people could say he did not make it to Kuwait, but at the cost of thousands of young men and even more innocent Iraqi people. The only key difference between the two were chemical weapons and tank battles. Not many knew the 1990’s were the last round of tank warfare.

After what he witnessed, Bennett was content to sleep at night knowing eighteen year old knuckleheads could not get their hands on that sort of firepower in foreign countries.

The old war vet could no longer remember the kids name but he sure recalled the vibrant light in his eyes and excitable boyish grin moments before ignition. All it took was one kid assuming he knew more than a weapons specialist and that he could make the incendiary rounds even more explosive with an augmentation spell.

It did.

With an 80 foot blast radius and a downpour of limbs laced with shrapnel. It took the crews CO a week to sort out the pieces and even longer to craft a thin heroic story of them dying in combat.

Not that it mattered, the truth came to light eventually. The good American war heroes were nothing more than the victims of unrestrained access to weaponry, no oversight during training, and reckless friendly fire. If there had been survivors they all would have been slapped with dishonorable discharges and left to rot on the sidewalks with every other veteran in America.

Santiago needed help. In the beginning he thought it was like the other boys from the dangers of the streets that brought them to the group home in the first place. However, upon Santiago’s exit the old soldier was starting to see it was far more complex than that.

None of it was real.

All the documents he had on the kid had been forgeries. Good ones at that.

Bennett leaned back in his chair, a mixture of surprise and concern etched on his face. For weeks he had been searching for Santiago. He needed to be sure the kid was alright. It was all too easy for kids like him to fall through the cracks when they had no one to look out for them.

“What do you mean he isn’t real?” Bennett said, “He has been a very real pain in my ass for the last few months.”

“I dug into it, Bennett. I went through all the channels I could access. There’s no trace of a Raphael Santiago prior to his accident. His background, his history, everything seems to have been created recently.” Jack’s computer chair creaked as he leaned back in his computer chair. “Someone went through great lengths to fabricate an identity for this kid.”

It explained the peculiar gaps surrounding Santiago’s appearance. Of course no contact was made with the family, they were fictional. It also raised more questions than answers.

“Why would someone go through all this trouble to create a synthetic identity for a teenager?” Bennett said.

“I can do what I can to dig a bit deeper to see if I find anything.” Jack shrugged, a flicker of concern crossed his eyes. “Whoever did this knows exactly what they’re doing. It’s not easy to get something like this done at the drop of a dime.”

“Takes a lot of greased wheels I imagine.”

Jack snorted, “You’re not wrong.”

This complicated things, without any concrete evidence to follow up on Bennett would have to build this case from the ground up. Operating under the assumption that everything on paper was fake Bennett would go to the one place where he might find something real. Santiago had been brought to the hospital. There had to be footage of his arrival and with any luck the person who brought him in.

Bennett hunched in the small wheeled chair squinting up at the array of screens. “I hate to bother you with this, but I appreciate it.”

“I know you wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important.” Sanjay flicked through the camera footage clicking his tongue, “This could be a problem my friend.”

“Hm?” Bennett leaned in staring at the small windows on the screen that should have been displaying footage completely blacked out.

“Your boy was admitted before the cameras came back on during the black out.”

Bennett cursed under his breath. He had seen it all over the news about faulty wiring catching fire in the basement of the hospital. It took out the power to the hospital and burned straight through the generators. For eighteen hours, four towers were left in the dark. Not even the emergency red phone was functioning. It had been absolute mayhem.

Patients had been pulled from the middle of surgeries, life supports went offline, medical mission control was blind. Hospitals do not get the luxury of closing their doors when something goes awry. They have to sift through the chaos as best they can to save lives.

For the most part they attempted to transfer patients to nearby hospitals. Still when people are brought through their doors they are attended to. Santiago was one of those few brought in with severe injuries. He was pronounced dead by a doctor who was likely overworked trying to determine who could be saved.

Bennett understood the weight of such decisions. It was a painful truth that when worse came to worst limited resources had to be allocated where they would have the greatest impact. Conditions had to be assessed quickly and a choice was made that could be the difference between life and death.

The memory of the scarlet ‘X’ Bennett had to strike down across charts of the broken and bleeding patients marking them for death made his chest tighten painfully.

“So there’s nothing.” Bennett sighed, rubbing a calloused hand over his face.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.” Said Sanjay. “It might not be a total loss though. I reached out to our head of surveillance you remember, Sean Varney, a really techy guy. He has access to the back up drive of all the surveillance footage.”

“What did he say?” Said Bennett.

“As of right now. Nothing. He’s on vacation for a month right after all this went down. I can’t blame him.” Sanjay shook his head, “He had the police and admins breathing down his neck when the accident happened.”

“Varney, I remember him. Super Bowl party, lives in Snohomish.” Bennett nodded.

Another dead end.

Bennett knew that this should be where he drew the line. It was done there were no more leads to chase at least not until Sean returned if it yielded anything. This did nothing to quell the voice in the back of his head that kept urging him to keep digging. There was still one more shot he had to get answers, but he would be crossing a line.

Bennett held the phone tucked between his head and shoulder as he threw a microwave meal in. “Hey Jack, question. If I bring you an encrypted computer would you be able to get in?”

“I could— This is still about that kid?”

“It is.”

“This above board?”

“No.”

There was a lingering pause filled only by the crackle of the phone line before Jack sighed, “Call me when you have it.”