Ack
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Because she messaged someone.
They don't know who she texted or what the message was, so they're holding off until they figure it's all clear.
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Taylor Hebert, Medhall Intern [Worm Fanfic]
- Thread starter Ack
- Start date
They don't know who she texted or what the message was, so they're holding off until they figure it's all clear.
Crazael
Could be wittier.
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What benefit does secretly keeping her alive give them they couldn't get without faking her death? That's what has me confused. I get keeping her alive to kill her later. I get killing her right away. What I don't get is doing both at once by faking her death.
Ack
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They've already interrogated her.
They know she sent a text off somewhere. They just don't know to whom. That's the one thing she's holding on to.
To them, that's a ticking bomb. They've had too many close calls in the last few weeks, so they're playing it safe for the moment.
Basically, they're waiting to see if anyone comes along and insists on a more in-depth autopsy of their stand-in corpse, which is likely to uncover clues that it's not Tracey. If that happens, there will be a general search for her body. They don't want her real body being found, because Thinkers (or Tinkertech devices) would be able to get incriminating evidence off her. So they're keeping her (alive, because they can always kill her if they need to, but bringing her back to life if they kill her prematurely is a lot more difficult) until they know the coast is clear to dispose of her body properly.
Part Eighteen: Threads
Ack
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Taylor Hebert, Medhall Intern
Part Eighteen: Threads
[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
12:17 Wednesday Morning
Taylor
The dream was horrible. I hated it. Tracey was stuck in the car and I was climbing down to save her, but the more I climbed, the farther away the car got. And the worst part was, Tracey was calling out for help, and I couldn't reach her.
Over and over, the dream restarted, and Tracey called out to me every time. I'm so sorry, I desperately shouted at her in the dream. I'm trying. In befuddled dream logic, I kind of knew that I was failing her, but the whys and wherefores escaped me at the moment.
Just when I was about to figure it out, I fell off the cliff.
Waking up involved me landing on my bedside rug. It was a hell of a shock for me; still tangled in my sheets, I had no idea which way was up, or where Tracey had gone, or anything. Reality seeped into my head as I struggled and cried out, but I only really figured out what was going on when the bedroom light came on.
"Taylor!" Dad said, kneeling down beside me. "Are you okay? What happened?"
I rubbed my eyes and shook my head to dispel the last of the nightmare. "Had a bad dream," I mumbled. "About Tracey."
"Oh, Taylor." He helped me unwind the sheets from myself, then hugged me. "I'm so sorry. Did you want to stay home tomorrow? Uh, today?"
Sure, I wanted to. But there was too much I had to do. And it would be my last day at Winslow with Greg, and I didn't want to do that to him.
I got up and headed into the bathroom to splash water on my face. Feeling a little refreshed, I went back to bed, rearranged the covers so they were on the bed again, and tried to settle back down. I did get to sleep, in the end, but it took a while.
Winslow
Greg
When Taylor's bus pulled to a stop and everyone started getting off, he straightened up from where he'd been leaning against the wall and took a few steps forward. He liked meeting her before class and catching up on the gossip, and it pained him that this would be the last time they'd do it.
They would remain a couple—she'd been extremely clear about that—but their time together would necessarily be limited to Medhall and weekends. Friday afternoons would be all theirs, of course, because they'd meet up at work and go from there.
He knew he was going to miss hanging out like this before class, and that was the least of it. Heading to the cafeteria with her for lunch had become the highlight of his day, especially with her snarky commentary on Gladly's class and discussion of whatever book or movie caught their fancy.
He'd read more books (as opposed to graphic novels) since they'd become friends than ever before in his life.
Finally, he spotted her in the crowd and went over to her. She looked great, as always, but there were bags under her eyes and a hollowness to her cheeks that didn't look good. "Hey, you," he said, then lowered his voice. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah, mostly." She put her arm through his and leaned against him. "Can we just go someplace quiet, please?"
He nodded, pleased he could help. "I know just the place."
Taylor
Greg did indeed know just the place, for which I was grateful.
At this time in the morning, there wasn't anyone smoking on the roof. How he'd known that would be the case, I didn't exactly worry about. I hadn't made a habit of going up there myself; I'd snuck up to eat my lunch in peace a couple of times, but the smell of cheap cigarette smoke and the way conversation had fallen silent had put me off.
Nobody had been so blatant as to bring up actual chairs to sit on, but there was a board laid over a couple of cinderblocks, and I was happy enough to sit on that. Greg sat beside me, his gaze silently concerned. I sighed and leaned against him, balancing my backpack on my knees. The last thing I wanted to do was accidentally carry a couple of the sad and sorry cigarette butts littering the area down into the school on the bottom of my pack, and be accused of smoking literally on my last day.
"Bad dreams," I said, in response to his unasked question. "About Tracey."
"Ah," he said, in tones of comprehension. And I knew damn well that he did actually understand. "You knew her better than I did. She was nice, wasn't she?"
Tears welled in my eyes, but I refused to cry. If I went into class with swollen eyes and a runny nose, the rumour mill would be churning out the most godawful theories before second period. Besides, I needed to talk it out.
"Yeah, she was." I accepted his silent offer of a handkerchief, wiped my eyes, and blew my nose. "She took me under her wing, gave me work, then trusted me to do it. When Emma tried to pull that shit pretending to be me, as soon as I called, she understood and believed what I was saying. And she even got me more of those clothes from Beautiful Me when Emma and her asshole friends stole the first lot."
"I totally get that." He put his arm around me and gave me a comforting hug. "She sounds like a great boss."
"She was the best." Leaning over, I blew my nose on his handkerchief again, then put my head on his shoulder. "I can't believe she's gone."
He squeezed me gently. "So, you think you can find out what's going on with this whole fake car accident thing?"
The question made me straighten up, anger replacing grief. "Yeah. However she ended up in that car, whoever put here there, the trail starts in Medhall. And if anyone knows how to sniff around inside Medhall's systems, it's me." I was totally going to find who killed Tracey, and then I was going to sic Max Anders and the entire white-hot fury of Medhall on them.
"And there's the Taylor I know and love," he said; even without looking, I could tell there was a grin on his face. "You know I've got your back in all this, right?"
"I know." I gave him his handkerchief back; I didn't need it anymore. "And thanks. I needed that reminder."
"Anytime." Just then, the home-room bell went off and he bounced to his feet. "Whoop! Don't want to be late for your last day at this glorious institute of mediocre education."
"This 'glorious institute' can die in a fire," I growled. Far too many of my troubles could be laid at the theoretical feet of Winslow High School, and the actual feet of the teachers and students that infested it.
But I had met Greg there, so that was a bonus.
He grinned again as I got up. "Not arguing."
Just After Midday
Greg
He wasn't sure about the expression on Taylor's face as the bus pulled away from the stop. She didn't look relieved so much as contemplative.
"What's on your mind?" he asked. This was one of the many good things about having Taylor as a girlfriend. Asking her a straight question got a straight answer.
"I was just thinking … I'm never going to see that place again, at least not as a student." She leaned back against the seat, looking up at the ceiling of the bus. "There's not much I'm going to miss about it, apart from World Affairs and lunchtime with you, but it's weird to think I'll never do any of that again. Computers with Mrs Knott. Math with Mr Quinlan. It's something that's been a huge part of my life for nearly two years, and now it's just … gone."
Greg nodded. He'd never really been in that kind of situation himself, but he could kind of imagine it. "I guess it would be like if we suddenly stopped working at Medhall tomorrow, except in a good way."
"Yeah, exactly that." Taylor sat up and booped him on the nose with her forefinger. "It's like I'm having this huge chunk of me just … excised, and I'm left wondering why I'm twenty pounds lighter."
"What, like cancer?" he jibed.
She snorted. "Exactly."
"You'll still have Arcadia to deal with," he reminded her. "Though I hear it's pretty good. They say the ABB doesn't even recruit there."
Taylor snorted. "I'll be happy with no gang fights behind the school."
He frowned thoughtfully. "I doubt that happens either. PHO rumour is that the Wards go to school there. I can't see them letting shit like that slide."
"Unless they didn't want to out themselves?" Taylor shrugged. "It might become an issue if Arcadia suddenly started showing a one-minute Wards response time whenever anything bad happened." She rolled her eyes. "And besides, they had a Ward at Winslow. That didn't do shit to keep the gangs in check."
"In fairness, Shadow Stalker was kind of a Ward-in-name-only," Greg mused. "I honestly think she was in it more for the 'being allowed to hurt people and get praised for it' aspect than the actual 'helping people and doing good' part. Just my impression."
"Ward-in-name-only? W-I-N-O?" Taylor smirked. "Would a superhero in name only be a SINO or a SHINO?"
Greg chuckled. "At the risk of sounding crude, if she'd graduated to the Protectorate, she'd be a PINO." He pronounced it 'peeno', causing her to roll her eyes.
Then her smirk morphed into a grin. "Well, she definitely was a bit of a dick. Anyway, I'd call her a hero-especially-in-name-only, ultra-skeevy, because she was pretty heinous."
It took him a second to get it, then he groaned. "And I thought your dad's jokes were terrible."
She preened. "I learned from the best."
Medhall Building
Taylor
The banter and silly jokes with Greg were a welcome distraction on the bus ride, otherwise I would probably have gone back to brooding about Tracey. It wasn't fair! First she lost Justin, and then someone abducted and killed her as well!
I honestly would've suspected Sophia for that one too, except Dad had made some phone calls and established that she was still firmly under lock and key, with visual checks every hour. I gathered that following the Medhall debacle, the PRT wasn't taking any chances with her getting away. Their public image had already been tarnished enough; they didn't want it to drop any further into the toilet.
Which meant, with Sophia out of the frame, I only had one other person to pin it on.
Ed Ferguson.
Whatever bushes Tracey had shaken to get his attention, and rate her abduction and murder, I was also going to have to ferret through. I had no idea how he'd grabbed her, unless it was as she was leaving the building to catch the bus. He could likely try that with me as well … unless I asked Bradley or Brian to walk out with me and Greg. And if I found rock-solid proof that he'd done it, I'd take that straight to Max Anders, and Ed Ferguson would soon have a lot more to worry about than one teenaged intern.
We got off the bus and headed up the stairs to the front doors. By mutual silent agreement, we'd brought along the black armbands we'd worn in Justin's memory. It gutted me that we were having to use them again so soon, but I felt Tracey would be pleased that we were using the same ones.
Brian was on the front desk, looking as impressively muscular as ever. He nodded pleasantly to two people coming through in front of us, then smiled when he saw us. "Taylor," he said warmly. "Greg. Good to see you." He paused, his eyes flicking to our armbands. "Uh … am I missing something?"
Greg gave me the sidelong glance that meant 'go ahead, I got this', then headed over to the desk as I went through the security arch. It didn't buzz for me, of course, and I caught fragments of what Greg was saying. Brian nodded, looking suddenly solemn, and I found myself unaccountably irritated that his higher-ups hadn't clued him in that someone from the company had been murdered overnight.
"If there's anything I can do to help, just let me know," he said, and I knew he meant it. I could tell just from looking at him that he was one of the good guys.
If he'd been at Winslow when I was being bullied, he wouldn't have been one of the people looking the other way and pretending they didn't see it happening. That just wasn't Brian. From what I'd seen of him, he would've been in there kicking ass, especially when Peter Ferguson and the Hitler Youth came after us.
I nodded. "Thanks." It was nice to know that someone had my back, even if I didn't need the help right then. I'd gone so long without anyone being in my corner, and now I had everyone backing me up.
Greg and I stepped into the lift together, and I hit the buttons for each of our floors. We didn't talk much on the way up, each of us involved in our own thoughts as we were, but our silence was companionable rather than awkward. I got out on my floor and headed by habit to Tracey's office, but once I got there, I had no idea what to do.
I'd been making these grand plans in my head, but in the cold hard light of reality, I knew I couldn't just go ahead with them. I was on Medhall's dime now, and they would surely expect me to actually do some work instead of investigate a murder. The best I could do, I supposed, was find out what they wanted of me then see if I could work my other stuff in around that.
With a nod to myself, I turned to go toward Ms Harcourt's office, then paused in thought. Tracey's boss valued initiative, and this wasn't my first unsupervised day in this building. Heading into the kitchenette, I set up a cup of coffee the way Ms Harcourt liked it—I'd jotted a note to myself to that effect and left it on the fridge—and spent the time until it was ready making sure I was presentable.
With coffee in hand, I went back down the corridor to Ms Harcourt's office. She was clearly a busy woman and, although I had no illusions about being able to fill Tracey's shoes, I figured I could take some of that load off her shoulders. After all, they were actually paying me a full salary now, so it was only fair that I do something to earn it.
Pausing before the dreaded portal, I knocked twice.
"Enter." Her voice wasn't any more forbidding than normal, as far as I could tell. Hopefully I hadn't come at a bad time. Well, a worse time than normal.
I turned the handle and opened the door. Ms Harcourt looked me over as I entered. "Miss Hebert. I expected you three minutes ago."
"Yes, ma'am. I made coffee, ma'am." She didn't already have a cup on her desk, so I'd guessed correctly.
"Ah." She didn't say any more than that, but she allowed me to place the cup on her desk. "Thank you. Until a replacement can be found for Ms Grimshaw, you will be working in her workspace. Is that going to be a problem?" The subtext, as far as I could tell, was that if it was a problem, she'd find some other place for me that was unlikely to be as comfortable, such as an unused utility closet.
I stiffened my spine. "No problem, ma'am." Or rather, while it was all too probable that I'd find the memories of Tracey in her workspace to be unpleasantly sharp from time to time, there was unlikely to be anyone there to supervise me, and I wasn't sure if I was up to adapting to a new boss right that very second.
"Good." There was a large Manila envelope on her desk; placing two fingers on it, she slid it across to me. "A continuation of the audit process. If anything appears to be unusual, make a note of it and bring it to me at the end of your work day. However, if you find something that seems likely to affect Medhall directly, contact me immediately. Is that understood?"
"Totally, ma'am." I took up the envelope, and felt an oblong lump that I guessed was a flash drive in there as well. "Am I expected to complete these today?"
Her expression was almost unreadable, but I thought I detected a hint of approval. "You are expected to complete them when you complete them. When you are finished, return the results to me."
"Thank you, ma'am. I'll, uh, I'll get to work, shall I?" I absolutely, desperately, did not want to turn my back on her and walk out when she still had stuff to tell me. Nor did I want to stand there like a stuffed dummy, waiting to be dismissed.
"Yes. I will call through when I need anything from you. I hope you've been working on your telephone presentation." Translation: 'get it right this time'.
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am." I turned and walked steadily from the office, carefully closing the door behind me. Well, she didn't yell at me for stopping to make coffee, so I'll count that as a win.
Clutching the envelope like a lifeline, I headed back to where Tracey and I had spent so much time chatting and working. The first thing I did was start another cup of coffee brewing. While the machine was still burbling, I sat down at the desk and opened the envelope.
I'd been right; along with the paper files was a flash drive, no doubt containing extraneous information about the people named in the files. I restrained myself from gulping nervously. Here I was, a teenager, and they were trusting me to vet actual adults who had been with them far longer than I had.
It was one hell of a responsibility.
I leafed through the files, getting first impressions while keeping half an ear out for the coffee maker. Nothing seemed to jump out at me, though I knew how deceptive that could be. I hadn't spotted those moles the first time until I compared their social security numbers. Aside from that, they'd looked perfectly mundane.
Once the coffee machine had worked its magic, I went and poured myself a cup, then came back to the desk and started work in earnest.
About five minutes in, I ran into an unexpected snag. There were a few things about the first guy I wasn't sure about, so I was going a little deeper into his employment history when one of my queries hit a wall. Instead of popping up a new window in response to hitting the Enter key, it instead generated a text box. ENTER USERNAME AND PARAMETERS OF SEARCH QUERY.
Well, that was something new. I remembered, on Monday, skating straight past that particular set of search screens while looking into Ed Ferguson. And now I had to ask permission to go deeper?
This was potentially problematic, but I didn't give up my plans immediately. There were ways and means around that sort of thing, not least because humans were fallible … and nobody seemed to have touched Tracey's desk yet.
Dutifully, I entered my username then typed in the basic description of what I was looking for. Either someone was really on the ball, or they'd automated it and were checking to see who went past a certain level, because the authorisation popped up almost immediately. A moment later, I figured it out, and wanted to facepalm: Ed Ferguson, or whoever had found out Tracey was looking into him, had evidently been in the system, so they were working to trace whoever was going where they shouldn't.
Well, it was good to see they were doing something, though I intended to see things through from my end anyway. Ed Ferguson was a clear and present danger to Medhall, and I wasn't going to let that stand. This was now a matter of pride; Medhall security might be on the case, but I was going to get there first.
The check on the guy's previous employers showed nothing of any particular interest, but I was only just getting warmed up. Once I'd given his file a thorough check, I started on the next one, keeping notes on minor things that might line up. Once again, when I got to a certain level of query, I hit the same request for authorisation to continue. I complied again, of course.
One by one, I worked through each of them. Nothing of a dramatic nature had showed up by the time the phone at my elbow rang. Mindful of Ms Harcourt's warning, I carefully answered. "Good afternoon, Taylor Hebert speaking. How may I help you?"
Ms Harcourt spoke crisply and firmly. "Very good, Ms Hebert. Bring me a cup of coffee, then I will be requiring you to hand-deliver an envelope for me."
"Yes, ma'am," I replied. "I'll be there soon."
Never one for extraneous verbiage, she ended the call on that note, and I put the phone down myself. After jotting down a reminder for myself so I'd know where I'd been up to, I got up and made the cup of coffee for Ms Harcourt.
Again, I trod the length of the corridor to her office and knocked. Her "Enter!" was as curt as ever, but she nodded approvingly when I bore the coffee into the room.
"Thank you," she said. "Take this envelope up to Max Anders' office." Not even by a gesture or a quirk of her expression did she ask if I knew where it was. If I didn't know that by now, I would not have been the girl she'd hired on.
"Yes, ma'am." I took the envelope. It held a stack of papers, and was held shut with one of those cool string fasteners. "Was there anything else, ma'am?"
She looked at me for a moment. "You haven't called me about anything dangerous to the company, but have you located anything problematic at all?"
I thought back to the little I had discovered. "It'll be in my report, ma'am, but all I've found so far is that three of them lied about some of their employment before entering Medhall, and one may be concealing a minor drug habit, if I'm interpreting his absences correctly."
Her eyebrows rose fractionally. "I shall be interested in looking at your conclusions." There was a minor pause. "Well, don't let me keep you." The dismissal was clear.
I nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
Heading for the elevator, I kept a firm grip on the envelope. Whatever Ms Harcourt wanted to convey to Mr Anders, it had to be too important and too sensitive for the inter-building mail service to courier from one office to another, or even to put in an email. Was I curious? Sure. But was I even tempted to open it and see what it was all about? Hell no.
To my surprise, when I stepped into the lift, Greg was there, wearing his Medhall maintenance gear and carrying an impressively large flashlight. Given that I had a screenshot of him wearing that same gear while knocking Sophia ass over teakettle with a fire extinguisher, I thought he looked very cool indeed wearing it.
"Oh, hi," he said with a blink of surprise. "What's happening, Tay?"
"Nothing much." I gave him a grin as I punched the button for the top floor. "Just the normal high-flying business life of a Medhall intern. Where are you headed?"
"Hey, I'm a Medhall intern too, I'll have you know," he retorted, then returned my grin. "Someone up on the seventeenth floor is complaining that the HVAC isn't working right, so I get to go and see if we can fix it or if we need to pull in an actual qualified repair guy. Whee."
"He also serves who fixes the air ducting," I reminded him. "Looking forward to next Saturday?"
"You know it." There was a lot we weren't saying, but we didn't need to say it out loud. I hadn't seen any cameras in the elevator, but if the doors opened at the wrong time and someone caught the two interns saying or doing something inappropriate, I was absolutely sure that Something Would Be Said. As my dad had once said, the best way not to get caught doing something wrong was to not do it.
