The Supreme Mage in a Loser's Body

Ch 16 - They Took His Father

Kael pushed his chair back and stood before Maya finished catching her breath. Pain ran through his ankle, but he kept his hand against the table until he could put weight on it.

“Where's Mom?” he asked.

“Here,” Maya replied. “They pushed her against the counter. She's awake. She tried to stop them.”

Evelyn was already moving toward the door with the phone in her hand. Helen reached for the desk telephone and called the protection team while Kael followed Evelyn into the corridor.

“Lock the door and stay together,” Evelyn said. “We're coming.”

Kael could hear Elena in the background, telling Maya to move away from the window. It was enough to keep him walking instead of trying to take the stairs faster than his body allowed.

In the car, Evelyn called the team herself. A man answered after several rings, his voice strained.

“Tell me how they got past you,” she said.

Kael listened as Evelyn put the call on speaker. The men in hospital uniforms had claimed they were collecting Thomas for an examination arranged after the warehouse attack. The protection team had called to verify it. Before they received an answer, a small object thrown beside their car had released a choking cloud. One officer had fallen trying to get out. The other reached the shop after the van pulled away.

“We're with the family now,” the man said. “I have the rear door covered.”

Evelyn's hands tightened on the wheel. “Nobody else approaches them without speaking to me,” she replied. “Medical uniforms don't change that.”

Kael stared through the windscreen. The Bureau had equipment, people, and procedures. Silas had found a way past them anyway. There would be time to ask how the uniforms had escaped notice. First, they needed the van.

Elena stood when they entered the shop, but Kael motioned for her to remain seated. A red mark ran along her forearm. Maya stood beside her with both hands around her phone.

“They said the clinic sent them,” Elena said. “I told them we hadn't arranged anything. One went straight to your father while the other blocked the passage.”

Kael crouched as far as his ankle allowed, bringing himself level with her. “Did you hit your head?” he asked.

“No,” Elena replied. “My arm caught the counter. Ethan, they wouldn't even let him get his shoes properly on.”

He put his hand over hers for a moment before turning to Maya.

“Did you see which way they went?” he asked.

“Toward the main road,” Maya replied. “I took pictures.”

She opened them with fingers that kept missing the screen. Kael waited instead of taking the phone from her. The first image showed the side of a white van. The next caught its rear as it pulled away, with part of the number plate visible. In the third, a man was climbing inside while another held Thomas by the arm.

A small mark showed beneath the false hospital badge on the nearer man's shirt.

Kael enlarged it. Three bent lines surrounded a dark center, their ends turned back toward the cloth. He knew the purpose of that arrangement even though the photograph was too blurred to show every cut.

“Show me the shop camera,” he said.

Evelyn asked the officer at the door to bring up the recording. The van was visible outside, but the men appeared as smeared patches whenever they crossed the entrance. Thomas's arm could be seen between them, seemingly held by people the camera could not resolve.

Maya leaned closer. “Why are they clearer on my phone?” she asked.

“Your pictures still have blur around the shirts,” Kael replied. “But you took them from the side, close enough to catch the mark. They prepared for the fixed cameras watching the street.”

He pointed to the badge on the screen. “That bends the image around the wearer. It doesn't make them invisible to someone standing there.”

Evelyn sent the photograph to the Bureau, followed by the van's partial plate and direction of travel.

“Check the street sensors along that route,” she said into her phone. “Look for magic moving with a vehicle, even if the camera image is unclear.”

Kael moved to the entrance. A faint trace remained on the doorframe where one of the uniforms had brushed it. He followed it only as far as the pavement, then stopped. Cars had passed through the street since the abduction, scattering the weak residue.

“Can you follow it?” Evelyn asked.

“Nearby,” Kael replied. “I need a direction before I can do more.”

Her phone sounded with a message. She read it, then showed him a map with two marked crossings.

“They passed both within four minutes,” she said. “The second is near the old medical stores.”

Kael looked back at Elena and Maya. Two more Bureau officers had arrived outside, and Evelyn gave them instructions before opening the car door.

“We'll call as soon as we have him,” Kael said.

Elena held his sleeve long enough to make him meet her eyes. “Bring yourself back too,” she replied.

He nodded and went with Evelyn.

Thomas sat on a metal chair in a warehouse that smelled of dust and old cleaning fluid. Empty shelves stood behind him. One of the men who had taken him pulled the false badge from his shirt and dropped it on a table.

Silas stood beside the table with Thomas's phone.

“Call your son,” he said. “Tell him to bring the black glass and the box they opened at the Bureau.”

Thomas kept his hands against his thighs. The journey had left his injured leg throbbing, and the men had taken the support he used to walk.

“I don't know what box you mean,” he replied.

“He does,” Silas said. “That's enough.”

He placed the phone on Thomas's knee with the call screen open. Thomas looked at Ethan's name, then pushed the phone back toward him.

“You can make your own threats,” Thomas said. “I'm not helping you bring him here.”

