“Suzuka, wait.”

The rounder glanced up at me, a confused expression on her face.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea.” I added, biting the inside of my cheek.

She frowned. “He’s breaking company policy.”

I never thought I’d hear Suzuka mention anything about company policy. Now I knew for certain she was doing this to Mateo out of spite.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this, but Mateo’s biological parents were killed by a client, that’s what caused him to transform.”

“So what?” Suzuka hissed.

“He’s joined the DOPD to protect kids like him. He wants to prevent others from transforming like he did.”

“That’s not the point.”

Despite her words, I noticed the rounder had pulled her finger away from the button. Suzuka glanced at Mateo and Beck at the counter of the café and then back at me. I could see the conflict etched on her face. Would her grudge against Mateo outweigh her strong sense of justice? After a few moments, she let out an annoyed grumble and folded her arms, defeated.

“If he makes one more nasty remark about a client, I’m going to call them.”

It was as if a huge weight had been pushed off my chest. A few seconds later, Mateo and Beck sat back down.

“Maggie, are you alright?” Beck asked me. “You look like you-”

Before the nurse could finish speaking, an explosion rang through the air. In the distance, a dark figure shot through the sky towards East Ardour. Almost immediately all of our phones started to buzz, minus Beck’s.

“Looks like it’s showtime.” Mateo muttered, standing back up once more. “Let’s hope we can get this mess sorted out quickly.”

I watched Suzuka give the protector a dirty look and I gritted my teeth. Thankfully, she didn’t say anything as she gave Beck a goodbye hug.

In almost record time, the three of us suited up at HQ and left the launch bay. Our sights were directed at a small artificial beach on the east shore of Ardour. The citizens had been evacuated and were now watching the spectacle unfolding before them from a distance.

Surrounded by torn and uprooted beach umbrellas was a twisting fantastical creature. Its jade green scales shone in the warm sunlight as it writhed about on the sand. Four huge claws dug into the dunes and a long, spiked tail swished about like a puppy waiting eagerly for a treat.

“It looks like it’s in pain.” Mateo muttered.

“Is it headless?” Suzuka gasped, pushing her crescent shaped aircraft forward.

As if hearing the rounder’s question, a huge beastly head popped out of the sand. It resembled a dog’s head in shape. A pair of pointed horns jutted out from the top of its skull and two yellow whiskers twisted from either side of its snout. Now I knew exactly what it was.

“It’s a dragon.”

The jade Chinese dragon eyed us and opened its maw wide. I could see a row of shining jagged teeth glinting in the light. Upon establishing eye contact with us, it rose into the sky. Sand cascaded from the crevices of its scales like miniature waterfalls.

“Brace yourselves.” I said, turning up my afterglow absorber.

Even from this distance, I could feel the warmth from this client’s afterglow. It was like having a second sun before us.

“The client’s scorching hot!” Suzuka hissed. “I haven’t seen the temperature gauge go up this high in a long time.”

I watched the majestic beast fly about in the sky. The client twisted and twirled in figure eights and circles. It reminded me of Lunar New Year dragon costumes with the big flappy mouths and ten pairs of legs underneath them.

“Maggie, I don’t think this client is choleric or melancholic.” Mateo murmured. “It looks so…”

“…so happy.” I finished Mateo’s sentence as I watched in awe at the dragon dancing in the air.

It was a rarity, but occasionally we got a sanguine client. Positive emotions did exist in Ardour, sometimes. After telling Mateo to guard my rear and instructing Suzuka to stealthy hang behind the dragon, I approached the joyful client.

“Hello there, can you hear me?” I asked.

“All my problems are over!” The dragon cried. “I’m free! I’m free from all of my debt!”

I gazed at the dragon’s jade scales.

“Did you get some money?”

“I won the jackpot! I’m 20 million dollars richer!”

The dragon began to spin about in a tight circle. To my dismay, I could see the dragon’s twirling movements were causing sand to swirl up into the sky. If the client kept twisting it was going to create a whirlwind, or in the worst-case scenario, a tornado.

“I’m so happy for you. Let’s take some deep breaths and talk about it a bit more.”

I may as well have been talking to the dust devil it was creating. The client completely ignored me and continued to spin.

“Maybe we should sedate the client.” Suzuka suggested.

Upon receiving my permission, the rounder shot a tranquilizer at the dragon. The dart contacted the client’s thick scales and bounced off.

“Should I use sedation dust?” She asked me.

“The wind will blow it back towards us.” Mateo muttered.

The dragon let out a roaring laugh and whipped its fluttering tail at us as it continued to spin about. A huge gust of wind buffeted us. I rocketed backwards into a tailspin. With the help of the self-righting mechanism within my suit, I was able to get my bearings again.