"I liked Theo. He's shy, but a nice guy underneath all that," I mused. So as not to speak ill of the absent, I didn't speak the next bit out loud, but Greg and I knew each other well by now. He nodded as he heard what went unsaid: Tammi, not so much.
The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Greg glanced away from my face to look at the lit-up floor indicator. "Whups, this is my floor. See you around, Tay."
"See you, Greg." I waved as the doors closed, then rode the rest of the way up to the top floor.
As I approached Mr Anders' office, his secretary nodded to me. "Miss Hebert? Go right in, he's expecting you."
"Thank you." I nodded to her, still a little weirded out by how accepted I was in Medhall, even by the boss's secretary, whom I was almost certain I'd never met before. Stepping past her desk, I knocked once then opened the door. "Mr Anders? It's Taylor Hebert."
"Ah, Taylor." Max Anders, immaculate in a three-piece suit that would've cost more than our car—maybe more than Alan Barnes' car—rose from behind his desk and came around it to meet me. "You made good time. It's good to see you again, although it always seems to be under less-than-ideal circumstances. How are you holding up?" His expression was the epitome of concern.
"I've been better, but I'll be okay, I guess. Thank you for asking." I held the packet out to him. "This is from Ms Harcourt."
"Ah, yes." He nodded as he accepted it from me. "Formidable lady. I honestly don't know what Medhall would do without her."
I didn't know how to answer that, or even if it had been addressed as a question rather than a comment. "Was there anything else, sir?"
"No, no, you're fine." He waved his hang negligently. "Back to work, Miss Hebert."
"Thank you, sir." I turned and left, closing the door carefully behind me. I had more work ahead of me before I could start on my own project.
Kaiser
Seating himself behind his desk again, Max idly tossed the envelope to one side—it contained reports, but nothing of substance—and tapped a button on his laptop. "So, what do you think?"
Victor's face appeared on the screen. "I still think having Veder in the elevator at the same time was trying too hard. She's very sharp; I doubt she'd do anything stupid in an elevator, even one without visible cameras."
Max shrugged. "Teenagers do stupid things all the time. They're known for it." His lips tightened as he thought about Theo's transgressions. "Especially if they want to impress their boyfriend or girlfriend."
"Not Hebert." Victor chuckled. "I'll give you one guess as to who wears the pants in that relationship, and it isn't him. She doesn't need to do jack to impress him. That's already been achieved."
"I do see your point." Max picked up the envelope and examined the string with which it was held closed. "How about outside the elevator? When she was alone in the corridor? Did she try to sneak a peek?"
"Not even a little bit," Victor admitted. "In the footage we've got, all her body language is focused on one thing. Getting that envelope to you. And pride that she was given the responsibility to do so."
"So, she's not the one working with Grimshaw against us, then." Max wasn't sure if he should be relieved or disappointed. The Hebert girl had been an absolute godsend when it came to finding those moles—he still got the shudders when he thought about how close they might have come to uncovering Medhall's connection to the Empire Eighty-Eight—but if it wasn't her, who the hell was it?
Grimshaw had uncovered that connection when following on from Hebert's initial investigation—which had been deeper and more thorough than he'd anticipated (that was on him, and he'd own it)—and had sent off a message to someone. Whoever that someone was, would know what Grimshaw knew. Hebert was good at many things, but she wore her heart on her sleeve; deception at a level that would fool Victor just wasn't part of her skillset.
If she was aware of Medhall's true nature, there was no way she'd be able to hide it. And from the face-to-face encounter he'd just had with her, she'd been up front, frank and slightly giddy at meeting with the boss … and that was it. Nothing else.
Victor shook his head in agreement with Max's assessment. "Not a hope in hell. She's just as loyal to Medhall as she ever was, if not more so. There's no way she's secretly working to bring us down. Bullshit of that level isn't in her wheelhouse."
"And you've got no idea of who it could be." Max hoped he was wrong.
"Not yet." Victor's expression of determination became razor-edged. "But now we know it's not Hebert, we can look past her and find the real culprit. No sneaky email blackmail demands yet?"
"No." That also was a disappointment of sorts. It would've given them something to work with. "I'll let you know if anything does come up."
"You do that. I'll keep working from my end. Later."
Max ended the call and leaned back in his chair with his fingers steepled, thinking hard. Okay, who do we focus on next?
It was a dilemma without an immediate solution.
Taylor
Some little time afterward, armed with a fresh cup of coffee, I finished my last cross-check and looked over my notes. I'd found one more inconsistency, which I'd tracked down to a potential link with ABB sympathisers. There was no evidence that the actual employee shared those sympathies, and it wasn't as though he could've chosen who his brother-in-law was, but I noted it down anyway. Medhall could investigate more deeply, or not, as it saw fit.
With all that squared away, I could now work on my other project: proving that Ed Ferguson had found out Tracey was looking into him and had her killed.
The trouble was that as far as I could tell, Medhall security was trying to do the same thing I was, but in doing so, it was seriously getting in my way. The requirement to send in a request to dig past a certain level was an indication that they were trying to honey-trap the bad guys into revealing themselves, but I doubted it was going to work. And if I tried looking for whatever Tracey had found, the automated system might lock me out or it might raise an alarm with an actual human being. I had no desire to get a talking-to from Bradley about staying safe in the workplace.
However, I didn't necessarily have to use my login.
Standing up from my desk, I went over to Tracey's. I'd been holding off from doing this for more than one reason, but I knew I had to. Getting in trouble was a very real scenario, but with any luck I'd find my proof first, so I'd be able to offer up Ed Ferguson's head on a plate.
However, over and above the spectre of potential trouble, I now had to face the loss of Tracey. When I wasn't focusing on her desk (and the fact she wasn't sitting at it) I could pretend in the back of my mind that she'd just stepped out for a moment and would be right back. Looking right at it, at the chair that was turned at just the right angle for her to get up and walk away from her desk, my eyes filled with tears at the thought that she'd never be back. She'd never sit down opposite me again, pass a little banter, then get on with her day.
I used a tissue to wipe my eyes, then moved so I was standing behind her desk, alongside her chair. Careful not to move the chair—the surest sign anyone had been at her desk—I gently edged open the right-hand top desk drawer. "Sorry, Tracey," I murmured. "But I have to do this. You understand."
Tracey was a nice person and an awesome boss, but she seemed to have problems remembering her password. I wouldn't even have known this, but a few times while I'd been taking a break between tasks, she'd gone to the bathroom, shutting her terminal down while she was away (as per the rules) and then had to log on again when she came back. Each time, she'd opened her right-hand drawer before typing the password into the computer.
There was only one reason she would be doing this: she'd left a reminder for her password in that drawer somewhere.
It wasn't immediately obvious, but then again, I hadn't expected there to be a giant Post-It note with THIS IS MY PASSWORD written on it. Acutely aware of the passage of time, I shuffled through the contents of the drawer—a couple of staplers, about fifty pens, several pencils, a packet of rubber bands, an actual Post-It pad (no password on it)—and other assorted stationery. Nothing popped out at me to indicate why she always opened the drawer.
I didn't want to empty the drawer onto the desk; it would take too long, and if someone came along I would be very hard-pressed to come up with a good reason. 'Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission' only worked if something had been achieved with the unauthorised action. So, I looked harder.
I saw the transparent sticky-tape on the upper edge of the inner opening of the drawer and dismissed it four or five times before my attention was drawn back to it. Why would Tracey put tape there? Although I couldn't get down low enough, I ran my fingers over that area … and found what I was looking for.
There was a small, laminated card, taped in place so that normally it was held up out of sight by the tape. I found that if I hooked my finger around it, I could pull it down far enough to read the password printed on it. After reading it through several times, I let it flip back up into place and nudged the drawer shut again. Then I went back to my desk.
What I was about to do next was the riskiest part of all. If they had already cancelled Tracey's login, it would simply come up with an error; however, if the system was watching for someone logging in as Tracey, it would certainly raise an alarm. My only hope was that, via institutional inertia, they'd neglected to do either one. After all, who would log in using a password that only she knew?
Dad had told me horror stories about logins not being cancelled after someone left the Dockworkers, and other people getting into the system using the still-extant password. Fortunately, the intruders hadn't done much damage, but password security was now something they took extremely seriously there. In Medhall, I'd been told, they did security updates over the weekend; with any luck, cancelling out Tracey's login privileges wouldn't be done until then.
With an excuse already brewing in the back of my mind—oh, uh, I had a brain fart and forgot my login so I used the one Tracey showed me once, I'll never do it again—I logged out of my terminal, then logged back as Tracey. One character at a time, I entered the password.
My finger hovered over the Enter key for the longest time. Then I jabbed it down.
The computer screen didn't ignore my request, and it didn't flash any kind of alert that I'd logged in with someone else's password. I didn't hear running footsteps in the corridor. The terminal considered my offering, then popped up a new screen.
I was in.
As of right then, I was on the clock and I knew it, but I had one last thing to check. If Tracey's login was also affected by the query restrictions, I would be back to square one. Also, I would be in so much trouble it wouldn't be funny. They might not fire me—I had saved them millions—but Ms Harcourt would probably bust me down to janitor for a few weeks to show me why I didn't pull crap like that on her watch.
Fingers flying over the keys, I retraced my earlier steps with Ed Ferguson. Only a few screens separated me from where the query was likely to happen. I blazed my way down the trail, barely reading the prompts. This was it, the make-or-break. If I got through, I was golden. Otherwise … I was probably going to have to get used to scrubbing toilets alongside Greg.
(Actually, either way this was likely to happen. But I was okay with that, so long as I found out what I needed to first.)
I reached the point where I'd been roadblocked so many times before. The query went in, and I clicked the mouse button.
Without any hesitation at all … it gave me the information.
I wanted to shout, to cheer, to jump up and down and whoop, but I didn't. The clock was ticking down, both literally and figuratively, and I needed to find out what I was looking for. There was exactly zero chance, as I saw it, for this intrusion to go unnoticed until Friday. Medhall security might have been slow-moving, but they weren't that lax.
However, now I had to follow Tracey's breadcrumb trail. For a moment, the word 'breadcrumb' reminded me of how Greg had been texted the word 'Mice' by Tracey. This now had more chilling connotations. I wasn't sure exactly what it meant, but I intended to find out.
With a burst of inspiration, I clicked the mouse on 'Previous queries' … and there it was. My roadmap. All the links Tracey had followed, the last time she was in here. Pulling my notepad closer and turning to a fresh page, I started following the links, going on from where I'd left off. It was getting very close to three, but I was hot on the trail.
She went in some directions that didn't seem to make sense, but I followed them anyway, jotting down fragments of data. Max Anders showed up, as did his ex-wife Kayden. The rabbit-hole became deeper and deeper, with no end in sight. Why isn't she looking more into Ed Ferguson? What did she do that triggered him to grab and murder her?
Tracey had looked into the money and where it had been disappearing to. She'd found a lot more cash, not being laundered by Medhall for Ferguson's subsidiary like I'd thought. Someone within Medhall itself had been using some very creative accounting to make it look like it was actually going somewhere and not just vanishing … and that someone had been personally appointed by Max Anders.
Why would Max Anders want to conceal the disappearance of his own money? Surely he could spend it how he pleased.
Unless he was bankrolling something extremely illegal. The thought wouldn't go away.
There was a series of searches into personnel files: Bradley, Melody, Justin, Mr Grayson, Diane, and photos of Mr Anders' ex-wife. I wasn't sure why; the money didn't seem to be going to them.
She'd done an outside search, and called up pictures of villains. Hookwolf, Cricket, Crusader, Victor, Othala, and Purity. I stared at the side-by-side image matches. No. Oh, God. No.
Hookwolf had tattoos. I'd never seen Bradley shirtless.
Cricket rarely spoke. Melody didn't either.
It can't be.
But the information was there.
Max Anders hadn't told Ed Ferguson to back off. Kaiser had given an order to an underling.
Even the racist jokes Greg had complained about when he first started working with Maintenance … it all made sense now.
The jigsaw puzzle was vast, almost too big to comprehend, and the pieces I had were few and far between. But when I looked at them with the certain knowledge that they'd led to Tracey's death, they took on far more sinister connotations.
This could all have been a horrifying coincidence … but I didn't believe in coincidence. Nor, it seemed, had Tracey.
Using that as a springboard, she'd looked deeper. Cash influxes into the company, well-concealed, but matching dates with heists and robberies by the Empire capes. Once upon a time, Hookwolf had been captured and was due to go into the Birdcage. Bradley had not attended work for that whole time … until Hookwolf was broken out of the transport.
I could only imagine the look on Tracey's face when she'd finally connected all the dots. At a guess, it would have matched mine.
This was huge. It was terrifying. I didn't want to believe it. It made all the sense in the world.
Have I been working for the Empire Eighty-Eight, for Kaiser, all this time?
I wanted to throw up, but I didn't have the time.
Grabbing my notepad, I tore the top pages off and folded them before tucking them into my bra. Then I made one last foray into what I could only imagine as a deep and dark jungle waiting to tear me asunder. With Tracey's clearance, she could log into the security camera system; not the current running system, but the recordings.
The clock was ticking down the last minute or so before three. I selected the camera that had a view of Tracey's desk, and flicked through the thumbnails until I saw one where she wasn't at it. Going back to the previous one, I started it running.
There was no sound, but I saw her working at her desk, looking more and more flustered as she no doubt found out what I just had. She spent a little time collating her work, looking as though she wanted to tear it all up. I knew how she felt. I wanted to shred it myself, but it was too late for me.
I knew what I knew, and as soon as someone checked the login records and the security logs, they'd know what I knew too. It was unbelievable, inconceivable … but Tracey had died for it.
If I kept denying it, I'd die too. I knew that, without a shadow of a doubt.
On the screen, she got up and headed out of sight up the corridor.
I flicked to the next recording in that direction; she'd gone to Ms Harcourt's office.
Inside the office, she laid out what she had. Even with no sound, it was easy to see what she was talking about. Ms Harcourt heard her out, then came around the desk.
I'd known something must have happened, but I didn't expect Ms Harcourt to punch Tracey in the stomach, hard enough to drop her the floor. On the screen, she dragged Tracey to a small closet on the far side of the room and shoved her into it, before hooking a chair under the handle. Then she went to her phone.
That was it. I knew exactly how bad it was now. Danger surrounded me on all sides.
I have to get out of here.
Hastily, I began to shut the terminal down. I'd been logged in for far too long already, but now I had to treat every second as vital. Snatching up the phone, I dialled a number that I'd long since memorised.
"Greg here. Who is this, and how can I help you?"
"Greg!" I hissed. "Can't talk! I need a secret passage out of the building! Life or death!"
"What—?"
At that moment, I saw Ms Harcourt coming along the corridor, so I put the phone down. In front of me, mercifully enough, the computer had finished shutting off. Anyone with any computer knowhow, of course, could retrace where I'd been and figure out what I knew.
And if I was still in the building then, I would be dead.
Literally, not figuratively.
Even worse, they'd probably assume Greg knew what I did, and murder him too.
Fuuuuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"Is everything well with you, Miss Hebert?" Ms Harcourt looked me over. "You seem flustered."
"Sorry, no, I was just rushing to get this last bit done," I said entirely truthfully but misleadingly. Picking up the report I'd already written, I handed it to her. "Three cases of being less than truthful about prior employment—and I think that one there may have done prison time and not told us—one potential low-key drug user, and a possible link to ABB sympathisers that we weren't told about."
Thankfully, she was distracted by that, and looked down over the report. "This is exceptional work, Ms Hebert. We will have to check your conclusions, of course, but I foresee no problems arising with that."
"Thank you, ma'am," I said. "Uh … I know I'm running late to leave, and I'm seriously not trying to score overtime, but would it be possible to use the restroom before I go?" I tilted my head at the phone. "I was just telling Greg that I wouldn't be long."
"Of course." She afforded me a measured nod. "Alert the security people in the lobby when you leave so we are aware when you have vacated the premises."
"Sure, I can do that." I tried to look like someone who was doing their best not to cross their legs in front of their boss. "Uh, the restroom …?"
"Go." She stepped aside, looking over the report again.
I ducked past her in the direction of the nearest ladies' restroom. A glance over my shoulder told me that she was heading off back toward her own office.
Hurry up, Greg.
Please.
End of Part Eighteen
Part Eighteen: Threads
[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
12:17 Wednesday Morning
Taylor
The dream was horrible. I hated it. Tracey was stuck in the car and I was climbing down to save her, but the more I climbed, the farther away the car got. And the worst part was, Tracey was calling out for help, and I couldn't reach her.
Over and over, the dream restarted, and Tracey called out to me every time. I'm so sorry, I desperately shouted at her in the dream. I'm trying. In befuddled dream logic, I kind of knew that I was failing her, but the whys and wherefores escaped me at the moment.
Just when I was about to figure it out, I fell off the cliff.
Waking up involved me landing on my bedside rug. It was a hell of a shock for me; still tangled in my sheets, I had no idea which way was up, or where Tracey had gone, or anything. Reality seeped into my head as I struggled and cried out, but I only really figured out what was going on when the bedroom light came on.
"Taylor!" Dad said, kneeling down beside me. "Are you okay? What happened?"
I rubbed my eyes and shook my head to dispel the last of the nightmare. "Had a bad dream," I mumbled. "About Tracey."
"Oh, Taylor." He helped me unwind the sheets from myself, then hugged me. "I'm so sorry. Did you want to stay home tomorrow? Uh, today?"
Sure, I wanted to. But there was too much I had to do. And it would be my last day at Winslow with Greg, and I didn't want to do that to him.
I got up and headed into the bathroom to splash water on my face. Feeling a little refreshed, I went back to bed, rearranged the covers so they were on the bed again, and tried to settle back down. I did get to sleep, in the end, but it took a while.
<><>
Winslow
Greg
When Taylor's bus pulled to a stop and everyone started getting off, he straightened up from where he'd been leaning against the wall and took a few steps forward. He liked meeting her before class and catching up on the gossip, and it pained him that this would be the last time they'd do it.
They would remain a couple—she'd been extremely clear about that—but their time together would necessarily be limited to Medhall and weekends. Friday afternoons would be all theirs, of course, because they'd meet up at work and go from there.
He knew he was going to miss hanging out like this before class, and that was the least of it. Heading to the cafeteria with her for lunch had become the highlight of his day, especially with her snarky commentary on Gladly's class and discussion of whatever book or movie caught their fancy.
He'd read more books (as opposed to graphic novels) since they'd become friends than ever before in his life.
Finally, he spotted her in the crowd and went over to her. She looked great, as always, but there were bags under her eyes and a hollowness to her cheeks that didn't look good. "Hey, you," he said, then lowered his voice. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah, mostly." She put her arm through his and leaned against him. "Can we just go someplace quiet, please?"
He nodded, pleased he could help. "I know just the place."
<><>
Taylor
Greg did indeed know just the place, for which I was grateful.
At this time in the morning, there wasn't anyone smoking on the roof. How he'd known that would be the case, I didn't exactly worry about. I hadn't made a habit of going up there myself; I'd snuck up to eat my lunch in peace a couple of times, but the smell of cheap cigarette smoke and the way conversation had fallen silent had put me off.
Nobody had been so blatant as to bring up actual chairs to sit on, but there was a board laid over a couple of cinderblocks, and I was happy enough to sit on that. Greg sat beside me, his gaze silently concerned. I sighed and leaned against him, balancing my backpack on my knees. The last thing I wanted to do was accidentally carry a couple of the sad and sorry cigarette butts littering the area down into the school on the bottom of my pack, and be accused of smoking literally on my last day.
"Bad dreams," I said, in response to his unasked question. "About Tracey."
"Ah," he said, in tones of comprehension. And I knew damn well that he did actually understand. "You knew her better than I did. She was nice, wasn't she?"
Tears welled in my eyes, but I refused to cry. If I went into class with swollen eyes and a runny nose, the rumour mill would be churning out the most godawful theories before second period. Besides, I needed to talk it out.
