First blood

"I need to talk to all of you." Max said quietly. "I’m seeing a disturbing trend." He said, after the sigils were set to allow them to talk in private. "I’ve been filling in for some of the other shift to see what is going on when we aren’t here and why so many officers are gone. Now, what I’m going to say, it doesn’t leave this room. "

The taskforce nodded one-by-one. "What is it?"

"Shadow plague, we think. Some new form." He sighed. "Wherever it is from its preferential. Unlike most shadow plague it can only attack one kind of magic. Normally, it attacks blood magic and to a lesser degree other magics, This, this stuff only attacks lunars."

"Lunars?" Claire asked. Are you sure?"

The ten officers who are currently in quarantine are all lunars. Robert’s Lunar."

"Wait, you think Robert is infected?"

"You saw what happened at the crime scene. A spell doesn’t rebound like that. His own magic rebounded on him, passive rebound. That’s shadow plague." Max held up his hand. "I’ve been doing a lot of research. And I found a couple of interesting things."

"Like what?"

"Like the fact that we are not called the Taskforce, and it is not our job to bow to the Services officer. We are called yedi arkadaş and it is our job to protect the Inkwalker." Max said. "The real Inkwalker. Like the fact that the Services officer did not exist before his job showed up, nowhere in the history of the city, which my family has taken down religiously for twelve generations, have they ever mentioned that title."

Now that he remembered his past he had been able to get into the house his parents had owned and there he had found the archive. "My family have been keepers of walkers for 12 generations, The Emmett walkers specifically. And there is not a reference in any document, not even a journal, to a ’services officer" like Javved. And, the name does me ’he who lived."

"What else?" Jessie asked.

"This whole thing may be bad blood between the family."

"What do you mean?"

"I found it strange that our services officer, who eschews Alchemish would give himself an alchemish name. So I did some digging. As I assumed his given name is not Javved, its a taken name. And that taken name I matched with a given, and that given with a picture."

He pulled out a copy of the picture of Damien and Daniel. "This is our services officer as a boy, and this is his half brother." He said pointing to Daniel. "In fact, I found this in his half-brother’s house. This one, the young service’s officer has been missing since he was sixteen. Presumed dead." He pointed to Javved. The same two downward marks were found on his face, down his chin were two thick black stripes.

"What do you mean?"

Max pointed to Daniel. "We all know this kid. He’s Daniel Emmett." Max said before pointing to the other figure in the picture. "This is Daniel’s Half-brother Damien. He’s a son-of-a-seven. His mother carried ink but never wore it, and his father was one of the most well-known Inkwalkers in the world. "

"What?" Jessie asked.

"Damien And Daniel Emmett are both sons of Zebulon Emmett." Damien was presumed dead in the massacre at the homestead. But I don’t think that’s what happened. I think he survived, I don’t know how or why. But he did, and the massacre was probably a blood binding like the one this morning. With fourteen bodies worth of magic, and most of them being Inkwalker blood, there was nothing the ink could do but stick. But any regular magic would be-- painful at best."

Everyone sat and stared for a moment, that was hard to absorb, no wonder the Inkwalker had destroyed the place, his entire family massacred by his father, his young brother dead, supposedly, he didn’t want any memory of that massacre.

"So Javved--"

The conversation was cut short by a prisoner who was in the main corridor, until this moment he had been acting normally, and then, he had screamed "temizlik başlıyor" as he touched his hands to the ground. The ground beneath them shook and there was a loud noise, and bright light, an explosion of mist and Max was out the door in a heartbeat tackling the figure. He reached to counter the spell but it was too late, the prisoner writhed under him and then was dead, blood running down his face from his eyes and nose, the spell had claimed his life. And whatever that smoke had been Max had gotten a face full of it and when they pulled him up, they found his hands covered in blood.

The words alone told them this was an attack from the presidium. "Back up!" He said. "Back up." Anyone who got into the smoke, I need you here with me. Call for medical."

Terrorism wasn’t uncommon from the Presidium but it had been a while since one had gotten through. There must be plenty of gaps because of the sickness ravaging the officers of the cog. It was likely nothing but better safe than sorry when it came to spells and sickness.

Next Chapter: Javved