Page 104 of Strange Familiars
Then he lunges at me, slamming the syringe into my shoulder.
When I wake I’m in…my own dorm room? I’m groggy; it’s like I’m hungover. Pudding is here, on her custom-made perch, basking beneath the UV light I’d mounted over the top.
“Wong,” I spit, unamused. “Yousedatedme? Is this some sort of joke?” I’ve heard the stories, of course—final-years pulling last-minute pranks on each other before the year is out.
“Not a joke, Briggs.” He takes out some sort of device—a black box, identical to the type that I’d seen Gwendolynne with—and switches it on.
I gape at him, lost for words. At first, nothing happens. But then the still air inside my bedroom starts to waver like a mirage. It’s like the shimmering mirages you see rising from the roads during a heat wave.
“What thefuckis going on?” I say, stumbling backward. I jiggle the door handle, but it’s futile. It won’t move. I grind my teeth; Danny has locked us in. Inside my own goddamned room.
Twiddling a dial on his device, Danny gives a most nonchalant-looking shrug. “I’m opening a Void portal.”
“Opening a portal?” I splutter. How the hell doesDannyknow how to open a portal? When actual geniuses like Gwendolynne and Conall Peters couldn’t?
Since I can’t leave the room, I instead march over to Danny, trying to grab the box. “Seriously, Wong, stop this fucking farce this instant, or I’ll—”
With lightning-fast reflexes, Danny jerks it away. “You don’t understand, Briggs,” he snaps. “Surely you know what that scar is? The one on the back of your head?”
“Thewhaton the back of my head?”
“Your scar.” Moving behind me, he shoves my head forward, pushing up the hair at the nape of my neck. “You were implanted. With the Source. Don’t you see?”
He lets me go, and I recoil, my mouth sagging open in horror. “I—what?” Shaking my head, I continue. “No. No. You’ve got it all wrong, you…” I trail off. My gut starts to churn, and I heave a breath, willing myself not to vomit.
“Nope. It’s true. You’re a tether.” He goes back to twiddling the dials on the box. “Your father, and Magecorp, have been cultivating you as one for decades.” His eyes flick to me, then back to the box.
My mind immediately jumps back to the fancy dinner in London, when Gwendolynne told me what tethers were. I sink onto my bed, everything inside me crumbling. “I’m…I’m a tether?” I can’t believe this, I don’t want to believe this.
And yet…
“Yeah, mate.” Danny pulls a sympathetic face. “Sorry.”
I finger the scar at the base of my skull. My limbs are numb, my hands shaking. I don’t—I can’t remember any of this, at all. The scar has been there for as long as I can remember. I’d never taken much notice…
“Fuck.” I clutch at my head, staring blankly at Danny. “Wait. Areyoua tether?”
“No. I’m a caster.” He holds up the black box and shakes it a little.“I’m meant to tear open a hole to the Void with this thing. Tethers like you are designed to keep the Void open while Magecorp and Linksphere harvest magic.”
Trying to breathe, I scrunch my eyes shut, panic tearing through my veins. “But…that still doesn’t explain why you’re opening a portal. In my fuckingbedroom.”
“I can explain,” Danny says, his voice rough around the edges. “It’s actually—”
He gets cut off, because at that moment, the very fabric of the world ruptures, a split appearing in midair. The center of it is so black, it seems to be absorbing all the light. A deluge of raw, unrefined magic floods from it, and I cough. It smells like ash.
It feels…wrong. I’m used to the magic that companies like Magecorp and Linksphere sell in neat packages—not this wild, unbridled energy that comes pouring from the Void.
“Danny,” I scream, doubling over, my hair blowing about in the Void’s maleficent wind. As I crumple to my knees, the back of my skull prickles, expanding into a pounding pain, and all of a sudden a deluge of memories drenches me, like a tsunami. Just before it pulls me under, the logical part of my brain clicks: Apparently crude, unprocessed Void magic can trigger deeply buried memories.
I’m three years old. I’m on a table, thrashing. But I can’t move because there are adults around me. They’re holding me down.
I’m three years old. A man in a white coat carries a syringe. The needle is pointy, and I am scared. He slams it into my arm. I scream. Everything goes black.
I’m three years old. I wake, groggy, a mask fitted over my face. The air I breathe is cold. I cry for my mama, but she doesn’t come. She isn’t allowed to come.
I’m three years old. My hair is shaved. My head feels spiky. The back of my neck hurts, and when I try to turn my head, stitches tug at my skin.
I’m four years old. It’s bedtime. My mother is hugging me. “I wish I didn’t have to do this, Harry,” she says. I squeeze her back. I don’t really understand. But by the time I wake in the morning, she’s no longer there to hug me.