"Yeah, she was." I accepted his silent offer of a handkerchief, wiped my eyes, and blew my nose. "She took me under her wing, gave me work, then trusted me to do it. When Emma tried to pull that shit pretending to be me, as soon as I called, she understood and believed what I was saying. And she even got me more of those clothes from Beautiful Me when Emma and her asshole friends stole the first lot."
"I totally get that." He put his arm around me and gave me a comforting hug. "She sounds like a great boss."
"She was the best." Leaning over, I blew my nose on his handkerchief again, then put my head on his shoulder. "I can't believe she's gone."
He squeezed me gently. "So, you think you can find out what's going on with this whole fake car accident thing?"
The question made me straighten up, anger replacing grief. "Yeah. However she ended up in that car, whoever put here there, the trail starts in Medhall. And if anyone knows how to sniff around inside Medhall's systems, it's me." I was totally going to find who killed Tracey, and then I was going to sic Max Anders and the entire white-hot fury of Medhall on them.
"And there's the Taylor I know and love," he said; even without looking, I could tell there was a grin on his face. "You know I've got your back in all this, right?"
"I know." I gave him his handkerchief back; I didn't need it anymore. "And thanks. I needed that reminder."
"Anytime." Just then, the home-room bell went off and he bounced to his feet. "Whoop! Don't want to be late for your last day at this glorious institute of mediocre education."
"This 'glorious institute' can die in a fire," I growled. Far too many of my troubles could be laid at the theoretical feet of Winslow High School, and the actual feet of the teachers and students that infested it.
But I had met Greg there, so that was a bonus.
He grinned again as I got up. "Not arguing."
<><>
Just After Midday
Greg
He wasn't sure about the expression on Taylor's face as the bus pulled away from the stop. She didn't look relieved so much as contemplative.
"What's on your mind?" he asked. This was one of the many good things about having Taylor as a girlfriend. Asking her a straight question got a straight answer.
"I was just thinking … I'm never going to see that place again, at least not as a student." She leaned back against the seat, looking up at the ceiling of the bus. "There's not much I'm going to miss about it, apart from World Affairs and lunchtime with you, but it's weird to think I'll never do any of that again. Computers with Mrs Knott. Math with Mr Quinlan. It's something that's been a huge part of my life for nearly two years, and now it's just … gone."
Greg nodded. He'd never really been in that kind of situation himself, but he could kind of imagine it. "I guess it would be like if we suddenly stopped working at Medhall tomorrow, except in a good way."
"Yeah, exactly that." Taylor sat up and booped him on the nose with her forefinger. "It's like I'm having this huge chunk of me just … excised, and I'm left wondering why I'm twenty pounds lighter."
"What, like cancer?" he jibed.
She snorted. "Exactly."
"You'll still have Arcadia to deal with," he reminded her. "Though I hear it's pretty good. They say the ABB doesn't even recruit there."
Taylor snorted. "I'll be happy with no gang fights behind the school."
He frowned thoughtfully. "I doubt that happens either. PHO rumour is that the Wards go to school there. I can't see them letting shit like that slide."
"Unless they didn't want to out themselves?" Taylor shrugged. "It might become an issue if Arcadia suddenly started showing a one-minute Wards response time whenever anything bad happened." She rolled her eyes. "And besides, they had a Ward at Winslow. That didn't do shit to keep the gangs in check."
"In fairness, Shadow Stalker was kind of a Ward-in-name-only," Greg mused. "I honestly think she was in it more for the 'being allowed to hurt people and get praised for it' aspect than the actual 'helping people and doing good' part. Just my impression."
"Ward-in-name-only? W-I-N-O?" Taylor smirked. "Would a superhero in name only be a SINO or a SHINO?"
Greg chuckled. "At the risk of sounding crude, if she'd graduated to the Protectorate, she'd be a PINO." He pronounced it 'peeno', causing her to roll her eyes.
Then her smirk morphed into a grin. "Well, she definitely was a bit of a dick. Anyway, I'd call her a hero-especially-in-name-only, ultra-skeevy, because she was pretty heinous."
It took him a second to get it, then he groaned. "And I thought your dad's jokes were terrible."
She preened. "I learned from the best."
<><>
Medhall Building
Taylor
The banter and silly jokes with Greg were a welcome distraction on the bus ride, otherwise I would probably have gone back to brooding about Tracey. It wasn't fair! First she lost Justin, and then someone abducted and killed her as well!
I honestly would've suspected Sophia for that one too, except Dad had made some phone calls and established that she was still firmly under lock and key, with visual checks every hour. I gathered that following the Medhall debacle, the PRT wasn't taking any chances with her getting away. Their public image had already been tarnished enough; they didn't want it to drop any further into the toilet.
Which meant, with Sophia out of the frame, I only had one other person to pin it on.
Ed Ferguson.
Whatever bushes Tracey had shaken to get his attention, and rate her abduction and murder, I was also going to have to ferret through. I had no idea how he'd grabbed her, unless it was as she was leaving the building to catch the bus. He could likely try that with me as well … unless I asked Bradley or Brian to walk out with me and Greg. And if I found rock-solid proof that he'd done it, I'd take that straight to Max Anders, and Ed Ferguson would soon have a lot more to worry about than one teenaged intern.
We got off the bus and headed up the stairs to the front doors. By mutual silent agreement, we'd brought along the black armbands we'd worn in Justin's memory. It gutted me that we were having to use them again so soon, but I felt Tracey would be pleased that we were using the same ones.
Brian was on the front desk, looking as impressively muscular as ever. He nodded pleasantly to two people coming through in front of us, then smiled when he saw us. "Taylor," he said warmly. "Greg. Good to see you." He paused, his eyes flicking to our armbands. "Uh … am I missing something?"
Greg gave me the sidelong glance that meant 'go ahead, I got this', then headed over to the desk as I went through the security arch. It didn't buzz for me, of course, and I caught fragments of what Greg was saying. Brian nodded, looking suddenly solemn, and I found myself unaccountably irritated that his higher-ups hadn't clued him in that someone from the company had been murdered overnight.
"If there's anything I can do to help, just let me know," he said, and I knew he meant it. I could tell just from looking at him that he was one of the good guys.
If he'd been at Winslow when I was being bullied, he wouldn't have been one of the people looking the other way and pretending they didn't see it happening. That just wasn't Brian. From what I'd seen of him, he would've been in there kicking ass, especially when Peter Ferguson and the Hitler Youth came after us.
I nodded. "Thanks." It was nice to know that someone had my back, even if I didn't need the help right then. I'd gone so long without anyone being in my corner, and now I had everyone backing me up.
Greg and I stepped into the lift together, and I hit the buttons for each of our floors. We didn't talk much on the way up, each of us involved in our own thoughts as we were, but our silence was companionable rather than awkward. I got out on my floor and headed by habit to Tracey's office, but once I got there, I had no idea what to do.
I'd been making these grand plans in my head, but in the cold hard light of reality, I knew I couldn't just go ahead with them. I was on Medhall's dime now, and they would surely expect me to actually do some work instead of investigate a murder. The best I could do, I supposed, was find out what they wanted of me then see if I could work my other stuff in around that.
With a nod to myself, I turned to go toward Ms Harcourt's office, then paused in thought. Tracey's boss valued initiative, and this wasn't my first unsupervised day in this building. Heading into the kitchenette, I set up a cup of coffee the way Ms Harcourt liked it—I'd jotted a note to myself to that effect and left it on the fridge—and spent the time until it was ready making sure I was presentable.
With coffee in hand, I went back down the corridor to Ms Harcourt's office. She was clearly a busy woman and, although I had no illusions about being able to fill Tracey's shoes, I figured I could take some of that load off her shoulders. After all, they were actually paying me a full salary now, so it was only fair that I do something to earn it.
Pausing before the dreaded portal, I knocked twice.
"Enter." Her voice wasn't any more forbidding than normal, as far as I could tell. Hopefully I hadn't come at a bad time. Well, a worse time than normal.
I turned the handle and opened the door. Ms Harcourt looked me over as I entered. "Miss Hebert. I expected you three minutes ago."
"Yes, ma'am. I made coffee, ma'am." She didn't already have a cup on her desk, so I'd guessed correctly.
"Ah." She didn't say any more than that, but she allowed me to place the cup on her desk. "Thank you. Until a replacement can be found for Ms Grimshaw, you will be working in her workspace. Is that going to be a problem?" The subtext, as far as I could tell, was that if it was a problem, she'd find some other place for me that was unlikely to be as comfortable, such as an unused utility closet.
I stiffened my spine. "No problem, ma'am." Or rather, while it was all too probable that I'd find the memories of Tracey in her workspace to be unpleasantly sharp from time to time, there was unlikely to be anyone there to supervise me, and I wasn't sure if I was up to adapting to a new boss right that very second.
"Good." There was a large Manila envelope on her desk; placing two fingers on it, she slid it across to me. "A continuation of the audit process. If anything appears to be unusual, make a note of it and bring it to me at the end of your work day. However, if you find something that seems likely to affect Medhall directly, contact me immediately. Is that understood?"
"Totally, ma'am." I took up the envelope, and felt an oblong lump that I guessed was a flash drive in there as well. "Am I expected to complete these today?"
Her expression was almost unreadable, but I thought I detected a hint of approval. "You are expected to complete them when you complete them. When you are finished, return the results to me."
"Thank you, ma'am. I'll, uh, I'll get to work, shall I?" I absolutely, desperately, did not want to turn my back on her and walk out when she still had stuff to tell me. Nor did I want to stand there like a stuffed dummy, waiting to be dismissed.
"Yes. I will call through when I need anything from you. I hope you've been working on your telephone presentation." Translation: 'get it right this time'.
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am." I turned and walked steadily from the office, carefully closing the door behind me. Well, she didn't yell at me for stopping to make coffee, so I'll count that as a win.
Clutching the envelope like a lifeline, I headed back to where Tracey and I had spent so much time chatting and working. The first thing I did was start another cup of coffee brewing. While the machine was still burbling, I sat down at the desk and opened the envelope.
I'd been right; along with the paper files was a flash drive, no doubt containing extraneous information about the people named in the files. I restrained myself from gulping nervously. Here I was, a teenager, and they were trusting me to vet actual adults who had been with them far longer than I had.
It was one hell of a responsibility.
I leafed through the files, getting first impressions while keeping half an ear out for the coffee maker. Nothing seemed to jump out at me, though I knew how deceptive that could be. I hadn't spotted those moles the first time until I compared their social security numbers. Aside from that, they'd looked perfectly mundane.
Once the coffee machine had worked its magic, I went and poured myself a cup, then came back to the desk and started work in earnest.
About five minutes in, I ran into an unexpected snag. There were a few things about the first guy I wasn't sure about, so I was going a little deeper into his employment history when one of my queries hit a wall. Instead of popping up a new window in response to hitting the Enter key, it instead generated a text box. ENTER USERNAME AND PARAMETERS OF SEARCH QUERY.
Well, that was something new. I remembered, on Monday, skating straight past that particular set of search screens while looking into Ed Ferguson. And now I had to ask permission to go deeper?
This was potentially problematic, but I didn't give up my plans immediately. There were ways and means around that sort of thing, not least because humans were fallible … and nobody seemed to have touched Tracey's desk yet.
Dutifully, I entered my username then typed in the basic description of what I was looking for. Either someone was really on the ball, or they'd automated it and were checking to see who went past a certain level, because the authorisation popped up almost immediately. A moment later, I figured it out, and wanted to facepalm: Ed Ferguson, or whoever had found out Tracey was looking into him, had evidently been in the system, so they were working to trace whoever was going where they shouldn't.
Well, it was good to see they were doing something, though I intended to see things through from my end anyway. Ed Ferguson was a clear and present danger to Medhall, and I wasn't going to let that stand. This was now a matter of pride; Medhall security might be on the case, but I was going to get there first.
The check on the guy's previous employers showed nothing of any particular interest, but I was only just getting warmed up. Once I'd given his file a thorough check, I started on the next one, keeping notes on minor things that might line up. Once again, when I got to a certain level of query, I hit the same request for authorisation to continue. I complied again, of course.
One by one, I worked through each of them. Nothing of a dramatic nature had showed up by the time the phone at my elbow rang. Mindful of Ms Harcourt's warning, I carefully answered. "Good afternoon, Taylor Hebert speaking. How may I help you?"
Ms Harcourt spoke crisply and firmly. "Very good, Ms Hebert. Bring me a cup of coffee, then I will be requiring you to hand-deliver an envelope for me."
"Yes, ma'am," I replied. "I'll be there soon."
Never one for extraneous verbiage, she ended the call on that note, and I put the phone down myself. After jotting down a reminder for myself so I'd know where I'd been up to, I got up and made the cup of coffee for Ms Harcourt.
Again, I trod the length of the corridor to her office and knocked. Her "Enter!" was as curt as ever, but she nodded approvingly when I bore the coffee into the room.
"Thank you," she said. "Take this envelope up to Max Anders' office." Not even by a gesture or a quirk of her expression did she ask if I knew where it was. If I didn't know that by now, I would not have been the girl she'd hired on.
"Yes, ma'am." I took the envelope. It held a stack of papers, and was held shut with one of those cool string fasteners. "Was there anything else, ma'am?"
She looked at me for a moment. "You haven't called me about anything dangerous to the company, but have you located anything problematic at all?"
I thought back to the little I had discovered. "It'll be in my report, ma'am, but all I've found so far is that three of them lied about some of their employment before entering Medhall, and one may be concealing a minor drug habit, if I'm interpreting his absences correctly."
Her eyebrows rose fractionally. "I shall be interested in looking at your conclusions." There was a minor pause. "Well, don't let me keep you." The dismissal was clear.
I nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
Heading for the elevator, I kept a firm grip on the envelope. Whatever Ms Harcourt wanted to convey to Mr Anders, it had to be too important and too sensitive for the inter-building mail service to courier from one office to another, or even to put in an email. Was I curious? Sure. But was I even tempted to open it and see what it was all about? Hell no.
To my surprise, when I stepped into the lift, Greg was there, wearing his Medhall maintenance gear and carrying an impressively large flashlight. Given that I had a screenshot of him wearing that same gear while knocking Sophia ass over teakettle with a fire extinguisher, I thought he looked very cool indeed wearing it.
"Oh, hi," he said with a blink of surprise. "What's happening, Tay?"
"Nothing much." I gave him a grin as I punched the button for the top floor. "Just the normal high-flying business life of a Medhall intern. Where are you headed?"
"Hey, I'm a Medhall intern too, I'll have you know," he retorted, then returned my grin. "Someone up on the seventeenth floor is complaining that the HVAC isn't working right, so I get to go and see if we can fix it or if we need to pull in an actual qualified repair guy. Whee."
"He also serves who fixes the air ducting," I reminded him. "Looking forward to next Saturday?"
"You know it." There was a lot we weren't saying, but we didn't need to say it out loud. I hadn't seen any cameras in the elevator, but if the doors opened at the wrong time and someone caught the two interns saying or doing something inappropriate, I was absolutely sure that Something Would Be Said. As my dad had once said, the best way not to get caught doing something wrong was to not do it.
"I liked Theo. He's shy, but a nice guy underneath all that," I mused. So as not to speak ill of the absent, I didn't speak the next bit out loud, but Greg and I knew each other well by now. He nodded as he heard what went unsaid: Tammi, not so much.
The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Greg glanced away from my face to look at the lit-up floor indicator. "Whups, this is my floor. See you around, Tay."
"See you, Greg." I waved as the doors closed, then rode the rest of the way up to the top floor.
As I approached Mr Anders' office, his secretary nodded to me. "Miss Hebert? Go right in, he's expecting you."
"Thank you." I nodded to her, still a little weirded out by how accepted I was in Medhall, even by the boss's secretary, whom I was almost certain I'd never met before. Stepping past her desk, I knocked once then opened the door. "Mr Anders? It's Taylor Hebert."
"Ah, Taylor." Max Anders, immaculate in a three-piece suit that would've cost more than our car—maybe more than Alan Barnes' car—rose from behind his desk and came around it to meet me. "You made good time. It's good to see you again, although it always seems to be under less-than-ideal circumstances. How are you holding up?" His expression was the epitome of concern.
"I've been better, but I'll be okay, I guess. Thank you for asking." I held the packet out to him. "This is from Ms Harcourt."
"Ah, yes." He nodded as he accepted it from me. "Formidable lady. I honestly don't know what Medhall would do without her."
I didn't know how to answer that, or even if it had been addressed as a question rather than a comment. "Was there anything else, sir?"
"No, no, you're fine." He waved his hang negligently. "Back to work, Miss Hebert."
"Thank you, sir." I turned and left, closing the door carefully behind me. I had more work ahead of me before I could start on my own project.
<><>
Kaiser
Seating himself behind his desk again, Max idly tossed the envelope to one side—it contained reports, but nothing of substance—and tapped a button on his laptop. "So, what do you think?"
Victor's face appeared on the screen. "I still think having Veder in the elevator at the same time was trying too hard. She's very sharp; I doubt she'd do anything stupid in an elevator, even one without visible cameras."
Max shrugged. "Teenagers do stupid things all the time. They're known for it." His lips tightened as he thought about Theo's transgressions. "Especially if they want to impress their boyfriend or girlfriend."
"Not Hebert." Victor chuckled. "I'll give you one guess as to who wears the pants in that relationship, and it isn't him. She doesn't need to do jack to impress him. That's already been achieved."
"I do see your point." Max picked up the envelope and examined the string with which it was held closed. "How about outside the elevator? When she was alone in the corridor? Did she try to sneak a peek?"
"Not even a little bit," Victor admitted. "In the footage we've got, all her body language is focused on one thing. Getting that envelope to you. And pride that she was given the responsibility to do so."
"So, she's not the one working with Grimshaw against us, then." Max wasn't sure if he should be relieved or disappointed. The Hebert girl had been an absolute godsend when it came to finding those moles—he still got the shudders when he thought about how close they might have come to uncovering Medhall's connection to the Empire Eighty-Eight—but if it wasn't her, who the hell was it?
Grimshaw had uncovered that connection when following on from Hebert's initial investigation—which had been deeper and more thorough than he'd anticipated (that was on him, and he'd own it)—and had sent off a message to someone. Whoever that someone was, would know what Grimshaw knew. Hebert was good at many things, but she wore her heart on her sleeve; deception at a level that would fool Victor just wasn't part of her skillset.
If she was aware of Medhall's true nature, there was no way she'd be able to hide it. And from the face-to-face encounter he'd just had with her, she'd been up front, frank and slightly giddy at meeting with the boss … and that was it. Nothing else.
Victor shook his head in agreement with Max's assessment. "Not a hope in hell. She's just as loyal to Medhall as she ever was, if not more so. There's no way she's secretly working to bring us down. Bullshit of that level isn't in her wheelhouse."
"And you've got no idea of who it could be." Max hoped he was wrong.
"Not yet." Victor's expression of determination became razor-edged. "But now we know it's not Hebert, we can look past her and find the real culprit. No sneaky email blackmail demands yet?"
"No." That also was a disappointment of sorts. It would've given them something to work with. "I'll let you know if anything does come up."
"You do that. I'll keep working from my end. Later."
Max ended the call and leaned back in his chair with his fingers steepled, thinking hard. Okay, who do we focus on next?
It was a dilemma without an immediate solution.
<><>
Taylor
Some little time afterward, armed with a fresh cup of coffee, I finished my last cross-check and looked over my notes. I'd found one more inconsistency, which I'd tracked down to a potential link with ABB sympathisers. There was no evidence that the actual employee shared those sympathies, and it wasn't as though he could've chosen who his brother-in-law was, but I noted it down anyway. Medhall could investigate more deeply, or not, as it saw fit.
With all that squared away, I could now work on my other project: proving that Ed Ferguson had found out Tracey was looking into him and had her killed.
The trouble was that as far as I could tell, Medhall security was trying to do the same thing I was, but in doing so, it was seriously getting in my way. The requirement to send in a request to dig past a certain level was an indication that they were trying to honey-trap the bad guys into revealing themselves, but I doubted it was going to work. And if I tried looking for whatever Tracey had found, the automated system might lock me out or it might raise an alarm with an actual human being. I had no desire to get a talking-to from Bradley about staying safe in the workplace.
