Rune Mage [Fantasy/Adventure | Book 1 +2 | Complete]

Chapter 23: A Swim with Guts

Seiren couldn't believe her eyes.

"What the hell is the meaning of this?" She thrust a hand at her research laboratory. It was in complete shambles. Her paperwork and books were all upended, scattered everywhere and smeared with hand- and footprints of ink. The bars where Seven-One-Three sat behind only yesterday were bent out of shape, the middle forced open in a circle. A single human footprint was left imprinted in the congealed, blackened blood inside.

On the far side, thankfully not the side overlooking the hospital grounds, the window was smashed into pieces. Spots of blood mixed with shards of glass.

"How the hell did they escape? How? Tell me!" She grabbed one of the guards by his collar and yanked him to her. Her heart was about to leap out of her chest. Adrenaline tore through her body, leaving her hot and cold at once. How did a specimen escape? And into busy Bicknor, no less. "This place is meant to be the most bloody secure place in the east!"

"We always have a guard posted outside, Mage Nithercott," one of them stammered. His face was equally pale when the implication of the scene hit him. "I—I did hand over to the night guard and he was here all night. He must have fallen asleep."

"Fallen asleep." Seiren ran a hand through her hair in disbelief, her tunic sticking to her chest and back. "Fallen. Asleep. On guard. Guarding a runically-altered human being with superhuman healing and no functioning cognitive ability. Seven-One-Three could be on a killing spree now and we're just sitting here like pansies."

Her mind leapt back to the moment when the rune completed on Seven-One-Three. Unlike the previous thirteen experiments, there had been something behind the eyes. He acknowledged her as a living creature on the other side of the bars. Those intelligent eyes seemed to understand his predicament. He hadn't struggled. The long gash in his chest had taken several minutes before the bleeding stemmed and healing began. Reducing the healing potential of the rune also reduced the accompanying frenzy.

Seiren stared out of the window. A mutated inmate with a relatively intact cognition. If he was seen, or worse, if he managed to communicate what Seiren did, there would be an uproar. She'd signed a contract of silence when her proposal was first accepted. Her probationary registration could very well be revoked if the council got wind people knew of her permitted but still illicit activities.

Where could he be?

Maybe he's left Bicknor, said Madeleine unhelpfully. Seiren sighed. Her sister had been infuriating recently, ever since Seiren had ignored her protests and arguments for the inmates' rights. Not for the first time that day, Seiren was tempted to rip the necklace off again to give her some literal peace of mind. She busied with pinching her paper runes instead. It would have been helpful if Madeleine could help spot the escapee, but she knew her sister was far too against everything in the recent few weeks to participate. As if to prove her point, Madeleine shifted in Seiren's mind until it felt as though her back faced Seiren.

Seiren's tracker rune abilities were somewhat lacking; King's never taught them that and Seiren had to read up on it in her free time. The theory was simple: a simple sample from the target – blood from the cage would suffice – and a continuous violet rune could detect where the target had been. Seiren had never used it in action, though. A more advanced version of that rune sat in the Council of Mages, monitoring every mage's moves via their violet tattoos.

She swept the mess off her table, ignoring the rustle of ripped paper and splintering of glass as they hit the marble ground. She brought out a new sheet of paper and sketched the double circle, adding six circle locks to contain the energy, and drew the standard tracer rune of a six-pointed star with two sets of three overlapping triangles