Maria Ortega hadn't slept properly in almost three days, and it showed.
The glow of her computer monitor painted the living room of her apartment in pale blue light, illuminating the steadily growing clutter of trash that had slowly taken over every available surface over the last few days. Empty tea bottles, scribbled notes, printed documents with highlighted passages, and photographs she had no business possessing were littered all over the place. And the half-eaten tray of sushi that she ordered yesterday was starting to fill the air with a not-so-pleasant aroma.
The curtains were drawn tight, sealing her off from the world outside, as if the sun itself were an inconvenience she could no longer afford. And outside of these walls, life moved on without her. Cars whispering along distant streets, and the occasional echo of laughter from the nearby playground filled the air. But inside, time had narrowed to a single, relentless point: her screen.
Her eyes burned, but she didn't stop. She couldn't stop. Not when there was still so much to do.
Another thread. Another alias. Another dead end.
The woman took a moment to lean back slightly in her chair while running a hand through her dark, tangled, and messy hair, and exhaled slowly through her nose.
The screen in front of her displayed yet another online private forum. An encrypted one made specifically for sorcerers, invitation-only, only accessible by those who knew who to ask and where to look. Its contents buried beneath layers of obfuscation that would have made a normal person give up after the first hour.
Maria had been inside for nearly twelve. With no sign of stopping anytime soon.
Still nothing concrete, however.
"Come on…" The young 'beast magic' user muttered, her voice rough from disuse.
She still had yet to find exactly what she was looking for.
"The Inquisitors."
Even the name felt wrong in the young woman's mind. Too theatrical for something so quiet, yet so precise in regard to what they made themselves out to be.
They didn't announce themselves. They rarely ever made a show of anything. Nor did they ever leave signatures on their work unless they wanted to. They simply showed up and erased whatever problem they thought needed to be solved before vanishing in a puff of smoke. A group of men and women clad in black and red who somehow managed to move like ghosts in a world that prided itself on keeping things quiet.
And yet, somehow, for some reason, they had left her alive.
Maria's fingers hovered over the keyboard as she reread the latest messages she'd managed to take screenshots of from an old thread from a few months back:
"Iquistor spotted in Northern California. Stay inside and don't get yourself killed."
"These psychos are still around?"
"Glad I live in LA, they've never shown up around here before."
The 'beast magic' user's chest tightened.
These people were as good as their reputation made them out to be.
Every sighting and alert was always well after the fact, and only brief. Nothing concrete. Nothing solid. Just brief encounters and maybe a few blurry photos to help out others, just in case.
Maria swallowed hard and clicked into another window, pulling up the file she'd been staring at for hours. The suspected profile of the man she now knew as Martin Pierce. Fragmented, incomplete, but much more than what she had before. A face that might not even be real. A trail of operations that spanned countries, each one ending the same way: silence. Cold, quick, and efficient, that seemed to be his modus operandi. And the guy was apparently very damn good at what he did.
Just like what had happened with her father.
Maria closed her eyes briefly, but the memory came anyway.
The sound was first. Always the sound. A sharp crack that didn't belong anywhere near her ears. The voice of the bystander when it happened, shouting in terror. The smell of something coppery hitting her nose as she watched the blood begin to ooze on the ground in front of her. And then-
'No.'
Maria opened her eyes, forcing herself back into the present.
"Focus, girl." She whispered to herself. "Keep your eye on the prize."
There were still a few things that just didn't add up. Things that just didn't make any sense, no matter how many different angles she tried to look at it from.
Her father had been a normal man. That was the part that didn't make sense. That was the one thing that kept coming back to her, no matter how many times she turned it over in her mind. Sure, he may have been a sorcerer, but it wasn't like he worked for any magical agency. He was a perfectly normal Spanish teacher for a local high school. No criminal record, no disputes with anyone of note. By every conceivable measure, Maria's father was just a regular guy.
He'd been kind. Cahrming. Caring. Dependable. The kind of man who fixed things around the house, laughed too easily at bad jokes, and made breakfast on Sundays before either her or her mother could get out of bed.
There was nothing in his life that should have drawn the attention of something like the Inquisitors.
So why him?
Maria tapped her fingers against the desk, then her gaze drifted to a notebook off to the side. It was older than the rest and worn at the edges, filled with her own handwriting from years ago. She reached for it almost without thinking, flipping it open to a page she had revisited too many times.
A single line, written after a conversation she barely remembered.
"We left Mexico because it wasn't safe, mija."
Her mother had said it so casually back then. Too casually.
At the time, Maria had been too young to question it. Too consumed with grief afterward to revisit it properly. But now…
"Not safe from what exactly?" She murmured.
Her mind began to turn, slow at first, then faster.
They had fled Mexico right after she was born; that much she was certain of. Not a gradual move. Not a planned relocation. They had run, and in a hurry. But why? The Civil War had been over for years at that point. And most of the remaining pockets of rebels were nowhere near the city where the 'beast magic' user had been born. Everything was relatively safe in the country by that point.
But still, why did her mother never want to talk about their family's past? Why was she always so vague in describing what things were like for her and her father when they were growing up? Why was she always so secretive about what their lives were like before she was born? There was something wrong here, something that the woman wasn't too keen on telling her.