However, I didn't necessarily have to use my login.
Standing up from my desk, I went over to Tracey's. I'd been holding off from doing this for more than one reason, but I knew I had to. Getting in trouble was a very real scenario, but with any luck I'd find my proof first, so I'd be able to offer up Ed Ferguson's head on a plate.
However, over and above the spectre of potential trouble, I now had to face the loss of Tracey. When I wasn't focusing on her desk (and the fact she wasn't sitting at it) I could pretend in the back of my mind that she'd just stepped out for a moment and would be right back. Looking right at it, at the chair that was turned at just the right angle for her to get up and walk away from her desk, my eyes filled with tears at the thought that she'd never be back. She'd never sit down opposite me again, pass a little banter, then get on with her day.
I used a tissue to wipe my eyes, then moved so I was standing behind her desk, alongside her chair. Careful not to move the chair—the surest sign anyone had been at her desk—I gently edged open the right-hand top desk drawer. "Sorry, Tracey," I murmured. "But I have to do this. You understand."
Tracey was a nice person and an awesome boss, but she seemed to have problems remembering her password. I wouldn't even have known this, but a few times while I'd been taking a break between tasks, she'd gone to the bathroom, shutting her terminal down while she was away (as per the rules) and then had to log on again when she came back. Each time, she'd opened her right-hand drawer before typing the password into the computer.
There was only one reason she would be doing this: she'd left a reminder for her password in that drawer somewhere.
It wasn't immediately obvious, but then again, I hadn't expected there to be a giant Post-It note with THIS IS MY PASSWORD written on it. Acutely aware of the passage of time, I shuffled through the contents of the drawer—a couple of staplers, about fifty pens, several pencils, a packet of rubber bands, an actual Post-It pad (no password on it)—and other assorted stationery. Nothing popped out at me to indicate why she always opened the drawer.
I didn't want to empty the drawer onto the desk; it would take too long, and if someone came along I would be very hard-pressed to come up with a good reason. 'Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission' only worked if something had been achieved with the unauthorised action. So, I looked harder.
I saw the transparent sticky-tape on the upper edge of the inner opening of the drawer and dismissed it four or five times before my attention was drawn back to it. Why would Tracey put tape there? Although I couldn't get down low enough, I ran my fingers over that area … and found what I was looking for.
There was a small, laminated card, taped in place so that normally it was held up out of sight by the tape. I found that if I hooked my finger around it, I could pull it down far enough to read the password printed on it. After reading it through several times, I let it flip back up into place and nudged the drawer shut again. Then I went back to my desk.
What I was about to do next was the riskiest part of all. If they had already cancelled Tracey's login, it would simply come up with an error; however, if the system was watching for someone logging in as Tracey, it would certainly raise an alarm. My only hope was that, via institutional inertia, they'd neglected to do either one. After all, who would log in using a password that only she knew?
Dad had told me horror stories about logins not being cancelled after someone left the Dockworkers, and other people getting into the system using the still-extant password. Fortunately, the intruders hadn't done much damage, but password security was now something they took extremely seriously there. In Medhall, I'd been told, they did security updates over the weekend; with any luck, cancelling out Tracey's login privileges wouldn't be done until then.
With an excuse already brewing in the back of my mind—oh, uh, I had a brain fart and forgot my login so I used the one Tracey showed me once, I'll never do it again—I logged out of my terminal, then logged back as Tracey. One character at a time, I entered the password.
My finger hovered over the Enter key for the longest time. Then I jabbed it down.
The computer screen didn't ignore my request, and it didn't flash any kind of alert that I'd logged in with someone else's password. I didn't hear running footsteps in the corridor. The terminal considered my offering, then popped up a new screen.
I was in.
As of right then, I was on the clock and I knew it, but I had one last thing to check. If Tracey's login was also affected by the query restrictions, I would be back to square one. Also, I would be in so much trouble it wouldn't be funny. They might not fire me—I had saved them millions—but Ms Harcourt would probably bust me down to janitor for a few weeks to show me why I didn't pull crap like that on her watch.
Fingers flying over the keys, I retraced my earlier steps with Ed Ferguson. Only a few screens separated me from where the query was likely to happen. I blazed my way down the trail, barely reading the prompts. This was it, the make-or-break. If I got through, I was golden. Otherwise … I was probably going to have to get used to scrubbing toilets alongside Greg.
(Actually, either way this was likely to happen. But I was okay with that, so long as I found out what I needed to first.)
I reached the point where I'd been roadblocked so many times before. The query went in, and I clicked the mouse button.
Without any hesitation at all … it gave me the information.
I wanted to shout, to cheer, to jump up and down and whoop, but I didn't. The clock was ticking down, both literally and figuratively, and I needed to find out what I was looking for. There was exactly zero chance, as I saw it, for this intrusion to go unnoticed until Friday. Medhall security might have been slow-moving, but they weren't that lax.
However, now I had to follow Tracey's breadcrumb trail. For a moment, the word 'breadcrumb' reminded me of how Greg had been texted the word 'Mice' by Tracey. This now had more chilling connotations. I wasn't sure exactly what it meant, but I intended to find out.
With a burst of inspiration, I clicked the mouse on 'Previous queries' … and there it was. My roadmap. All the links Tracey had followed, the last time she was in here. Pulling my notepad closer and turning to a fresh page, I started following the links, going on from where I'd left off. It was getting very close to three, but I was hot on the trail.
She went in some directions that didn't seem to make sense, but I followed them anyway, jotting down fragments of data. Max Anders showed up, as did his ex-wife Kayden. The rabbit-hole became deeper and deeper, with no end in sight. Why isn't she looking more into Ed Ferguson? What did she do that triggered him to grab and murder her?
Tracey had looked into the money and where it had been disappearing to. She'd found a lot more cash, not being laundered by Medhall for Ferguson's subsidiary like I'd thought. Someone within Medhall itself had been using some very creative accounting to make it look like it was actually going somewhere and not just vanishing … and that someone had been personally appointed by Max Anders.
Why would Max Anders want to conceal the disappearance of his own money? Surely he could spend it how he pleased.
Unless he was bankrolling something extremely illegal. The thought wouldn't go away.
There was a series of searches into personnel files: Bradley, Melody, Justin, Mr Grayson, Diane, and photos of Mr Anders' ex-wife. I wasn't sure why; the money didn't seem to be going to them.
She'd done an outside search, and called up pictures of villains. Hookwolf, Cricket, Crusader, Victor, Othala, and Purity. I stared at the side-by-side image matches. No. Oh, God. No.
Hookwolf had tattoos. I'd never seen Bradley shirtless.
Cricket rarely spoke. Melody didn't either.
It can't be.
But the information was there.
Max Anders hadn't told Ed Ferguson to back off. Kaiser had given an order to an underling.
Even the racist jokes Greg had complained about when he first started working with Maintenance … it all made sense now.
The jigsaw puzzle was vast, almost too big to comprehend, and the pieces I had were few and far between. But when I looked at them with the certain knowledge that they'd led to Tracey's death, they took on far more sinister connotations.
This could all have been a horrifying coincidence … but I didn't believe in coincidence. Nor, it seemed, had Tracey.
Using that as a springboard, she'd looked deeper. Cash influxes into the company, well-concealed, but matching dates with heists and robberies by the Empire capes. Once upon a time, Hookwolf had been captured and was due to go into the Birdcage. Bradley had not attended work for that whole time … until Hookwolf was broken out of the transport.
I could only imagine the look on Tracey's face when she'd finally connected all the dots. At a guess, it would have matched mine.
This was huge. It was terrifying. I didn't want to believe it. It made all the sense in the world.
Have I been working for the Empire Eighty-Eight, for Kaiser, all this time?
I wanted to throw up, but I didn't have the time.
Grabbing my notepad, I tore the top pages off and folded them before tucking them into my bra. Then I made one last foray into what I could only imagine as a deep and dark jungle waiting to tear me asunder. With Tracey's clearance, she could log into the security camera system; not the current running system, but the recordings.
The clock was ticking down the last minute or so before three. I selected the camera that had a view of Tracey's desk, and flicked through the thumbnails until I saw one where she wasn't at it. Going back to the previous one, I started it running.
There was no sound, but I saw her working at her desk, looking more and more flustered as she no doubt found out what I just had. She spent a little time collating her work, looking as though she wanted to tear it all up. I knew how she felt. I wanted to shred it myself, but it was too late for me.
I knew what I knew, and as soon as someone checked the login records and the security logs, they'd know what I knew too. It was unbelievable, inconceivable … but Tracey had died for it.
If I kept denying it, I'd die too. I knew that, without a shadow of a doubt.
On the screen, she got up and headed out of sight up the corridor.
I flicked to the next recording in that direction; she'd gone to Ms Harcourt's office.
Inside the office, she laid out what she had. Even with no sound, it was easy to see what she was talking about. Ms Harcourt heard her out, then came around the desk.
I'd known something must have happened, but I didn't expect Ms Harcourt to punch Tracey in the stomach, hard enough to drop her the floor. On the screen, she dragged Tracey to a small closet on the far side of the room and shoved her into it, before hooking a chair under the handle. Then she went to her phone.
That was it. I knew exactly how bad it was now. Danger surrounded me on all sides.
I have to get out of here.
Hastily, I began to shut the terminal down. I'd been logged in for far too long already, but now I had to treat every second as vital. Snatching up the phone, I dialled a number that I'd long since memorised.
"Greg here. Who is this, and how can I help you?"
"Greg!" I hissed. "Can't talk! I need a secret passage out of the building! Life or death!"
"What—?"
At that moment, I saw Ms Harcourt coming along the corridor, so I put the phone down. In front of me, mercifully enough, the computer had finished shutting off. Anyone with any computer knowhow, of course, could retrace where I'd been and figure out what I knew.
And if I was still in the building then, I would be dead.
Literally, not figuratively.
Even worse, they'd probably assume Greg knew what I did, and murder him too.
Fuuuuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"Is everything well with you, Miss Hebert?" Ms Harcourt looked me over. "You seem flustered."
"Sorry, no, I was just rushing to get this last bit done," I said entirely truthfully but misleadingly. Picking up the report I'd already written, I handed it to her. "Three cases of being less than truthful about prior employment—and I think that one there may have done prison time and not told us—one potential low-key drug user, and a possible link to ABB sympathisers that we weren't told about."
Thankfully, she was distracted by that, and looked down over the report. "This is exceptional work, Ms Hebert. We will have to check your conclusions, of course, but I foresee no problems arising with that."
"Thank you, ma'am," I said. "Uh … I know I'm running late to leave, and I'm seriously not trying to score overtime, but would it be possible to use the restroom before I go?" I tilted my head at the phone. "I was just telling Greg that I wouldn't be long."
"Of course." She afforded me a measured nod. "Alert the security people in the lobby when you leave so we are aware when you have vacated the premises."
"Sure, I can do that." I tried to look like someone who was doing their best not to cross their legs in front of their boss. "Uh, the restroom …?"
"Go." She stepped aside, looking over the report again.
I ducked past her in the direction of the nearest ladies' restroom. A glance over my shoulder told me that she was heading off back toward her own office.
Hurry up, Greg.
Please.
End of Part Eighteen
Anonymous Brainwash
Ex-Lurker
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I have the strangest sense that Taylor's Trigger Event is coming
macdjord
Well worn.
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'intra-building'
readingpanther5
Not too sore, are you?
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As the song goes: Send lawyers guns and money, the shit has hit the fan.
Robert Stadler
Know what you're doing yet?
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I hope that this story keeps Taylor as unpowered. It's a pleasant change of pace.
NavigatorNobilis
Follower of the Second Star
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Also, the delicious, delicious irony of the Empire being brought down by a pair of un-powered teenagers.
Bonus points for Brian's bluescreen when he finds out.
Part Nineteen: When in Doubt, Run Away
Ack
(Verified Ratbag) (Unverified Great Old One)
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Taylor Hebert, Medhall Intern
Part Nineteen: When in Doubt, Run Away
[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Greg
"So, how's things going with you anyway?" Greg leaned against the security desk, idly pulling off his safety gloves and stowing them in his backpack.
"Not too bad, actually." Brian glanced at a screen and clicked the mouse, then looked back up at him. "This is a pretty good job, and the guys are starting to warm up to me."
"Good. That's good." Greg paused. "I just wanted to thank you for volunteering to help Bradley and Melody with training me and Taylor. I think we were really both starting to get it there, at the end."
Brian shrugged. "That's no problem. You're both willing to learn, and you're at least kind of fit, which makes you good students." He glanced around, then lowered his voice slightly. "Unlike some. Just saying."
Greg knew exactly who he was talking about, and why he'd lowered his voice. "Yeah. She was a bit of a dick to Theo too, when we were leaving."
"Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. I'm actually wondering—" But what he was wondering went by the wayside when Greg's phone went off. "You should probably get that."
"Right." With a glance back toward the bank of elevators—Taylor usually wasn't this late coming out—Greg pulled out his phone and strolled a few steps away from the security desk while he flicked the Answer icon. He didn't recognise the number, but that didn't mean it was a miss-call. "Greg here. Who is this, and how can I help you?"
"Greg!" It was Taylor's voice, kept low and filled with more urgency than he'd ever heard from her before; even the time he'd loaned her his phone to call Tracey that one time. "Can't talk! I need a secret passage out of the building! Life or death!"
Taken aback, he blinked in confusion. "What—?"
The call cut off, leaving him staring at the phone. What the hell? What's going on here? He recalled telling Taylor about the 'secret passages', and how Ms Harcourt and the young women had hidden in there from Shadow Stalker, but he had no idea why she needed him to sneak her out that way now.
… actually, on second thought, he did have an idea. She'd been looking for information to link Ed Ferguson with Tracey's death. If Ed was in the building and had figured out what she was doing …
But it didn't matter. Taylor had called for help, and he would go the distance for her. It was that simple.
Doing his best to pretend to be casual, he slid his phone back into his pocket and returned to the desk. "Dude, can I ask a huge favour? One of the guys upstairs just called and said I left my wallet in the maintenance storage room, but they're busy and can't bring it down. Okay if I just slip back up there and grab it?"
Brian frowned. "You're not supposed to be in employee spaces after your shift ends, but … hold on." He picked up a phone and made a quick call. Greg could hear him relaying the excuse and asking if it was okay to let him back through. He jittered, wishing he could just bolt upstairs, but knowing that any stunt like that would probably get him tackled and tased, and then he wouldn't be able to help Taylor.
"Okay." Brian put the phone down. "I'm going to escort you up. Joe says he can hold down the desk while we're up there."
"Just don't be too long," one of the other guards said as he came out of the back area. "Hey, Greg."
"Hey, Joe." Greg swiped himself back through, and they headed for the elevators. His mind was turning over scenarios at a thousand miles per hour, trying to figure out how to ditch Brian after he got hold of a maintenance keyring.
They entered the elevator and Greg hit the button for the floor he needed; the doors closed, and the elevator started upward. It seemed to be inching along, but Greg did his best to hide his urgency. The last thing he wanted was for Brian to wonder what was going on.
"Okay, so what's actually going on?" asked Brian. "You're trying not to show it, but one of my friends is a regular Sherlock, and she's given me pointers on spotting body language. This is about more than a wallet, isn't it?"
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Not only was Brian a ton more skilled and six inches taller than Greg, but an elevator offered exactly zero places to run to. If this came to a fight, Greg knew he would not only lose, he'd lose badly.
As the elevator rumbled upward, he tried frantically to think of what to say.
Taylor
Keeping one eye on Ms Harcourt's back, I pushed the restroom door open, then stepped away and ducked back into Tracey's office area. Behind me, the restroom door automatically closed, but by that time I was out of her line of sight again. I needed a hiding place and I needed it fast, but I couldn't go too far from the kitchenette; Greg would likely be coming out of the maintenance door there.
Slipping my shoes off—they were comfortable, but I wanted to be able to move silently, and bare feet was better for that—I stuck them in my backpack. After looking around frantically, I pulled Tracey's chair out and ducked down into the footwell. With the chair pulled in as far as I could manage, it would hopefully look like there was nobody under there; for once, my skinny frame was working for me instead of against.
Now it was just a waiting game. I didn't know when Ms Harcourt would get the memo that I had accessed Tracey's account, and I didn't know when Greg would get here. All I could do was pray that he was more on the ball than whoever was running the computer security.
Victor
Alexander Grayson frowned as he looked up from his paperwork and realised that a notification had popped up in the corner of his screen. It had been waiting for some little time, but at least it wasn't an outside breach. However, the fact that he'd gotten the notification at all meant it was significant.
With a sigh, he moved the mouse and clicked on it. The new window opened, showing that someone had accessed an area of the network that he thought he'd closed off to most personnel after the Grimshaw near-debacle. He focused on the account name … and froze.
"What the fuck?" he murmured. It was Grimshaw's account, but he knew damn well Grimshaw was locked in a room in the bottom sub-basement level until they could get around to disposing of her without leaving a trace. They'd already fucked up by faking her death instead of killing her for real, and now they were stuck with her unless they wanted the authorities wondering why there were two of her in the morgue.
Pulling all his copious investigative skills to the fore, he started in on the problem, determining who had accessed Grimshaw's account and what they'd seen. The latter was a real problem; they'd traced over what Grimshaw had uncovered and taken to Harcourt. But it was the former that was the ultimate kicker. Alex traced the access point back to the terminal in question, thinking it was going to be Grimshaw's, but it wasn't. Instead, it was the one Taylor Hebert had been using.
Grabbing up his phone, he hit the speed-dial for the first number in the queue. "Max," he said tersely. "We have a real problem. Hebert just backtraced what Grimshaw found out. She knows, Max. She's seen it all."
To his credit, Max didn't indicate the slightest sign of incredulity. This was Hebert they were talking about. She was almost as good at ferreting things out as Victor was, and he had a power helping him out. "Fuck. Is she still in the building?"
Alex hit a few keys, calling up the swipe card registry. "She hasn't swiped out yet, and her last computer entry was … thirty seconds ago."
"Any sign her boyfriend is in on it with her?"
"None, but I didn't know she had any idea. If she's shared anything at all with him … I mean, he came across as a total loser, but she's turned him all the way around." He didn't have to mention Veder's spectacular takedown of Shadow Stalker.
"Good point. We're going to have to deal with both of them. Where's he?"
Victor scrolled down the registry. "Signed out, as of three minutes ago."
"He'll be waiting for her. You go down to the lobby and get him back inside. I'll contact Harcourt and tell her to hold Hebert right where she is."
"Gotcha. On my way." Jumping up from his desk, Alex vaulted over it and headed for his office door. He felt real regret at the way things were going—Hebert had literally saved his life—but maybe they could talk the two around. After all, Harcourt had unexpectedly sided with Medhall.
It was worth a try, anyway.
He power-walked along the corridor to the elevator bank and hit the down button. As soon as one of the elevators opened, he jumped in and mashed the button for the lobby. It seemed to take forever to descend the distance, and he was ready to throttle whoever had composed the music that accompanied the trip by the time he got to the bottom.
Striding out of the elevator, he made his way to the desk, where one of the guards—Joe, he believed—was dealing with a member of the public. Veder was nowhere in sight. Okay, he must be outside.
He swiped his way through the barrier, and stepped out through the automatic doors, already composing the excuse to get Veder to re-enter the building. But even when he descended the steps to street level and looked around, he couldn't see the young man. Fuming at the delay, he dashed up the steps once more and headed over to the desk.
"Mr Grayson," Joe greeted him respectfully. "How can I help you?"
Alex bit back his impatience, and assumed a calm, casual demeanour. "I'm looking for Greg Veder, one of the interns. Has he been out this way?"
"Yeah, he has." Joe rolled his eyes. "Moron forgot his wallet, so Laborn's escorting him back up to the maintenance room to get it. You just missed them. Did you want to leave a message, sir?"
"Yes. Tell him that when he comes back, to wait right here in the lobby. We have some very important news for him." Alex forced himself to smile, as though the bearer of good tidings. "Do you have that?"