Silas bent to retrieve the phone before it fell. “You think he won't come for his father?” he asked.

“I think you've mistaken coming for me with surrendering to you,” Thomas replied. “He won't hand himself over because you made me ask.”

Silas straightened and looked toward the two men. One moved behind Thomas's chair while the other checked the warehouse entrance.

“Then we'll let him hear you instead,” Silas said.

Several streets away, Evelyn stopped beside a row of shuttered buildings. The Bureau's last sensor reading placed the van in that area, but two roads led out of the crossing. Kael asked her to drive slowly past the first turn.

He kept the window open and used only enough power to reach beyond the car. At the second alley, the trace from the uniforms returned. It was weak, but its uneven pattern matched what he had felt on the shop doorframe.

“Here,” he said. “They turned in.”

Evelyn parked before the alley mouth and sent their position to the approaching team. Beyond the turn stood a low building with faded medical lettering above a closed loading entrance. The white van was backed into a side yard, its rear doors still open.

Kael could feel the mark more clearly now. He pointed toward a narrow service door beside the yard.

Evelyn caught his sleeve when he began to move. “Stay beside me,” she said. “If we rush the front, they have time to use him against us.”

Kael nodded. She had her barrier device ready, but she kept it inactive as they approached the side of the building. A gap beneath a window let them hear voices inside.

“Take his hand off the chair,” a man said.

Thomas answered before anyone moved. “Leave it where it is,” he said. “I'm not making your call.”

Kael reached the service door. It stood slightly open, held from closing by a strip of loose packing material. Evelyn looked through first, then signaled that one man stood between them and Thomas.

There was no exchange to wait for. They had arrived before Silas could force the call.

Evelyn pushed through and raised her device.

“Step away from him,” she said.

The man behind Thomas turned with a knife in his hand. Silas moved toward the far aisle, lifting his fingers, while the second man reached beneath the table.

Evelyn angled the barrier to block the black cord coming from Silas. Kael stepped through the space beside her and saw the knife turn toward Thomas's chest.

He was too far away to catch the wrist.

Kael opened his hand and spread the power in his core into a thin, curved surface between the blade and his father. Unlike the push he had used before, this force had to remain in place while the blow struck it.

The knife stopped a hand's width from Thomas's shirt.

A pale curve flashed around the blade. The man drove harder, and Kael felt the pressure through his own arm. His small reserve fell almost at once. He had enough to stop the stroke, not hold the shield while the attacker tried again.

“Dad, lean left,” Kael said.

Thomas moved immediately. Kael let the shield break as the blade slid past the chair, then caught the attacker's wrist against its wooden back. He used the man's forward weight to bend the arm until the knife fell.

Evelyn's arriving colleague took hold of the attacker before Kael had to keep fighting. Another officer blocked the man at the table. Silas sent a final cord across the aisle, forcing Evelyn to keep the barrier raised while he withdrew behind the shelves.

Kael dropped to one knee beside Thomas. The shield had taken most of what the practice stone supplied. His fingers shook as he checked his father's shirt for blood.

“It didn't reach me,” Thomas said.

Kael looked up at him, then checked anyway. There was no wound beneath the place the blade had struck the shield.

“Can you move your foot?” Kael asked.

Thomas shifted it slowly. “It hurts,” he replied. “But I can move it.”

Evelyn called for the rear exit to be covered. Footsteps and shouted instructions carried through the aisles, but Kael kept his attention on his father. Silas was someone the Bureau could pursue. Thomas could not be left on that chair while he did it himself.

“Don't let him put weight on the left leg,” Kael told the officer beside them. “Bring something to support it before we move him.”

He heard the certainty in his own voice only after he had spoken. Thomas was watching him closely, though he said nothing while a folding stretcher was brought from the response vehicle.

Evelyn returned as they helped Thomas onto it. “The two men are secured,” she said. “We're checking the other exits for Silas.”

Kael nodded toward the discarded badge. “Keep that,” he replied. “The mark is still on the cloth.”

“We will,” Evelyn said. She lowered her voice as she looked at Thomas. “I'm sorry. The team should never have let them reach you.”

Thomas rested his hand over Kael's wrist. “Get us home when you can,” he replied. “My wife will be waiting.”

Kael called Elena from the yard while the officers settled Thomas in the vehicle. He told her they had found him and that the knife had not reached him. Only after she answered did he realize he had mentioned the knife at all.

He let Thomas speak to her, staying close enough to take the phone when his father's hand tired. By the time the call ended, the shaking in Kael's fingers had eased, but he could feel how little remained in his core.

Thomas waited until the officer stepped away to speak with Evelyn. Then he reached for his son's sleeve again.

“Ethan,” he said, “I saw what you put between me and that knife.”

Kael remained beside him. He had no explanation ready that would survive what Thomas had witnessed.

His father kept his voice low.

“And I heard you in there,” Thomas said. “Why do you move and speak as though you've been doing this for hundreds of years?”