Even now, Karla Ortega was suspiciously tight-lipped with any details about their lives from before they came here. Every answer she gave was always vague and oddly dismissive. And she always gave the same details whenever Maria tried to bring it up, almost as if she had been rehearsing them for years.
And despite all the secrecy, years later, the Inquisitors found them anyway.
That wasn't a coincidence. It couldn't have been.
Maria straightened in her chair, a new tension settling into her shoulders. Sharper and more focused than the dull exhaustion that had been weighing her down for who knows how long.
"What were you involved in?" She asked the empty room, as if her father might somehow answer.
Or maybe it wasn't him.
Maybe it was her mother.
The thought lingered, uncomfortable and persistent.
She turned back to her computer, pulling up another secured database. One that she wasn't technically authorized to access without direct oversight from her superiors. Her DPA credentials flickered across the screen as she bypassed a warning prompt, and her fingers moved with practiced ease as she tapped away on the keyboard. Thank God she remembered to install that special VPN that Sebastain told her about.
If there was something in their past, something tied to Mexico, to the time before she could remember, she was going to find it.
She had to.
Because this, this was the closest she had ever been to finding out the truth.
For over six years, Maria Ortega had been plagued by the shadows of her past. Shadows that had derailed her life in the most unreasonably tragic way possible. Untouchable. Untraceable. A ghost story whispered through classified briefings and half-redacted files from some no-name guy on the internet with too much time on his hands.
Now she had a thread.
A suspect. A pattern. A connection to her father's death.
And maybe, just maybe, a reason.
Maria leaned forward, eyes locked on the screen as new files began to populate. Files filled with a plethora of names, locations, and additional insights that would hopefully allow her to paint a better picture of what she was looking at.
"I'm not letting this go." The raven-haired woman said quietly.
Not now. Not when the answers were finally within reach.
Whatever the Inquisitors were, whoever they were, they had taken everything from her once.
This time, she was ready.
This time, she was going to take something back. And she would make sure to get her answers.
-(o)-
Info Card: World Sorcerer Rankings
Twice a year, every June and December, the members of the organization known as the Clock Tower meet to discuss and establish the latest world sorcerer rankings. No one outside of the organization knows exactly what criteria are used to calculate the new standings. However, it is common knowledge that factors such as strength, magical power, feats, recognition, and influence are used in the decision-making process.
On average, the process takes around three to five days to complete. And once the final decisions have been made, the list is sent to every government, magical agency, and affiliated organization around the globe.
Current World Sorcerer Ranking (January 2023):
Rank: 1
Name: Emerson da Costa
Gender: Male
Age: 32
Grade: S+
Country: Federal Republic of Brazil
Magical Attribute: Nuclear
Sobriquet(s): The Atom, King of Sorcerers
Bounty: $7,500,000
Status: Inactive (Whereabouts Currently Unknown)
Rank: 2* (Currently Disputed)
Name: Jiayi Wang
Gender: Female
Age: 35
Grade: S+
Country: People's Republic of China
Magical Attribute: Beast
Sobriquet(s): The Monkey Queen, The Mad Monkey of Hengduan, Queen of Sorcerers
Bounty: $4,100,000
Status: Active
Rank: 3* (Currently Disputed)
Name: Jean-Jacques Mubele
Gender: Male
Age: 30
Grade: S+
Country: United States of America
Magical Attribute: Lightning
Sobriquet(s): The Thunder God, The Chosen One, The Wonderboy, The Reaper
Bounty: $3,750,000
Status: Active
Rank: 4
Name: Ahmed Salah
Gender: Male
Age: 40
Grade: S
Country: Kingdom of Egypt
Magical Attribute: Earth
Sobriquet(s): N/A
Bounty: $975,250
Status: Active
Rank: 5
Name: Jyotika Kumari
Gender: Female
Age: 47
Grade: S+
Country: Republic of India
Magical Attribute: Fire
Sobriquet(s): The Inferno, The Hellfire Queen, Agneya
Bounty: N/A
Status: Inactive (Currently Incarcerated)
Rank: 6
Name: Jonas Neuer
Gender: Male
Age: 42
Grade: S
Country: United Federal Republic of Germany
Magical Attribute: Dark
Sobriquet(s): N/A
Bounty: $1,000,500
Status: Active
Rank: 7
Name: Giovani Lozano
Gender: Male
Age: 36
Grade: S+
Country: United Mexican States
Magical Attribute: N/A
Sobriquet(s): The Heretic, The Inquisitor Slayer
Bounty: $375,500
Status: Active
Rank: 8
Name: Calvin Musa
Gender: Male
Age: 20
Grade: S
Country: Federal Republic of Nigeria
Magical Attribute: Poison
Sobriquet(s): The Biohazard, The Black Salamander
Bounty: $800,000
Status: Inactive (Whereabouts Currently Unknown)
Rank: 9* (Currently Disputed)
Name: Elaine MacNamara
Gender: Female
Age: 30
Grade: S
Country: United States of America
Magical Attribute: Wind
Sobriquet(s): Sky Queen, The Pop Star
Bounty: $20,500,000
Status: Active
Rank: 10* (Currently Disputed)
Name: Haku Minamoto
Gender: Male
Age: 26
Grade: S+
Country: Japan
Magical Attribute: Water
Sobriquet(s): God's Eye, The White Wave, Wicked Eye Haku, Dragon Slayer
Bounty: $1,500,000
Status: Active