"Wait … here … good … news." Joe looked up from the notepad. "Yes, sir. I'll be sure to tell him."
"Good." Alex swiped himself back through and speed-walked toward the elevators. Even as he hit the button to go up, he was pulling out his phone to update Max and bring Bradley into the loop. This was an all-hands-on-deck situation if he'd ever seen one.
Brian
"Well?" asked Brian, after Greg hadn't said a word in several seconds. He liked Greg and Taylor—they'd gotten him into this job, after all—but that wasn't going to stop him from doing that same job.
Greg was looking in every direction but him, and every second glance was at the floor indicator. He didn't know if Greg was a fast runner—he was only moderate, himself—and the last thing he wanted was for the guy to do a bolt with him chasing after through the corridors of Medhall. That would be the absolute maximum in bad optics for security in general and himself in particular.
Leaning over, he hit the 'stop' button; the elevator jolted to a halt. Greg stared at him. "What did you do that for?"
"Because I asked a question, and you haven't answered." Brian liked to think he was a patient guy, but everything had its limits. "When you tell me what you really want to go up again for, then maybe we can go."
"Fuck …" Greg looked more frazzled than Brian had ever seen him, and then he ran his hands through his hair and redoubled the look. Taking a deep breath, he looked Brian straight in the eye. "Taylor called me. She's in some kind of trouble, and needs to get right out of the building. She asked me to take her out through the maintenance spaces. I just need to get the maintenance keys to do it with."
Brian frowned. "Taylor's in trouble? Last I heard, she was the fair-haired girl. What would she be in trouble for?"
"Okay, okay, she'll probably yell at me for telling you this, but we've been having trouble at school with a guy called Peter Ferguson, who's connected to the Empire Eighty-Eight. The other day, Taylor found out his dad is also connected. That's Ed Ferguson, Max Anders' brother-in-law. And we've seen Peter's dad right here in the Medhall building. He runs a company that Medhall does business with."
Brian blinked; whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't that. As it was, the mention of the Empire Eighty-Eight definitely got his attention. "Jeez … okay. So, what do you think's going on here? Why would Taylor want to sneak out of the building?"
Greg shrugged desperately. "I'm thinking maybe Mr Ferguson is here in the building right now, and somehow knows what she found out. But I wanted to get her to safety first and ask questions after."
That … kind of made sense to Brian. "Right, okay. But if I find out she's been stealing company secrets or something, I am going to hand you both over to Bradley and wash my hands of you. Understood?"
Greg stared at him incredulously. "Stealing company secrets? Taylor's had a thousand chances to do that, and she's never done it once. She's saved them millions. That's why we're getting paid full adult salaries as interns."
"Ah. Right." Brian hadn't known that. He took a deep breath, and made a leap of faith. "Okay, let's do this. But we'll do it my way."
"I don't care how we do it, just so long as we do it!"
Greg's desperation for Taylor's safety, more than anything else, convinced Brian. He hit the start button, then the button for the next floor.
"What?" Greg stared. "We need to get to the maintenance room, so I can get keys!"
Brian hefted the bunch of keys on his hip, making a jingling sound. While maintenance had certain keys, security had them all. "What, like these?"
The look of embarrassed realisation on Greg's face was like the sun rising. "Ah. Yeah. Those keys."
Taylor
I waited, crouched in the footwell of the desk, just long enough to wonder if I shouldn't have made a run for the elevator, or even the fire stairs. Shit, maybe I should've just pulled the fire alarm and gone out with the general rush.
It wasn't too late. Maybe I still could.
But then, just as I was shifting around, preliminary to pushing back the chair and getting out from under Tracey's desk, I heard a door open and close at the far end of the corridor. Ms Harcourt's voice echoed all the way down to where I was, clearly audible: "Ms Hebert!"
There was no mistaking the Tone of Doom. She absolutely knew. I froze where I was, listening intently with my eyes tight shut.
Down the corridor her footsteps came, moving in an almost military cadence.
I held perfectly still, barely even breathing.
She got up to where Tracey's office was, and her footsteps paused.
My heart rate faltered at the same time.
Then she marched on, and I breathed again.
I heard the restroom door open, and she called out my name again, but I wasn't listening. If she did what I thought she was going to do, then I had a tiny window to improve my chances of escaping. I listened so hard, I could almost feel my ears growing another quarter inch.
From inside the restroom, I heard a stall door being pushed open, then let swing back to bang against the stop. I acted as fast as I could. Pushing back the chair, I scrambled out from under the desk, bringing my backpack with me. I dashed to the corridor, briefly checked that there was nobody watching, then grabbed one of my shoes out of my bag and skidded it down the corridor in the direction of the elevators. Then I grabbed the T-handle of the fire alarm and gave it a good yank.
When Ms Harcourt had set the fire during our induction process, there had been no fire alarms going off. Greg and I had likewise not been at Medhall long enough to go through an actual fire drill. So I wasn't prepared for the absolute cacophony that erupted when I pulled the fire alarm. Sirens went off with a steady whoop-whoop-whoop, red lights that had always sat quiescent now flashed balefully, and an automated voice began reciting a message about remaining calm and moving to the nearest exit.
Fortunately, I had just enough presence of mind to dive behind Tracey's desk before Ms Harcourt erupted from the restroom. With one eye around the corner of the desk, I saw her storm past, her eyes fixed on something ahead. Hopefully, she'd fall for the ruse and decide I'd gone thataway while her back was turned.
As people began to stream past, I debated joining the rush, but quickly discarded the idea. They would be watching for me, and it wouldn't take much effort to pluck me out of the crowd. My original idea was just going to have to do.
I just hoped Greg got here before they backtracked and found me anyway. Because I was damn sure they weren't going to stop looking.
Kaiser
Max raised his head when the fire alarms started going off. It seemed to be an amazing coincidence, perfectly set up for someone in the building who was trying to get out. Taking up his phone, he hit Victor's number.
"I don't think it's a fire," Victor said immediately. "Wait, Harcourt's calling me."
"Let me know what she says." Max ended the call and got up from his desk. Hands clasped behind his back, he paced back and forth. It was the supreme irony, if he'd been into that sort of thing, for the Hebert girl to be the saviour of Medhall in one instance, then threaten to topple it in the next.
It seemed his assumption of it being a false fire alarm was well-founded, if Victor also believed the same thing. Could it be that she was using the general exodus to sneak out? It sounded the most likely scenario. Grabbing up his phone from his desk, he sent a general text to Bradley and Melody to watch two of the fire exits and to put two of the more loyal guards on the other two.
Then he made his way toward the fire stairs. While his staff could be excused as 'being elsewhere at the time', Max Anders had to be visible to talk to the emergency services when they showed up and explain that it was a prank by an irresponsible intern.
But in the meantime, the search would go on. They had to catch her. There was no other acceptable outcome.
Victor
"—must have been hiding, then she ran for it after pulling the alarm," Ms Harcourt reported crisply. "I found her shoe, so I know which direction she was running in."
"Good, good." Alex looked around distractedly. He'd been standing outside the maintenance room since before the fire alarm went off, and there was still no sign of Veder or Laborn. "Let me know how you go."
He ended the call and tried the door to the maintenance room. It opened easily, to show a room empty of either the wayward intern or the security guard who was supposed to have been escorting him. He knew damn well there was no way Veder could have overpowered Laborn, not without taking a lot of damage in return.
Hitting Max's number, he waited for his boss's terse answer, then started talking. "Harcourt says Hebert was definitely the one who pulled the alarm and ran for it. I'm at the maintenance room where Veder said he needed to go, but he's not here, and neither is Laborn."
"Fuck. You think Laborn's in it with them?"
Victor grimaced. "I … can't really see it? Unless this is part of a really big sting of some sort? Don't forget, he actually got cut saving their stuff. That's really going above and beyond."
"Has anyone tried calling Laborn's phone? Or his radio? He is wearing a radio, right?"
"No, not yet." Peering into the maintenance room, he spotted a two-way radio of the same type the security guards used. "But I can do both, right now."
"Do it, and get back to me."
Tracey Grimshaw
There were no speakers in or around the room Tracey was imprisoned in (wherever that was), but she heard the echoes of the echoes of the sirens going off. The sound was unmistakeable, and she sat up from where she'd been huddled miserably in the corner.
Oh, god, there's a fire.
What do I do?
Are they going to let me out?
What if they don't?
Her mistake, she'd long since decided, had been in not picking up the nuance of Ms Harcourt's question: "Have you told anyone else about this?" Like an idiot, she'd said no. The punch that floored her hadn't been particularly expert, but it was totally unexpected.
She'd gone to Ms Harcourt in the first place because there had been no mention of the woman in any of the information she'd gone through. Ms Harcourt herself was staunchly apolitical, espousing no particular views or even strong convictions, except for her loyalty to Medhall. The other thing Ms Harcourt had said to her, while they were struggling over the possession of her phone, was telling: "I'm not going to let you tear Medhall down."
So no, she strongly suspected that they weren't going to just let her out. The locked room she was in didn't appear particularly flammable—she'd broken a couple of nails trying to pry the door open, and the walls were extremely solid, even when she kicked them—but death from smoke inhalation was definitely a thing.
She'd once read that staying low was best for smoke, so she stretched out on the floor, trying to be careful with her injured arm. It had begun to knit, but they'd taken the cast off (she hadn't had a choice in the matter) shortly after being shoved into the room. She wasn't quite sure why; maybe they thought she could bash her way out with it?
Either way, she wasn't getting out of this room any time soon, but that wasn't even the worst bit.
The worst bit was that Taylor was still working for them. With the girl's irrepressible curiosity, she would sooner or later stumble on some other clue as to the company's maleficent origins.
Tracey knew that she wasn't likely to get out of this situation alive, but hopefully Taylor would be smarter than her, and take the evidence directly to the authorities.
Bring the bastards down, Taylor. Avenge me.
Medhall Building Maintenance Spaces
Greg
"Laborn, are you there? Come in, Laborn. Report location."
Greg jumped as the voice suddenly emanated from Brian's radio. "Jeez!" he exclaimed. "Uh, you aren't going to answer that, are you?"
Brian frowned. "I don't actually recognise that voice. It's not Bradley, and it's not Joe. Whoever it is doesn't belong on the radio net. There's something weird going on here."
"So you believe me?" Greg felt an upswelling of hope. Holy shit, I actually got it right!
"Let's just say, I'm less inclined to disbelieve you." Brian pointed his flashlight along the passage they'd been going down, and brushed a hanging spiderweb out of the way. "Still this way?"
"Just along a little bit, then up a ladder. Taylor's two floors up."
Brian shook his head. "I will never understand how you keep it all straight in your head."
Greg chuckled hollowly. "It's only a bit more complicated than Donkey Kong. Gaming nerd for the win."
At that moment, Brian's phone rang. He swapped his flashlight to his left hand while he pulled the phone out, and looked at the number on the display. Again, he frowned.
"Who is it?" asked Greg, while the phone kept ringing.
"Not anybody I know." Brian abruptly declined the call. "Someone really wants to know where we are, and they're not Medhall security."
"Ferguson. It must be." Greg felt his heart rate increasing. This was real. It was really real.
"Someone, anyway. Maybe the same people who set off the fire alarm, to get all the witnesses out of the way." Brian accessed another number in his phone and held it to his ear.
"Who are you calling?"
Brian glared at the phone. "Well, I'm trying to call friends, but the call's not going through. They must be blocking it somehow." He gestured with the flashlight and stuffed the phone away. "Just along here, then up a ladder? I'm starting to think we need to get to Taylor now."
Greg followed behind Brian as he hustled along, but didn't voice his thoughts. Well, duh.
Taylor
The last of the staff had poured along the corridor in the direction of the fire stairs, but I knew better than to move right away. They would be searching for me; when they didn't find me in the outgoing crowds, they'd come back up to where Ms Harcourt had thought I'd run to, and start going through the place with a fine tooth comb. Eventually they'd work back to where I actually was, and I would be found.
Unless Greg got to me first. I had to have faith that he would.
But until then, there was nothing to say I couldn't make it harder for them to find me. As it was, I knew I couldn't be seen by the security camera in the corridor unless I moved out from behind the desk, but if someone went back through the camera files, they would spot that I'd last been seen in that area, and direct people to that location. I'd be caught like a rat in a trap.
Which meant I'd have to be extra sneaky. Fortunately, Tracey once more came to the rescue.
While I'd been working with her, she'd occasionally had to go off and assist Ms Harcourt with meetings with the higher-ups. When prepping for one such meeting, she'd had me fetch a triple-A battery from the supply closet, because her laser pointer was starting to get a little weak. So I knew she had one; more to the point, I knew (from Dad talking about it) that shining a laser pointer into the lens of a security camera was a big no-no, because it caused them to turn away or shut down to avoid damage. Not because laser pointers could actually damage them, but because Tinkers were a thing, and so were hand-held lasers that could scorch plastic from twenty yards.
My immediate thought was that I could use it to mess with the security cameras so they'd never see me, but it didn't take me long to figure out the flaw in that plan. Wherever the cameras were acting up, that was where they would look for me. Which required a little deeper thought into my strategy.
Sliding open the appropriate drawer without getting up from behind the desk wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but I managed it. Then I had the fun job of sorting through the desk's contents by touch alone, while keeping an ear out for approaching footsteps.
It took three false identifications, and far too long, before my fingers closed around the pointer. Time, already of the essence, was now downright vital. I scrambled out from under the desk, backpack over one shoulder.
Ducking out into the corridor, I pointed the laser at the camera and prayed that Dad hadn't been exaggerating. After a few seconds of dosing it with the beam, I ran down the corridor to the next camera and did the same, then the next one after that as well. Then I ran back the other way, my bare feet slapping against the vinyl flooring in a way that felt truly weird, and hit the next two cameras in that direction.
That would give them a whole bunch of places to search, not just the office space I'd been hiding in. Anything that slowed them down was just fine with me. But I still had to hide; simply standing out in the open did me no good at all.
I went into the kitchenette and yanked the fridge door open. My initial plan had been to empty out the contents and hide them (somewhere), then squeeze into the space thus vacated. But then I heard distant footsteps coming. There were too many shelves in there to pull out and hide without making it obvious where I was, so I took the next best option.
Reaching back, I flicked off the light switch, then opened my backpack and hauled out my hoodie and jeans. I'd never gotten into a compromising position with Greg where I might need to get my clothing back on in a hurry (he was too much of a gentleman for that) but I could've broken records with how fast I got my jeans and hoodie on this time.
There was just enough room in the fridge to shove my backpack onto one of the shelves, then I closed it and scrambled up onto the bench. As the footsteps came closer, I climbed on top of the fridge itself, pressing back into the niche it occupied. The ceiling was maybe two feet above the top of the fridge so I was more or less in a foetal position, but if they didn't give the kitchenette area more than a cursory glance, I might escape notice, at least for a little while. At least, that was the plan.
"Fucking laser pointers," I heard Bradley growl. "I'll give Taylor that much, she's inventive as fuck."
"Sounds like you actually admire her." That was a guy's voice that I didn't know. "That's not like you."
"Well, she has done a lot for this company." I recognised Mr Grayson's voice. "So how about we don't go lethal straight away? She deserves the chance to see the light."
"She knows what she's seen." Ms Harcourt's tone was as uncompromising as ever. "The fact that she's trying to escape tells us everything we need to know."
"All she knows is that when Tracey took it to you, you beat her up," Mr Grayson reminded her. By now, it sounded like they were standing almost directly outside the kitchenette, and I was barely breathing. "That's bound to give anyone a prejudiced point of view. And look at yourself. You didn't need any persuading at all."
"She hasn't put the years into this company that I have," Ms Harcourt retorted. "I don't care about your politics or your ideology. I care about Medhall. And I have it on good authority that she hates and despises white supremacy. So your chances of legitimately bringing her around are slim to zero. Whereas if she pretends to come around, then starts working against you …" She let the statement trail off.
"We're wasting time." That was Bradley. "Everyone, spread out, check all the offices and other rooms where she coulda hidden. And keep an eye out for Veder and Laborn. They're loose in the building somewhere too."
"It never fails." It was the same stranger's voice. "Once you bring one of them on board, everything goes to hell."
"What, interns or blacks?" asked Mr Grayson in a joking tone. "Come on, Lars, let's look down this way. Melody, you check the restrooms."
"Because I'm a chick?" I'd wondered why Melody didn't talk much. Belying her name, her voice had a fifty-packs-a-day rasp.
"No," snapped Bradley. "Because you're the lightest of us and if she's done something tricky like hide in the ceiling panels, you're the only one who can get up there."
I had actually considered hiding in the drop ceiling, but now I was glad I hadn't. Besides, I was fairly sure I just wasn't athletic enough to get up there.
Out of the corner of my eye—I wasn't moving any part of my body that I didn't have to—I saw Melody and Bradley moving off down the corridor. Ms Harcourt leaned into the kitchenette and gave it a cursory glance, then sniffed dismissively and went out of sight again. I tried to relax the full-body clench I'd just gone into, and blessed the impulse I'd had to turn the light off. Combined with my lack of movement and the darker clothing, the shadow in the niche had given me just enough concealment that she hadn't spotted me.
Over the crashing and banging of her searching Tracey's office—there were cupboards and cabinets that could theoretically have contained me, if I'd also been a professional contortionist—I heard the most welcome noise in the world; that of a door lock carefully opening. "Greg?" I whispered. "Be careful. Ms Harcourt's right there."
Thankfully, he was totally on the ball. "Taylor?" His whisper was no louder than mine. "What's going on?"
At that moment, I had an epiphany. I knew what Tracey's text to Greg had been, before autocorrupt had had its way with her message. She'd been trying to say, 'MH is E88', but the spaces hadn't come through. "Medhall is Empire Eighty-Eight," I whispered as I tried to climb down off the fridge.
"What?" That was Greg, apparently trying to process my words.
"What?" And that was a deeper voice, one I knew, but hadn't expected. What's Brian doing here?
Right then, I slipped; I caught myself before I fell all the way, but my feet hit the floor with an audible thud. "I'll tell you later," I hissed as I yanked the fridge door open to retrieve my backpack. "We have to get out of here."
"You're going nowhere," Ms Harcourt proclaimed as she stormed across the corridor, her eyes alight with righteous rage. "You have no idea how much trouble you've caused—"
As she came at me, she swung a punch. I hadn't been specifically taught how to deal with punches yet, but the little training I'd had let me slip it aside all the same. As part of the same move, I grabbed her arm, braced myself, and heaved. She wasn't light, but her momentum did all the work; over she went, to land on her back in the middle of the kitchenette. For a few seconds, I stood there, staring, unable to believe what I'd done.
I'd just thrown Ms Harcourt.
I'd just thrown Ms Harcourt.
The current situation notwithstanding, it was like I'd just toppled the Forsberg Gallery or punched out Alexandria; utterly unbelievable.
"Taylor!" Greg opened the maintenance door all the way and grabbed my arm. "Get in here!"
That snapped me out of the state of shock, and I followed him back into the maintenance space. As he pulled the door shut, I stared at the third member of our little party. "Brian? What are you doing here?"
"Tell you later," Greg said, facing up to me. "Who else is out there?"
I took a deep breath. Bradley, Melody, Mr Grayson, some other guy … "Hookwolf, Cricket, Victor, and someone called Lars."
"They're here!" I heard Ms Harcourt bellow from outside the maintenance door. "They're in the walls!"
I'd never actually seen a black guy go pale before. "We have to go," Brian urged. "Greg, which way?"
"Follow me!" Grabbing Brian's flashlight on the way past, Greg hurried off down the dark, web-strewn passageway.
I followed along; as claustrophobic and musty as it was—generations of rats and bugs must have died in those passages—it was still preferable to what was outside.
Hookwolf
"They're here! They're in the walls!"
Brad looked around at the Harcourt woman's shout, frowning. What, really? Coming out of the office he'd been searching, he ran back down the corridor. Cricket popped out of the restrooms as he came past, and fell into step with him. As they came up to the kitchenette area, he saw Victor and Stormtiger coming the other way.
"What the fuck?" demanded Stormtiger. "What do you mean, 'they're in the walls'?"