“Is everyone okay?” I asked, flying back over to my team.

I could see Mateo was bringing his automaton closer to the dragon.

“I’m fine!” Suzuka said. “I don’t know what Mateo is doing though.”

“The client is saying something.” Mateo replied, “I’m having trouble hearing it.”

I came closer to the spinning whirlwind the giddy dragon was creating. The client was chanting something under its breath that I could barely make out.

“6, 9, 17, 21, 25, 37, 45. 6, 9, 17, 21, 25, 37, 45.”

“It’s saying lottery numbers.”

“What are the numbers?” Mateo asked.

I repeated them. There was a quiet lull before I heard Mateo switching something on in his cockpit.

“Hey dragon!”

Mateo’s voice echoed crystal clear across the beach. The jade beast ignored the protector and continued its merry twisting. There were beach umbrellas in its windy vortex now, twirling as if they were being held by excited children in the rain. I was about to tell Mateo to turn his speaker off when he spoke again.

“You got the numbers wrong.”

That got the client’s attention almost immediately. The dragon darted its head towards Mateo’s automaton, its nose whiskers twitching.

“What did you say?”

“The last number. It wasn’t 45, it was 46. Sorry.”

The giant beast shook its massive head and snorted in disbelief. The swirling gale it had been creating was already starting to die down.

“Are you sure?”

“I have the numbers up on my screen.” The protector replied. “I’m real sorry.”

“Oh. Oh God. I quit my job.”

The dragon’s body drooped like a limp noodle. Letting out a sigh, the client plummeted towards the ground. Before I had time to give orders the beast slammed into the dunes, sending sand crashing in all directions like waves.

“Suzuka, watch the sky in case it comes back up. Mateo, help me!”

The protector and I landed on the beach and approached the crater. It took up a good chunk of the beach and was close enough to the water that the waves started to splash into it. I peeked over the edge of the sandy cliff, feeling my heart fluttering with anxiety.

Several metres down was a person curled up into a tight ball. Even from this distance, I could hear their pained sobs.

“Worked like a charm.”

I heard Mateo’s robot clunk up beside me. I shot up at eye level to him and gave him a furious glare.

“That was extremely unprofessional.” I scolded him, folding my arms. “I am the only person in the team qualified to speak directly to the client.”

Mateo scoffed and gestured towards Ardour. “Sorry, did you want me to run that by you while the client sent a hurricane into the city?”

“HQ is going to give you a strike for that.”

“For turning the client back with minimal damage done to us and the citizens of Ardour? I don’t think so.”

“What if the client transformed again out of rage or despair?” I argued.

“That’s impossible. You of all people would know that.”

As much as it aggravated me to say, he did have a point. There is no conclusive evidence of a client transforming twice in a row or transitioning from one form to another.

“You could have just told me the numbers.” I muttered, floating beside Mateo’s machine.

“Not exactly; I lied. The client had the correct numbers the whole time.”

I blinked and turned my head towards the sobbing man lying in the sand.

“So, the client did win the money?” I asked softly.

“Yep. He’s got enough cash to get the hell off this pit of an island and nobody got killed in the process, I’d say that’s a win-win situation.”

“That was clever, I never would have thought of that.”

Mateo chuckled and smirked at me from inside his automaton.

“You’ve never told one lie to a client before?”

“It’s not in my profession to tell lies.” I replied, frowning.

“What about Belladonna?”

I wasn’t sure how to reply to that. Mateo must have noticed how uncomfortable I was, and he quickly spoke again.

“It’s okay Maggie. Sometimes it’s for the best.”

We waited for the van to arrive together. After what happened to River, we’d been advised to check the credentials for the client removal team. There was a code word too. I wished this had all been put in place before clients started going missing and I’m sure Suzuka felt the same way.

“I can’t believe they still haven’t found them.” Suzuka sighed over her private intercom to me. She was lazily circling the air above us in her aircraft.

“Yeah, I know.” I murmured.

“They’re not trying hard enough.” She growled. “Ardour doesn’t care about clients! Did you know that Beck was telling me they always feed the client patients last at the hospital?”

“That’s horrible.”

Suzuka dropped her voice to a whisper.

“These intercom sessions aren’t monitored or recorded, are they?”

“Only if we talk directly to HQ.” I replied.

“Beck told me she saw a weird document in the head nurse’s office a few days ago. Maggie, it had the names of all the missing clients on it.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“There’s more – she said it had the results of blood and urine tests on it for each of them. They were dated the day she saw it.”

My mind began to spin like the tornado that had been blustering before me not too long ago.

“So, that means-”

“It means the clients are alive, and at least one person in the hospital knows exactly where they are.”