Chapter 4

The Volunteer

Andrew Harris joined the small line of men and women lined up in front of the cubicle holding the recruiting desk inside the council building foyer. Most looked to be older than him, and he received some strange looks from the others in the queue, but he simply stood and waited patiently. With the strange invasion going on down south filling the news channels, accompanied by rumors of enemy magicians, he knew his duty. Even his father hadn’t been opposed, which had surprised him, especially when his old man made noise about enlisting himself, although Andrew thought his dad was probably too old to be accepted. The line moved forward periodically, sometimes quicker, sometimes slower, and after what seemed like hours but was probably less than one, he finally made it to the front.

The person who entered the cubicle ahead of him finally exited, and it was his turn.

“Next.” Came the almost yell from inside the cubicle.

Andrew walked in and stopped in front of the desk in the center of the area. Behind the desk, a man dressed in the mottled green and sand uniform of the army sat, busily typing something into a computer. A second man, also in uniform, sat to one side, enjoying a cup of coffee.

“Name?” The man at the desk asked, his head bent over the keyboard. Then looked up from his keyboard and frowned at Andrew. “Huh? How old are you, kid?”

“My name is Andrew Harris, and I just turned eighteen.”

The soldier studied him. “You don’t look eighteen.”

Andrew was used to people not believing he was as old as he was. In fairness, he looked like he was only fifteen or sixteen, partly because he was just starting to fill out. His grandmother had done something to him before she died that delayed puberty to an extent. She had said it was to keep him under control once he came into his power. Reading her journal, he had discovered that one of her few earlier children had been born with a hormonal imbalance that required special drugs when he reached puberty, and he had grown up to be very strong magically. Or so she claimed. She made no mention of his death, so Andrew assumed he was still alive, somewhere.

His grandmother had studied how the drugs worked and come up with a spell that did much the same thing, and that was what she’d used on Andrew. She said it would wear off somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-five. Andrew hadn’t been given a choice, but at least he didn’t have to take drugs. His erstwhile uncle was somewhere in the Pilbara when he was last heard from, and his even older aunt had been forced to move to Nuzeeland because of her lack of aging. They had lost contact with her entirely since she had moved over there.

“Here is my ID card.” He handed over the card with the ridiculously bad photo of his face looking out from it.