"I mean, they went into that door there!" Harcourt snapped, climbing painfully to her feet. "The girl was right here, in this kitchen area, and you all missed her. I heard her talking to her confederates and went to apprehend her, but she threw me to the ground and got away!"
It was a serious situation, but Brad couldn't help catching Cricket's eye. They both snickered out loud as Brad clenched his fist and grew a whole lot of blades from it. Holy shit, the kid actually learned something! Drawing back his fist, he smashed it into the small door, ripping out the section around the lock. Without anything to hold it closed, it swung inward.
He was still chuckling at the mental image of Taylor pulling off a shoulder throw against Harcourt as he headed into the passageway. On another level altogether, he was wondering what had to be done about her 'confederates'. These had to be Veder and Laborn, unless there were two other people wandering around inside the building that he didn't know about. Were they in it with her, or just going along for the ride?
It wouldn't matter in the long run, Brad knew. Max was very much a fan of zero loose ends. It was how Medhall had survived for so long. He'd hunt these three down, then persuade Grimshaw to talk about who she'd sent her message to, and then they'd be able to deal with it once and for all.
It was a pity about Hebert; she was sharp as a tack, and a nice kid on top of that. But Medhall came first.
He hustled along the passageway until he realised the only light was coming in from behind him, so he pulled out his phone and activated the light on it. Moving on, he quickly came to the first junction; there was a ladder and a passage heading off at right angles. He paused and listened intently, but all he could hear were his idiot teammates bumbling up behind him.
"Will you assholes keep the noise down?" he demanded. "I'm trying to figure out which way they went!"
Stormtiger pushed forward past Cricket, ignoring her poisonous glare, and sniffed. Brad felt the air shifting around him. "Up that way," the aerokinetic said, pointing at the ladder.
"Why would they go up?" asked Victor. "Surely they'd want to go down."
"The smell of shit-scared teenagers goes up the damn ladder," Stormtiger stated flatly.
"Okay, you're the bird dog." Hookwolf passed the phone over to him. "Lead the way."
"Fuck you." But Stormtiger started climbing the ladder anyway. "When I catch that asshole Laborn," he muttered, "I am gonna rip his fuckin' guts out."
Not if I get to him first.
Taylor
"Can we stop a minute? My feet are killing me." I hated to ask, but the rough metal of the ladder rungs and the equally rough concrete of the passageways made me feel like I was dancing on broken glass.
Greg stopped, of course, and aimed the flashlight down at my feet. "You're barefoot. Why are you barefoot?"
"Took my shoes off to move quietly," I said. "Lend me a shoulder?"
"Anytime." He moved up next to me and I gratefully leaned on him while I reached into my backpack for my sneakers. I didn't think we had time for socks, but I could definitely deal with that better than bare feet.
"Thanks," I said as I tugged on the first sneaker, then changed feet. "You guys were a lifesaver, showing up when you did."
"Yeah, well—" Greg began, before Brian grabbed the flashlight and turned it off with a 'Shh!'.
I stopped moving and held my breath to listen. After a few seconds, my eyes adjusted enough to detect a flickering light down the passageway we'd just come along, getting stronger. Also, I was pretty sure I could hear voices. My eyes opened wide in the darkness, and I jammed the shoe on my foot.
"Go!" hissed Brian.
"Going!" Greg agreed, and we hurried off.
It wasn't quite a labyrinth, but there were occasional branchings. We kept moving, going up and down ladders and around corners at a speed that soon had me panting for breath. At one point, Greg let us out into a ladies' restroom, then took us out into the corridor—I spiked the security cameras that I could see—and around the corner to another maintenance door. After going down two floors from that, we stopped to rest.
I was covered in sweat, not least from the fact that I was wearing two layers of clothing, but also because of the constant exertion. My breath was hurting in my lungs, and my heart rate was somewhere up around 'hummingbird'.
"Taylor, you okay?" Greg was in better shape, but that was probably because he'd been doing this sort of thing on a daily basis. Brian didn't seem to be sweating at all, the big cheat.
"Yeah … yeah …" I gasped. "Just … need to … catch my … breath."
And then we heard it. The sound of a maintenance door opening, two floors above. I even picked out Bradley's voice, but not what he was saying.
"How can they keep following us?" I whimpered, staggering to my feet. "How do they know where we are?"
"I think I know," Brian said grimly. "The one you don't know, Lars, he must be Stormtiger. A friend of mine once told me he can follow a scent by concentrating the air into his sinuses."
We kept moving. Greg led the way, being the only one at all familiar with the hidden spaces of the building, and Brian did his best to help me along. But the noise behind, and the flashing light, got closer and closer.
And then Greg left us to race up ahead. Brian was almost carrying me by now, although I was staggering along with zero gas in the tank. "Sorry," I whispered. "For getting you into this."
"Not your fault," he replied. "I made my choices."
As we got closer, I heard Greg open a maintenance door. I wanted to protest that ducking out through the corridors didn't actually gain us any distance, and probably let them catch up with us. But then he came back through the door and pulled it shut behind him. "Keep going," he urged, handing Brian the flashlight. "We need to be out of sight."
Brian didn't query him, though I was worried. Surely he wasn't going to try to hold them off on his own? Even Brian couldn't do that, and I'd seen him fight.
Greg fell in behind us, and I heard the ssst ssst ssst ssst from a spray bottle. An acrid tang stung my nose, and I stifled a sneeze. Brian picked me up and carried me, jogging onward, attempting to outrace the rolling cloud of vapour that Greg was generating. Even in the middle of it, he was still adding to it, spraying two bottles at once for all he was worth.
Then I heard the bottles clatter to the floor and he caught up with us. In a flash of light, I saw his eyes were red and streaming. "Ladder," he wheezed. "Down."
I could climb down a ladder; it was about all I could climb, right then. Brian went down first, then I half-climbed, half-fell down. He caught me at the bottom. Greg came down without using the rungs, hands and feet on the outside of the ladder. I felt jealous that he could pull off a cool move like that.
We staggered around a corner, then Greg waved for the flashlight to be turned off and we collapsed on the floor. Greg and I were both trying to die quietly, while Brian was just muffling his coughs. I was still terrified that they'd hear us from an entire floor away, right up until I heard the hacking, choking coughs that emanated from above.
"Fuck!" That was Bradley … Hookwolf. "His fuckin' sinuses are bleeding! What the fuck?"
"Veder sprayed cleaning products in the air," Mr Grayson (Victor, my brain insisted) said. "Somehow he knew how Lars' power works."
Someone—hopefully Stormtiger—let out another barrage of racking coughs. It honestly sounded like he was doing his best to part company with both lungs at once. We could live in hope.
"Yeah, you're right." Hookwolf managed to sound pissed and admiring all at once. "It's definitely something she'd do."
"So what do we do?" asked Victor. "We can't just leave him here. He might actually die."
"No, that's true." Hookwolf seemed to come to a decision. "Get him to Othala. We'll keep looking. Tell Max to send everyone home. Seal the building. Put out the word that a couple of interns and a security guard pulled the alarm and vandalised the place."
"Copy that." I heard the maintenance door open. "Come on, Lars. Let's get you out of here."
"We have to keep moving," Brian murmured. "They might catch up with us by accident."
I clenched my teeth to avoid groaning as I got to my feet yet again. Even with that brief respite, I felt as though my leg muscles had congealed into solid concrete. But I knew he was right. Just Hookwolf on his own could murder all of us.
"Can we just call the cops?" I asked in a whisper. "Even if they arrest us, we'll be alive."
Greg shook his head. "Brian tried calling someone. The call was blocked."
"Even if we got through, the Empire's got people in the BBPD," Brian said. "And the PRT. But the PRT wouldn't touch this anyway."
"Yeah," I said. "Because we're not capes. Damn it."
"We've got to lie low until we can get our strength back," Brian advised. "Not in the public spaces. Security will be sweeping those areas. And somewhere Stormtiger can't track us to, once he gets his sinuses back. Any ideas?"
Greg brightened. "I think I might know a place."
Kaiser
"What the fuck is going on in there?" demanded Max, though he had to keep his voice to a calm tone. It was important to maintain the unflappable reputation. "How is it that you can't capture one overly inquisitive intern in our own goddamn building?"
"Two, plus Laborn," Victor reported, his voice exhibiting the warbling overtone of a Medhall phone. "They're extremely resourceful. Veder knows his way around the interior spaces, and he's already incapacitated Lars."
"How the fuck—no, save it, I don't want to know." Max shook his head. "Just make sure they can't get out, and I'll keep the Faraday cage running on the building, and make sure the reporters go away happy."
"You do that."
The phone call ended. Max growled in his throat as he put the phone away, then pasted a smile on his face as he went to speak to the reporters who had shown up.
The Empire Eighty-Eight would win. It was just a matter of time.
Greg
Taylor peered down the long ladder. "I'm not sure I can climb down that. How far down does it go?"
"Not sure." Greg grimaced. He hadn't factored in Taylor's exhaustion. "Never been to the bottom. I found it one day, but nobody's ever talked about it."
"I can carry you down," offered Brian. "It'll be uncomfortable, but …"
"I guess?" Taylor looked at Greg. "What's this ladder for, anyway?"
"Oh, there's an elevator shaft just on the other side of that wall." Greg gestured at a maintenance door set in the wall. "We need access that doesn't actually involve climbing down the shaft itself. So, a ladder."
Brian sighed. "Well, there's only one way to do this. Taylor, do you feel up to hanging on to my back?"
Taylor didn't look too certain, but she nodded. "Going to have to, aren't I?" Then she paused. "Just a second. Turn your backs, guys."
Greg immediately averted his gaze, and saw that Brian had too. Behind them, they heard the rustling of cloth.
"Okay, you can turn around now."
When he looked, Greg saw that Taylor had removed her hoodie and jeans, and was stuffing them into her backpack. Her office clothing was sadly creased, but it had to be lighter than what she'd been wearing before.
Brian nodded approvingly. "Okay, yeah, that's better. You must've been boiling in that."
She rolled her eyes. "Oh, you have no idea. Let's do this thing."
The climb down into darkness felt interminable. Greg went first, and paused every dozen rungs to shine the flashlight downward, but there was always more ladder. He began to wonder just how many floors the Medhall building had. Surely it wasn't this tall.
Eventually, they reached the bottom of the ladder shaft. There were two maintenance doors leading out; one into the elevator shaft that he already knew about, and one that he had no idea of. He was just peering at the second one when Brian arrived at the bottom, and let Taylor down onto her feet.
"Jesus," she muttered, shaking her hands out. "Now I know what they mean by 'hanging on for dear life'."
"What's through there?" asked Brian pragmatically, pointing at the second maintenance door.
"No clue." Greg glanced at the other two, and turned the handle. It opened, and he pushed it out a little way. Light spilled in; outside was a basic concrete corridor.
There were no shouts of alarm, so he cautiously stepped out, blinking in the glare of fluorescent lighting. Taylor and then Brian followed him out, peering around. The walls were industrial off-yellow, and the floor was raw concrete.
"What is this place?" asked Taylor, her voice hushed.
"I have no fucking idea." Brian shook his head. "And I've been given the full tour, from Max Anders' office all the way to the basement storage. Greg?"
Greg shook his head. "Don't look at me. I've never seen this place before either. And I thought I knew the building."
Taylor drew a deep breath. "Well, we either stand here and wait for them to find us, or we go and see if we can find something useful. Like an exit. Right?"
Greg glanced at Brian, and they traded shrugs. "Makes sense," Greg allowed.
"Totally," agreed Brian.
They moved off, Brian in the lead by mutual agreement. Taylor was still unsteady on her feet, but she was moving better now.
"Hey," a voice said from just around the next corner, "did you hear something?"
"Yeah, I did," said someone else. "Back me up while I check it out."
There was absolutely zero cover in the corridor, and Greg knew damn well Taylor couldn't run. It appeared Brian knew that too, because he was running forward, toward the corner. It was amazing how quietly someone his size could move when he had to.
The first thing they saw around the corner was a rifle barrel, and then a face. The eyes widened, just as Brian reached out and grabbed the guy. There was just enough time for the guy to yell in surprise, and for the rifle to go off, before Brian headbutted him savagely.
Greg had no idea where the bullet went to, but the rifle's report was loud enough to deafen him. And then the other guard appeared, pointing his rifle at them. He was far enough back that Brian couldn't just grab him, and he seemed to be yelling something into a radio.
And that was when Brian put out his hands and blackness poured from them, enveloping the second guard in a heartbeat. Intuiting what was going to happen next, Greg pulled Taylor to the ground, covering her with his body. There was a muffled shot, but it didn't seem to come near either one of them. A moment later, the blackness started dissipating, revealing Brian standing over the recumbent body of the second guard.
"What the hell?" asked Greg, rolling off Taylor and getting to his feet. "You're … a cape?"
"Well, duh, he's a cape," Taylor snarked as she used the wall to help herself get up. "What I want to know is, what are these two jerks stuck down here guarding with rifles while all hell's breaking out upstairs?"
Greg immediately knew what she was doing. Yes, Brian being a cape had to be addressed at some point. He even had a suspicion of who Brian really was. But right now it wasn't important.
Between them, Brian and Greg secured the guards, then checked them for keys. One of the guys had one that didn't seem to be the usual house key/car key setup. There was only one door along that part of the corridor, and Taylor went to it.
Inserting the key, she turned the lock and opened the door. Then she stared into the room, her jaw dropping.
"Tracey?"
End of Part Nineteen
Part Nineteen: When in Doubt, Run Away
[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Greg
"So, how's things going with you anyway?" Greg leaned against the security desk, idly pulling off his safety gloves and stowing them in his backpack.
"Not too bad, actually." Brian glanced at a screen and clicked the mouse, then looked back up at him. "This is a pretty good job, and the guys are starting to warm up to me."
"Good. That's good." Greg paused. "I just wanted to thank you for volunteering to help Bradley and Melody with training me and Taylor. I think we were really both starting to get it there, at the end."
Brian shrugged. "That's no problem. You're both willing to learn, and you're at least kind of fit, which makes you good students." He glanced around, then lowered his voice slightly. "Unlike some. Just saying."
Greg knew exactly who he was talking about, and why he'd lowered his voice. "Yeah. She was a bit of a dick to Theo too, when we were leaving."
"Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. I'm actually wondering—" But what he was wondering went by the wayside when Greg's phone went off. "You should probably get that."
"Right." With a glance back toward the bank of elevators—Taylor usually wasn't this late coming out—Greg pulled out his phone and strolled a few steps away from the security desk while he flicked the Answer icon. He didn't recognise the number, but that didn't mean it was a miss-call. "Greg here. Who is this, and how can I help you?"
"Greg!" It was Taylor's voice, kept low and filled with more urgency than he'd ever heard from her before; even the time he'd loaned her his phone to call Tracey that one time. "Can't talk! I need a secret passage out of the building! Life or death!"
Taken aback, he blinked in confusion. "What—?"
The call cut off, leaving him staring at the phone. What the hell? What's going on here? He recalled telling Taylor about the 'secret passages', and how Ms Harcourt and the young women had hidden in there from Shadow Stalker, but he had no idea why she needed him to sneak her out that way now.
… actually, on second thought, he did have an idea. She'd been looking for information to link Ed Ferguson with Tracey's death. If Ed was in the building and had figured out what she was doing …
But it didn't matter. Taylor had called for help, and he would go the distance for her. It was that simple.
Doing his best to pretend to be casual, he slid his phone back into his pocket and returned to the desk. "Dude, can I ask a huge favour? One of the guys upstairs just called and said I left my wallet in the maintenance storage room, but they're busy and can't bring it down. Okay if I just slip back up there and grab it?"
Brian frowned. "You're not supposed to be in employee spaces after your shift ends, but … hold on." He picked up a phone and made a quick call. Greg could hear him relaying the excuse and asking if it was okay to let him back through. He jittered, wishing he could just bolt upstairs, but knowing that any stunt like that would probably get him tackled and tased, and then he wouldn't be able to help Taylor.
"Okay." Brian put the phone down. "I'm going to escort you up. Joe says he can hold down the desk while we're up there."
"Just don't be too long," one of the other guards said as he came out of the back area. "Hey, Greg."
"Hey, Joe." Greg swiped himself back through, and they headed for the elevators. His mind was turning over scenarios at a thousand miles per hour, trying to figure out how to ditch Brian after he got hold of a maintenance keyring.
They entered the elevator and Greg hit the button for the floor he needed; the doors closed, and the elevator started upward. It seemed to be inching along, but Greg did his best to hide his urgency. The last thing he wanted was for Brian to wonder what was going on.
"Okay, so what's actually going on?" asked Brian. "You're trying not to show it, but one of my friends is a regular Sherlock, and she's given me pointers on spotting body language. This is about more than a wallet, isn't it?"
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Not only was Brian a ton more skilled and six inches taller than Greg, but an elevator offered exactly zero places to run to. If this came to a fight, Greg knew he would not only lose, he'd lose badly.
As the elevator rumbled upward, he tried frantically to think of what to say.
<><>
Taylor
Keeping one eye on Ms Harcourt's back, I pushed the restroom door open, then stepped away and ducked back into Tracey's office area. Behind me, the restroom door automatically closed, but by that time I was out of her line of sight again. I needed a hiding place and I needed it fast, but I couldn't go too far from the kitchenette; Greg would likely be coming out of the maintenance door there.
Slipping my shoes off—they were comfortable, but I wanted to be able to move silently, and bare feet was better for that—I stuck them in my backpack. After looking around frantically, I pulled Tracey's chair out and ducked down into the footwell. With the chair pulled in as far as I could manage, it would hopefully look like there was nobody under there; for once, my skinny frame was working for me instead of against.
Now it was just a waiting game. I didn't know when Ms Harcourt would get the memo that I had accessed Tracey's account, and I didn't know when Greg would get here. All I could do was pray that he was more on the ball than whoever was running the computer security.
<><>
Victor
Alexander Grayson frowned as he looked up from his paperwork and realised that a notification had popped up in the corner of his screen. It had been waiting for some little time, but at least it wasn't an outside breach. However, the fact that he'd gotten the notification at all meant it was significant.
With a sigh, he moved the mouse and clicked on it. The new window opened, showing that someone had accessed an area of the network that he thought he'd closed off to most personnel after the Grimshaw near-debacle. He focused on the account name … and froze.
"What the fuck?" he murmured. It was Grimshaw's account, but he knew damn well Grimshaw was locked in a room in the bottom sub-basement level until they could get around to disposing of her without leaving a trace. They'd already fucked up by faking her death instead of killing her for real, and now they were stuck with her unless they wanted the authorities wondering why there were two of her in the morgue.
Pulling all his copious investigative skills to the fore, he started in on the problem, determining who had accessed Grimshaw's account and what they'd seen. The latter was a real problem; they'd traced over what Grimshaw had uncovered and taken to Harcourt. But it was the former that was the ultimate kicker. Alex traced the access point back to the terminal in question, thinking it was going to be Grimshaw's, but it wasn't. Instead, it was the one Taylor Hebert had been using.
Grabbing up his phone, he hit the speed-dial for the first number in the queue. "Max," he said tersely. "We have a real problem. Hebert just backtraced what Grimshaw found out. She knows, Max. She's seen it all."
To his credit, Max didn't indicate the slightest sign of incredulity. This was Hebert they were talking about. She was almost as good at ferreting things out as Victor was, and he had a power helping him out. "Fuck. Is she still in the building?"
Alex hit a few keys, calling up the swipe card registry. "She hasn't swiped out yet, and her last computer entry was … thirty seconds ago."
"Any sign her boyfriend is in on it with her?"
"None, but I didn't know she had any idea. If she's shared anything at all with him … I mean, he came across as a total loser, but she's turned him all the way around." He didn't have to mention Veder's spectacular takedown of Shadow Stalker.
"Good point. We're going to have to deal with both of them. Where's he?"
Victor scrolled down the registry. "Signed out, as of three minutes ago."
"He'll be waiting for her. You go down to the lobby and get him back inside. I'll contact Harcourt and tell her to hold Hebert right where she is."
"Gotcha. On my way." Jumping up from his desk, Alex vaulted over it and headed for his office door. He felt real regret at the way things were going—Hebert had literally saved his life—but maybe they could talk the two around. After all, Harcourt had unexpectedly sided with Medhall.
It was worth a try, anyway.
He power-walked along the corridor to the elevator bank and hit the down button. As soon as one of the elevators opened, he jumped in and mashed the button for the lobby. It seemed to take forever to descend the distance, and he was ready to throttle whoever had composed the music that accompanied the trip by the time he got to the bottom.
Striding out of the elevator, he made his way to the desk, where one of the guards—Joe, he believed—was dealing with a member of the public. Veder was nowhere in sight. Okay, he must be outside.
He swiped his way through the barrier, and stepped out through the automatic doors, already composing the excuse to get Veder to re-enter the building. But even when he descended the steps to street level and looked around, he couldn't see the young man. Fuming at the delay, he dashed up the steps once more and headed over to the desk.
"Mr Grayson," Joe greeted him respectfully. "How can I help you?"
Alex bit back his impatience, and assumed a calm, casual demeanour. "I'm looking for Greg Veder, one of the interns. Has he been out this way?"
"Yeah, he has." Joe rolled his eyes. "Moron forgot his wallet, so Laborn's escorting him back up to the maintenance room to get it. You just missed them. Did you want to leave a message, sir?"
"Yes. Tell him that when he comes back, to wait right here in the lobby. We have some very important news for him." Alex forced himself to smile, as though the bearer of good tidings. "Do you have that?"
"Wait … here … good … news." Joe looked up from the notepad. "Yes, sir. I'll be sure to tell him."
"Good." Alex swiped himself back through and speed-walked toward the elevators. Even as he hit the button to go up, he was pulling out his phone to update Max and bring Bradley into the loop. This was an all-hands-on-deck situation if he'd ever seen one.
<><>
Brian
"Well?" asked Brian, after Greg hadn't said a word in several seconds. He liked Greg and Taylor—they'd gotten him into this job, after all—but that wasn't going to stop him from doing that same job.
Greg was looking in every direction but him, and every second glance was at the floor indicator. He didn't know if Greg was a fast runner—he was only moderate, himself—and the last thing he wanted was for the guy to do a bolt with him chasing after through the corridors of Medhall. That would be the absolute maximum in bad optics for security in general and himself in particular.
Leaning over, he hit the 'stop' button; the elevator jolted to a halt. Greg stared at him. "What did you do that for?"
"Because I asked a question, and you haven't answered." Brian liked to think he was a patient guy, but everything had its limits. "When you tell me what you really want to go up again for, then maybe we can go."
"Fuck …" Greg looked more frazzled than Brian had ever seen him, and then he ran his hands through his hair and redoubled the look. Taking a deep breath, he looked Brian straight in the eye. "Taylor called me. She's in some kind of trouble, and needs to get right out of the building. She asked me to take her out through the maintenance spaces. I just need to get the maintenance keys to do it with."
Brian frowned. "Taylor's in trouble? Last I heard, she was the fair-haired girl. What would she be in trouble for?"
"Okay, okay, she'll probably yell at me for telling you this, but we've been having trouble at school with a guy called Peter Ferguson, who's connected to the Empire Eighty-Eight. The other day, Taylor found out his dad is also connected. That's Ed Ferguson, Max Anders' brother-in-law. And we've seen Peter's dad right here in the Medhall building. He runs a company that Medhall does business with."
Brian blinked; whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't that. As it was, the mention of the Empire Eighty-Eight definitely got his attention. "Jeez … okay. So, what do you think's going on here? Why would Taylor want to sneak out of the building?"
Greg shrugged desperately. "I'm thinking maybe Mr Ferguson is here in the building right now, and somehow knows what she found out. But I wanted to get her to safety first and ask questions after."
That … kind of made sense to Brian. "Right, okay. But if I find out she's been stealing company secrets or something, I am going to hand you both over to Bradley and wash my hands of you. Understood?"
Greg stared at him incredulously. "Stealing company secrets? Taylor's had a thousand chances to do that, and she's never done it once. She's saved them millions. That's why we're getting paid full adult salaries as interns."
"Ah. Right." Brian hadn't known that. He took a deep breath, and made a leap of faith. "Okay, let's do this. But we'll do it my way."
"I don't care how we do it, just so long as we do it!"
Greg's desperation for Taylor's safety, more than anything else, convinced Brian. He hit the start button, then the button for the next floor.
"What?" Greg stared. "We need to get to the maintenance room, so I can get keys!"
Brian hefted the bunch of keys on his hip, making a jingling sound. While maintenance had certain keys, security had them all. "What, like these?"
The look of embarrassed realisation on Greg's face was like the sun rising. "Ah. Yeah. Those keys."
<><>
Taylor
I waited, crouched in the footwell of the desk, just long enough to wonder if I shouldn't have made a run for the elevator, or even the fire stairs. Shit, maybe I should've just pulled the fire alarm and gone out with the general rush.
It wasn't too late. Maybe I still could.
But then, just as I was shifting around, preliminary to pushing back the chair and getting out from under Tracey's desk, I heard a door open and close at the far end of the corridor. Ms Harcourt's voice echoed all the way down to where I was, clearly audible: "Ms Hebert!"
There was no mistaking the Tone of Doom. She absolutely knew. I froze where I was, listening intently with my eyes tight shut.
Down the corridor her footsteps came, moving in an almost military cadence.
I held perfectly still, barely even breathing.
She got up to where Tracey's office was, and her footsteps paused.
My heart rate faltered at the same time.
Then she marched on, and I breathed again.
I heard the restroom door open, and she called out my name again, but I wasn't listening. If she did what I thought she was going to do, then I had a tiny window to improve my chances of escaping. I listened so hard, I could almost feel my ears growing another quarter inch.
From inside the restroom, I heard a stall door being pushed open, then let swing back to bang against the stop. I acted as fast as I could. Pushing back the chair, I scrambled out from under the desk, bringing my backpack with me. I dashed to the corridor, briefly checked that there was nobody watching, then grabbed one of my shoes out of my bag and skidded it down the corridor in the direction of the elevators. Then I grabbed the T-handle of the fire alarm and gave it a good yank.
When Ms Harcourt had set the fire during our induction process, there had been no fire alarms going off. Greg and I had likewise not been at Medhall long enough to go through an actual fire drill. So I wasn't prepared for the absolute cacophony that erupted when I pulled the fire alarm. Sirens went off with a steady whoop-whoop-whoop, red lights that had always sat quiescent now flashed balefully, and an automated voice began reciting a message about remaining calm and moving to the nearest exit.
Fortunately, I had just enough presence of mind to dive behind Tracey's desk before Ms Harcourt erupted from the restroom. With one eye around the corner of the desk, I saw her storm past, her eyes fixed on something ahead. Hopefully, she'd fall for the ruse and decide I'd gone thataway while her back was turned.
As people began to stream past, I debated joining the rush, but quickly discarded the idea. They would be watching for me, and it wouldn't take much effort to pluck me out of the crowd. My original idea was just going to have to do.
I just hoped Greg got here before they backtracked and found me anyway. Because I was damn sure they weren't going to stop looking.
<><>
Kaiser
Max raised his head when the fire alarms started going off. It seemed to be an amazing coincidence, perfectly set up for someone in the building who was trying to get out. Taking up his phone, he hit Victor's number.
"I don't think it's a fire," Victor said immediately. "Wait, Harcourt's calling me."
"Let me know what she says." Max ended the call and got up from his desk. Hands clasped behind his back, he paced back and forth. It was the supreme irony, if he'd been into that sort of thing, for the Hebert girl to be the saviour of Medhall in one instance, then threaten to topple it in the next.
It seemed his assumption of it being a false fire alarm was well-founded, if Victor also believed the same thing. Could it be that she was using the general exodus to sneak out? It sounded the most likely scenario. Grabbing up his phone from his desk, he sent a general text to Bradley and Melody to watch two of the fire exits and to put two of the more loyal guards on the other two.
Then he made his way toward the fire stairs. While his staff could be excused as 'being elsewhere at the time', Max Anders had to be visible to talk to the emergency services when they showed up and explain that it was a prank by an irresponsible intern.
But in the meantime, the search would go on. They had to catch her. There was no other acceptable outcome.
<><>
Victor
"—must have been hiding, then she ran for it after pulling the alarm," Ms Harcourt reported crisply. "I found her shoe, so I know which direction she was running in."
"Good, good." Alex looked around distractedly. He'd been standing outside the maintenance room since before the fire alarm went off, and there was still no sign of Veder or Laborn. "Let me know how you go."
He ended the call and tried the door to the maintenance room. It opened easily, to show a room empty of either the wayward intern or the security guard who was supposed to have been escorting him. He knew damn well there was no way Veder could have overpowered Laborn, not without taking a lot of damage in return.
Hitting Max's number, he waited for his boss's terse answer, then started talking. "Harcourt says Hebert was definitely the one who pulled the alarm and ran for it. I'm at the maintenance room where Veder said he needed to go, but he's not here, and neither is Laborn."
"Fuck. You think Laborn's in it with them?"
Victor grimaced. "I … can't really see it? Unless this is part of a really big sting of some sort? Don't forget, he actually got cut saving their stuff. That's really going above and beyond."
"Has anyone tried calling Laborn's phone? Or his radio? He is wearing a radio, right?"
"No, not yet." Peering into the maintenance room, he spotted a two-way radio of the same type the security guards used. "But I can do both, right now."
"Do it, and get back to me."
<><>
Tracey Grimshaw
There were no speakers in or around the room Tracey was imprisoned in (wherever that was), but she heard the echoes of the echoes of the sirens going off. The sound was unmistakeable, and she sat up from where she'd been huddled miserably in the corner.
Oh, god, there's a fire.
What do I do?
Are they going to let me out?
What if they don't?
Her mistake, she'd long since decided, had been in not picking up the nuance of Ms Harcourt's question: "Have you told anyone else about this?" Like an idiot, she'd said no. The punch that floored her hadn't been particularly expert, but it was totally unexpected.
She'd gone to Ms Harcourt in the first place because there had been no mention of the woman in any of the information she'd gone through. Ms Harcourt herself was staunchly apolitical, espousing no particular views or even strong convictions, except for her loyalty to Medhall. The other thing Ms Harcourt had said to her, while they were struggling over the possession of her phone, was telling: "I'm not going to let you tear Medhall down."
So no, she strongly suspected that they weren't going to just let her out. The locked room she was in didn't appear particularly flammable—she'd broken a couple of nails trying to pry the door open, and the walls were extremely solid, even when she kicked them—but death from smoke inhalation was definitely a thing.
She'd once read that staying low was best for smoke, so she stretched out on the floor, trying to be careful with her injured arm. It had begun to knit, but they'd taken the cast off (she hadn't had a choice in the matter) shortly after being shoved into the room. She wasn't quite sure why; maybe they thought she could bash her way out with it?
Either way, she wasn't getting out of this room any time soon, but that wasn't even the worst bit.
The worst bit was that Taylor was still working for them. With the girl's irrepressible curiosity, she would sooner or later stumble on some other clue as to the company's maleficent origins.
Tracey knew that she wasn't likely to get out of this situation alive, but hopefully Taylor would be smarter than her, and take the evidence directly to the authorities.
Bring the bastards down, Taylor. Avenge me.
<><>
Medhall Building Maintenance Spaces
Greg
"Laborn, are you there? Come in, Laborn. Report location."
Greg jumped as the voice suddenly emanated from Brian's radio. "Jeez!" he exclaimed. "Uh, you aren't going to answer that, are you?"
Brian frowned. "I don't actually recognise that voice. It's not Bradley, and it's not Joe. Whoever it is doesn't belong on the radio net. There's something weird going on here."
"So you believe me?" Greg felt an upswelling of hope. Holy shit, I actually got it right!
"Let's just say, I'm less inclined to disbelieve you." Brian pointed his flashlight along the passage they'd been going down, and brushed a hanging spiderweb out of the way. "Still this way?"
"Just along a little bit, then up a ladder. Taylor's two floors up."
Brian shook his head. "I will never understand how you keep it all straight in your head."
Greg chuckled hollowly. "It's only a bit more complicated than Donkey Kong. Gaming nerd for the win."
At that moment, Brian's phone rang. He swapped his flashlight to his left hand while he pulled the phone out, and looked at the number on the display. Again, he frowned.
"Who is it?" asked Greg, while the phone kept ringing.
"Not anybody I know." Brian abruptly declined the call. "Someone really wants to know where we are, and they're not Medhall security."
"Ferguson. It must be." Greg felt his heart rate increasing. This was real. It was really real.
"Someone, anyway. Maybe the same people who set off the fire alarm, to get all the witnesses out of the way." Brian accessed another number in his phone and held it to his ear.
"Who are you calling?"
Brian glared at the phone. "Well, I'm trying to call friends, but the call's not going through. They must be blocking it somehow." He gestured with the flashlight and stuffed the phone away. "Just along here, then up a ladder? I'm starting to think we need to get to Taylor now."
Greg followed behind Brian as he hustled along, but didn't voice his thoughts. Well, duh.
<><>
Taylor
The last of the staff had poured along the corridor in the direction of the fire stairs, but I knew better than to move right away. They would be searching for me; when they didn't find me in the outgoing crowds, they'd come back up to where Ms Harcourt had thought I'd run to, and start going through the place with a fine tooth comb. Eventually they'd work back to where I actually was, and I would be found.
Unless Greg got to me first. I had to have faith that he would.
But until then, there was nothing to say I couldn't make it harder for them to find me. As it was, I knew I couldn't be seen by the security camera in the corridor unless I moved out from behind the desk, but if someone went back through the camera files, they would spot that I'd last been seen in that area, and direct people to that location. I'd be caught like a rat in a trap.
Which meant I'd have to be extra sneaky. Fortunately, Tracey once more came to the rescue.
While I'd been working with her, she'd occasionally had to go off and assist Ms Harcourt with meetings with the higher-ups. When prepping for one such meeting, she'd had me fetch a triple-A battery from the supply closet, because her laser pointer was starting to get a little weak. So I knew she had one; more to the point, I knew (from Dad talking about it) that shining a laser pointer into the lens of a security camera was a big no-no, because it caused them to turn away or shut down to avoid damage. Not because laser pointers could actually damage them, but because Tinkers were a thing, and so were hand-held lasers that could scorch plastic from twenty yards.
My immediate thought was that I could use it to mess with the security cameras so they'd never see me, but it didn't take me long to figure out the flaw in that plan. Wherever the cameras were acting up, that was where they would look for me. Which required a little deeper thought into my strategy.
Sliding open the appropriate drawer without getting up from behind the desk wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but I managed it. Then I had the fun job of sorting through the desk's contents by touch alone, while keeping an ear out for approaching footsteps.
It took three false identifications, and far too long, before my fingers closed around the pointer. Time, already of the essence, was now downright vital. I scrambled out from under the desk, backpack over one shoulder.
Ducking out into the corridor, I pointed the laser at the camera and prayed that Dad hadn't been exaggerating. After a few seconds of dosing it with the beam, I ran down the corridor to the next camera and did the same, then the next one after that as well. Then I ran back the other way, my bare feet slapping against the vinyl flooring in a way that felt truly weird, and hit the next two cameras in that direction.
That would give them a whole bunch of places to search, not just the office space I'd been hiding in. Anything that slowed them down was just fine with me. But I still had to hide; simply standing out in the open did me no good at all.
I went into the kitchenette and yanked the fridge door open. My initial plan had been to empty out the contents and hide them (somewhere), then squeeze into the space thus vacated. But then I heard distant footsteps coming. There were too many shelves in there to pull out and hide without making it obvious where I was, so I took the next best option.
Reaching back, I flicked off the light switch, then opened my backpack and hauled out my hoodie and jeans. I'd never gotten into a compromising position with Greg where I might need to get my clothing back on in a hurry (he was too much of a gentleman for that) but I could've broken records with how fast I got my jeans and hoodie on this time.
There was just enough room in the fridge to shove my backpack onto one of the shelves, then I closed it and scrambled up onto the bench. As the footsteps came closer, I climbed on top of the fridge itself, pressing back into the niche it occupied. The ceiling was maybe two feet above the top of the fridge so I was more or less in a foetal position, but if they didn't give the kitchenette area more than a cursory glance, I might escape notice, at least for a little while. At least, that was the plan.
"Fucking laser pointers," I heard Bradley growl. "I'll give Taylor that much, she's inventive as fuck."
"Sounds like you actually admire her." That was a guy's voice that I didn't know. "That's not like you."
"Well, she has done a lot for this company." I recognised Mr Grayson's voice. "So how about we don't go lethal straight away? She deserves the chance to see the light."
"She knows what she's seen." Ms Harcourt's tone was as uncompromising as ever. "The fact that she's trying to escape tells us everything we need to know."
"All she knows is that when Tracey took it to you, you beat her up," Mr Grayson reminded her. By now, it sounded like they were standing almost directly outside the kitchenette, and I was barely breathing. "That's bound to give anyone a prejudiced point of view. And look at yourself. You didn't need any persuading at all."
"She hasn't put the years into this company that I have," Ms Harcourt retorted. "I don't care about your politics or your ideology. I care about Medhall. And I have it on good authority that she hates and despises white supremacy. So your chances of legitimately bringing her around are slim to zero. Whereas if she pretends to come around, then starts working against you …" She let the statement trail off.
"We're wasting time." That was Bradley. "Everyone, spread out, check all the offices and other rooms where she coulda hidden. And keep an eye out for Veder and Laborn. They're loose in the building somewhere too."
"It never fails." It was the same stranger's voice. "Once you bring one of them on board, everything goes to hell."
"What, interns or blacks?" asked Mr Grayson in a joking tone. "Come on, Lars, let's look down this way. Melody, you check the restrooms."
"Because I'm a chick?" I'd wondered why Melody didn't talk much. Belying her name, her voice had a fifty-packs-a-day rasp.
"No," snapped Bradley. "Because you're the lightest of us and if she's done something tricky like hide in the ceiling panels, you're the only one who can get up there."
I had actually considered hiding in the drop ceiling, but now I was glad I hadn't. Besides, I was fairly sure I just wasn't athletic enough to get up there.
Out of the corner of my eye—I wasn't moving any part of my body that I didn't have to—I saw Melody and Bradley moving off down the corridor. Ms Harcourt leaned into the kitchenette and gave it a cursory glance, then sniffed dismissively and went out of sight again. I tried to relax the full-body clench I'd just gone into, and blessed the impulse I'd had to turn the light off. Combined with my lack of movement and the darker clothing, the shadow in the niche had given me just enough concealment that she hadn't spotted me.
Over the crashing and banging of her searching Tracey's office—there were cupboards and cabinets that could theoretically have contained me, if I'd also been a professional contortionist—I heard the most welcome noise in the world; that of a door lock carefully opening. "Greg?" I whispered. "Be careful. Ms Harcourt's right there."
Thankfully, he was totally on the ball. "Taylor?" His whisper was no louder than mine. "What's going on?"
At that moment, I had an epiphany. I knew what Tracey's text to Greg had been, before autocorrupt had had its way with her message. She'd been trying to say, 'MH is E88', but the spaces hadn't come through. "Medhall is Empire Eighty-Eight," I whispered as I tried to climb down off the fridge.
"What?" That was Greg, apparently trying to process my words.
"What?" And that was a deeper voice, one I knew, but hadn't expected. What's Brian doing here?
Right then, I slipped; I caught myself before I fell all the way, but my feet hit the floor with an audible thud. "I'll tell you later," I hissed as I yanked the fridge door open to retrieve my backpack. "We have to get out of here."
"You're going nowhere," Ms Harcourt proclaimed as she stormed across the corridor, her eyes alight with righteous rage. "You have no idea how much trouble you've caused—"
As she came at me, she swung a punch. I hadn't been specifically taught how to deal with punches yet, but the little training I'd had let me slip it aside all the same. As part of the same move, I grabbed her arm, braced myself, and heaved. She wasn't light, but her momentum did all the work; over she went, to land on her back in the middle of the kitchenette. For a few seconds, I stood there, staring, unable to believe what I'd done.
I'd just thrown Ms Harcourt.
I'd just thrown Ms Harcourt.
The current situation notwithstanding, it was like I'd just toppled the Forsberg Gallery or punched out Alexandria; utterly unbelievable.
"Taylor!" Greg opened the maintenance door all the way and grabbed my arm. "Get in here!"
That snapped me out of the state of shock, and I followed him back into the maintenance space. As he pulled the door shut, I stared at the third member of our little party. "Brian? What are you doing here?"
"Tell you later," Greg said, facing up to me. "Who else is out there?"
I took a deep breath. Bradley, Melody, Mr Grayson, some other guy … "Hookwolf, Cricket, Victor, and someone called Lars."
"They're here!" I heard Ms Harcourt bellow from outside the maintenance door. "They're in the walls!"
I'd never actually seen a black guy go pale before. "We have to go," Brian urged. "Greg, which way?"
"Follow me!" Grabbing Brian's flashlight on the way past, Greg hurried off down the dark, web-strewn passageway.
I followed along; as claustrophobic and musty as it was—generations of rats and bugs must have died in those passages—it was still preferable to what was outside.
<><>
Hookwolf
"They're here! They're in the walls!"
Brad looked around at the Harcourt woman's shout, frowning. What, really? Coming out of the office he'd been searching, he ran back down the corridor. Cricket popped out of the restrooms as he came past, and fell into step with him. As they came up to the kitchenette area, he saw Victor and Stormtiger coming the other way.
"What the fuck?" demanded Stormtiger. "What do you mean, 'they're in the walls'?"
"I mean, they went into that door there!" Harcourt snapped, climbing painfully to her feet. "The girl was right here, in this kitchen area, and you all missed her. I heard her talking to her confederates and went to apprehend her, but she threw me to the ground and got away!"
It was a serious situation, but Brad couldn't help catching Cricket's eye. They both snickered out loud as Brad clenched his fist and grew a whole lot of blades from it. Holy shit, the kid actually learned something! Drawing back his fist, he smashed it into the small door, ripping out the section around the lock. Without anything to hold it closed, it swung inward.
He was still chuckling at the mental image of Taylor pulling off a shoulder throw against Harcourt as he headed into the passageway. On another level altogether, he was wondering what had to be done about her 'confederates'. These had to be Veder and Laborn, unless there were two other people wandering around inside the building that he didn't know about. Were they in it with her, or just going along for the ride?
It wouldn't matter in the long run, Brad knew. Max was very much a fan of zero loose ends. It was how Medhall had survived for so long. He'd hunt these three down, then persuade Grimshaw to talk about who she'd sent her message to, and then they'd be able to deal with it once and for all.
It was a pity about Hebert; she was sharp as a tack, and a nice kid on top of that. But Medhall came first.
He hustled along the passageway until he realised the only light was coming in from behind him, so he pulled out his phone and activated the light on it. Moving on, he quickly came to the first junction; there was a ladder and a passage heading off at right angles. He paused and listened intently, but all he could hear were his idiot teammates bumbling up behind him.
"Will you assholes keep the noise down?" he demanded. "I'm trying to figure out which way they went!"
Stormtiger pushed forward past Cricket, ignoring her poisonous glare, and sniffed. Brad felt the air shifting around him. "Up that way," the aerokinetic said, pointing at the ladder.
"Why would they go up?" asked Victor. "Surely they'd want to go down."
"The smell of shit-scared teenagers goes up the damn ladder," Stormtiger stated flatly.
"Okay, you're the bird dog." Hookwolf passed the phone over to him. "Lead the way."
"Fuck you." But Stormtiger started climbing the ladder anyway. "When I catch that asshole Laborn," he muttered, "I am gonna rip his fuckin' guts out."
Not if I get to him first.
<><>
Taylor
"Can we stop a minute? My feet are killing me." I hated to ask, but the rough metal of the ladder rungs and the equally rough concrete of the passageways made me feel like I was dancing on broken glass.
Greg stopped, of course, and aimed the flashlight down at my feet. "You're barefoot. Why are you barefoot?"
"Took my shoes off to move quietly," I said. "Lend me a shoulder?"
"Anytime." He moved up next to me and I gratefully leaned on him while I reached into my backpack for my sneakers. I didn't think we had time for socks, but I could definitely deal with that better than bare feet.
"Thanks," I said as I tugged on the first sneaker, then changed feet. "You guys were a lifesaver, showing up when you did."
"Yeah, well—" Greg began, before Brian grabbed the flashlight and turned it off with a 'Shh!'.
I stopped moving and held my breath to listen. After a few seconds, my eyes adjusted enough to detect a flickering light down the passageway we'd just come along, getting stronger. Also, I was pretty sure I could hear voices. My eyes opened wide in the darkness, and I jammed the shoe on my foot.
"Go!" hissed Brian.
"Going!" Greg agreed, and we hurried off.
It wasn't quite a labyrinth, but there were occasional branchings. We kept moving, going up and down ladders and around corners at a speed that soon had me panting for breath. At one point, Greg let us out into a ladies' restroom, then took us out into the corridor—I spiked the security cameras that I could see—and around the corner to another maintenance door. After going down two floors from that, we stopped to rest.
I was covered in sweat, not least from the fact that I was wearing two layers of clothing, but also because of the constant exertion. My breath was hurting in my lungs, and my heart rate was somewhere up around 'hummingbird'.
"Taylor, you okay?" Greg was in better shape, but that was probably because he'd been doing this sort of thing on a daily basis. Brian didn't seem to be sweating at all, the big cheat.
"Yeah … yeah …" I gasped. "Just … need to … catch my … breath."
And then we heard it. The sound of a maintenance door opening, two floors above. I even picked out Bradley's voice, but not what he was saying.
"How can they keep following us?" I whimpered, staggering to my feet. "How do they know where we are?"
"I think I know," Brian said grimly. "The one you don't know, Lars, he must be Stormtiger. A friend of mine once told me he can follow a scent by concentrating the air into his sinuses."
We kept moving. Greg led the way, being the only one at all familiar with the hidden spaces of the building, and Brian did his best to help me along. But the noise behind, and the flashing light, got closer and closer.
And then Greg left us to race up ahead. Brian was almost carrying me by now, although I was staggering along with zero gas in the tank. "Sorry," I whispered. "For getting you into this."
"Not your fault," he replied. "I made my choices."
As we got closer, I heard Greg open a maintenance door. I wanted to protest that ducking out through the corridors didn't actually gain us any distance, and probably let them catch up with us. But then he came back through the door and pulled it shut behind him. "Keep going," he urged, handing Brian the flashlight. "We need to be out of sight."
Brian didn't query him, though I was worried. Surely he wasn't going to try to hold them off on his own? Even Brian couldn't do that, and I'd seen him fight.
Greg fell in behind us, and I heard the ssst ssst ssst ssst from a spray bottle. An acrid tang stung my nose, and I stifled a sneeze. Brian picked me up and carried me, jogging onward, attempting to outrace the rolling cloud of vapour that Greg was generating. Even in the middle of it, he was still adding to it, spraying two bottles at once for all he was worth.
Then I heard the bottles clatter to the floor and he caught up with us. In a flash of light, I saw his eyes were red and streaming. "Ladder," he wheezed. "Down."
I could climb down a ladder; it was about all I could climb, right then. Brian went down first, then I half-climbed, half-fell down. He caught me at the bottom. Greg came down without using the rungs, hands and feet on the outside of the ladder. I felt jealous that he could pull off a cool move like that.
We staggered around a corner, then Greg waved for the flashlight to be turned off and we collapsed on the floor. Greg and I were both trying to die quietly, while Brian was just muffling his coughs. I was still terrified that they'd hear us from an entire floor away, right up until I heard the hacking, choking coughs that emanated from above.
"Fuck!" That was Bradley … Hookwolf. "His fuckin' sinuses are bleeding! What the fuck?"
"Veder sprayed cleaning products in the air," Mr Grayson (Victor, my brain insisted) said. "Somehow he knew how Lars' power works."
Someone—hopefully Stormtiger—let out another barrage of racking coughs. It honestly sounded like he was doing his best to part company with both lungs at once. We could live in hope.
"Yeah, you're right." Hookwolf managed to sound pissed and admiring all at once. "It's definitely something she'd do."
"So what do we do?" asked Victor. "We can't just leave him here. He might actually die."
"No, that's true." Hookwolf seemed to come to a decision. "Get him to Othala. We'll keep looking. Tell Max to send everyone home. Seal the building. Put out the word that a couple of interns and a security guard pulled the alarm and vandalised the place."
"Copy that." I heard the maintenance door open. "Come on, Lars. Let's get you out of here."
"We have to keep moving," Brian murmured. "They might catch up with us by accident."
I clenched my teeth to avoid groaning as I got to my feet yet again. Even with that brief respite, I felt as though my leg muscles had congealed into solid concrete. But I knew he was right. Just Hookwolf on his own could murder all of us.
"Can we just call the cops?" I asked in a whisper. "Even if they arrest us, we'll be alive."
Greg shook his head. "Brian tried calling someone. The call was blocked."
"Even if we got through, the Empire's got people in the BBPD," Brian said. "And the PRT. But the PRT wouldn't touch this anyway."
"Yeah," I said. "Because we're not capes. Damn it."
"We've got to lie low until we can get our strength back," Brian advised. "Not in the public spaces. Security will be sweeping those areas. And somewhere Stormtiger can't track us to, once he gets his sinuses back. Any ideas?"
Greg brightened. "I think I might know a place."
<><>
Kaiser
"What the fuck is going on in there?" demanded Max, though he had to keep his voice to a calm tone. It was important to maintain the unflappable reputation. "How is it that you can't capture one overly inquisitive intern in our own goddamn building?"
"Two, plus Laborn," Victor reported, his voice exhibiting the warbling overtone of a Medhall phone. "They're extremely resourceful. Veder knows his way around the interior spaces, and he's already incapacitated Lars."
"How the fuck—no, save it, I don't want to know." Max shook his head. "Just make sure they can't get out, and I'll keep the Faraday cage running on the building, and make sure the reporters go away happy."
"You do that."
The phone call ended. Max growled in his throat as he put the phone away, then pasted a smile on his face as he went to speak to the reporters who had shown up.
The Empire Eighty-Eight would win. It was just a matter of time.
<><>
Greg
Taylor peered down the long ladder. "I'm not sure I can climb down that. How far down does it go?"
"Not sure." Greg grimaced. He hadn't factored in Taylor's exhaustion. "Never been to the bottom. I found it one day, but nobody's ever talked about it."
"I can carry you down," offered Brian. "It'll be uncomfortable, but …"
"I guess?" Taylor looked at Greg. "What's this ladder for, anyway?"
"Oh, there's an elevator shaft just on the other side of that wall." Greg gestured at a maintenance door set in the wall. "We need access that doesn't actually involve climbing down the shaft itself. So, a ladder."
Brian sighed. "Well, there's only one way to do this. Taylor, do you feel up to hanging on to my back?"
Taylor didn't look too certain, but she nodded. "Going to have to, aren't I?" Then she paused. "Just a second. Turn your backs, guys."
Greg immediately averted his gaze, and saw that Brian had too. Behind them, they heard the rustling of cloth.
"Okay, you can turn around now."
When he looked, Greg saw that Taylor had removed her hoodie and jeans, and was stuffing them into her backpack. Her office clothing was sadly creased, but it had to be lighter than what she'd been wearing before.
Brian nodded approvingly. "Okay, yeah, that's better. You must've been boiling in that."
She rolled her eyes. "Oh, you have no idea. Let's do this thing."
The climb down into darkness felt interminable. Greg went first, and paused every dozen rungs to shine the flashlight downward, but there was always more ladder. He began to wonder just how many floors the Medhall building had. Surely it wasn't this tall.
Eventually, they reached the bottom of the ladder shaft. There were two maintenance doors leading out; one into the elevator shaft that he already knew about, and one that he had no idea of. He was just peering at the second one when Brian arrived at the bottom, and let Taylor down onto her feet.
"Jesus," she muttered, shaking her hands out. "Now I know what they mean by 'hanging on for dear life'."
"What's through there?" asked Brian pragmatically, pointing at the second maintenance door.
"No clue." Greg glanced at the other two, and turned the handle. It opened, and he pushed it out a little way. Light spilled in; outside was a basic concrete corridor.
There were no shouts of alarm, so he cautiously stepped out, blinking in the glare of fluorescent lighting. Taylor and then Brian followed him out, peering around. The walls were industrial off-yellow, and the floor was raw concrete.
"What is this place?" asked Taylor, her voice hushed.
"I have no fucking idea." Brian shook his head. "And I've been given the full tour, from Max Anders' office all the way to the basement storage. Greg?"
Greg shook his head. "Don't look at me. I've never seen this place before either. And I thought I knew the building."
Taylor drew a deep breath. "Well, we either stand here and wait for them to find us, or we go and see if we can find something useful. Like an exit. Right?"
Greg glanced at Brian, and they traded shrugs. "Makes sense," Greg allowed.
"Totally," agreed Brian.
They moved off, Brian in the lead by mutual agreement. Taylor was still unsteady on her feet, but she was moving better now.
"Hey," a voice said from just around the next corner, "did you hear something?"
"Yeah, I did," said someone else. "Back me up while I check it out."
There was absolutely zero cover in the corridor, and Greg knew damn well Taylor couldn't run. It appeared Brian knew that too, because he was running forward, toward the corner. It was amazing how quietly someone his size could move when he had to.
The first thing they saw around the corner was a rifle barrel, and then a face. The eyes widened, just as Brian reached out and grabbed the guy. There was just enough time for the guy to yell in surprise, and for the rifle to go off, before Brian headbutted him savagely.
Greg had no idea where the bullet went to, but the rifle's report was loud enough to deafen him. And then the other guard appeared, pointing his rifle at them. He was far enough back that Brian couldn't just grab him, and he seemed to be yelling something into a radio.
And that was when Brian put out his hands and blackness poured from them, enveloping the second guard in a heartbeat. Intuiting what was going to happen next, Greg pulled Taylor to the ground, covering her with his body. There was a muffled shot, but it didn't seem to come near either one of them. A moment later, the blackness started dissipating, revealing Brian standing over the recumbent body of the second guard.
"What the hell?" asked Greg, rolling off Taylor and getting to his feet. "You're … a cape?"
"Well, duh, he's a cape," Taylor snarked as she used the wall to help herself get up. "What I want to know is, what are these two jerks stuck down here guarding with rifles while all hell's breaking out upstairs?"
Greg immediately knew what she was doing. Yes, Brian being a cape had to be addressed at some point. He even had a suspicion of who Brian really was. But right now it wasn't important.
Between them, Brian and Greg secured the guards, then checked them for keys. One of the guys had one that didn't seem to be the usual house key/car key setup. There was only one door along that part of the corridor, and Taylor went to it.
Inserting the key, she turned the lock and opened the door. Then she stared into the room, her jaw dropping.
"Tracey?"
End of Part Nineteen
Last edited:
macdjord
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Isn't she mute and using an electrolarynx? Or is Taylor just misidentifying 'mechanical' as 'raspy'?
Sto Odin
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At least I was braced for a tense chapter and another cliffhanger, this time. And their getting to Tracey doesn't bend probability too much, though I don't see that gets them closer to escape.
Brian has got to be wondering how he went from a nice normal day (it's a cute detail that he thinks his co-workers are starting to warm up to him) to life or death pursuit by the whole E88.
Brian has got to be wondering how he went from a nice normal day (it's a cute detail that he thinks his co-workers are starting to warm up to him) to life or death pursuit by the whole E88.
Ack
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Basically, this.
Crazael
Could be wittier.
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I mean, they do tend to sound pretty raspy. At least that's my experience with them.
macdjord
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TIL electrolarynxes are a real thing and not a minor bit of mass-produced Tinker-inspired technology.
Crazael
Could be wittier.
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I remember seeing them in anti-smoking ads as a kid.
NavigatorNobilis
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Faking the need for an electrolarynx would also be a pretty good way to basically use a voice changer in your cape persona without being obvious about it, while also laying a false trail as to your actual identity.
Random thoughts aside, this is getting really exciting!
Lictre
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Considering their current position, they could get their hands on somebody's vehicle, possibly even Max's personal escape car. I suspect he has one that would be accessible via some escape route from his office. It's probably very anonymous and unremarkable in appearance, with some minor rust spots and maybe some graffiti, windows just barely within legal limits for tinting, and with substantial ballistic protection built into just about every surface, including the floor and roof panels. I'd think that a service truck for a no-longer-in-business plumbing business would be a very good option.
I figure that Max would have had the vehicle stolen, then killed the thieves after it was delivered to wherever he had do work on it to upgrade its defenses, engine and drive-train. Then had it delivered by another soon-to-be-dead agent. After that, periodically going to run the engine and exercise the drive-train on the vehicle equivalent of a treadmill would be pretty trivial, and keep the vehicle ready for use at need.
A small payment to Accord to make the plans to keep it unnoticed would explain how the escape vehicle was never noticed. Accord would only know that a plan was commissioned from him, whether or not it was executed, he wouldn't be able to tell, and it wouldn't be his problem.
SlickRCBD
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I wonder If any of them are going to get job offers from the PRT after bringing down the E88 as interns.
It would be funny if Brian gets an offer for a job as a PRT trooper, or more likely a scholarship offer to get an associates in law enforcement so he can become a trooper.
Taylor on the other hand would probably be better off as an auditor for the S.E.C. or possibly D.E.A. Although I'm sure every government agency has the type of auditors Taylor was working as to catch internal stuff, so she might get such an offer too in the hopes she would find the moles in the PRT.
Part Twenty: All For One
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Taylor Hebert, Medhall Intern
Part Twenty: All For One
[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Tracey Grimshaw
The voices outside the cell were barely audible to Tracey, but the single shot startled her badly. What's going on?
And then, after a few moments, she heard a key rattling in the door lock. Sitting up from her slumped position on the cold concrete floor, she prepared to plead for her life with whoever opened the door. Pride was all well and good, but you couldn't be proud if you were dead.
The door opened, and the last person Tracey hoped or expected to see looked into the room. "Tracey?"
"Taylor?" Her one-time intern looked terrible. Taylor was filthy, her normally immaculate hair was downright bedraggled, her Beautiful Me outfit was stained and creased, and her eyes looked haunted. Tracey's heart plummeted toward the centre of the earth. "Oh, no. They got you too?"
"No. No, no, no." Taylor limped into the room. She had grazes on one knee and both elbows, but there was a smile of pure joy on her face as she knelt down beside Tracey. "Brian and Greg got me out just in time. How are you alive? They said you crashed your car, but I knew that couldn't be true, so I thought Mr Ferguson had gotten to you. Then I saw what was on the computer, and I thought they'd killed you for knowing too much."
She hugged Tracey then, dispelling any notion that this might be a particularly vivid hallucination. Tracey hugged her back, holding her close. "No, they've been trying to find out who I sent the text to. How did you find me, anyway?"
"By sheer accident." Taylor stood up and helped Tracey to her feet. "We're running from Hookwolf and the others, and Greg's escape plan led us here. Brian beat up the guards, then I got curious about what they were guarding. Can you walk?"
Despite the dire circumstances, Tracey had to chuckle. Taylor getting curious about something and making a totally serendipitous discovery was totally on-brand for her. "I think so, but I haven't had anything to eat or drink since … how long's it been? They never switch off the light in here." She would've broken it if she'd been able to reach it, or had anything to break it with. Instead, she'd had to cover her eyes with her arm to get away from the endless glare.
"It's Wednesday afternoon, a bit after three." They got to the door, which Greg helpfully held open for them. "Greg, do you have anything in your backpack for Tracey to eat or drink?"
God, forty-eight hours. No wonder my stomach feels like a wrung-out sock. Tracey looked on as Greg produced a water-bottle and a protein bar out of his backpack. "Oh, thank you. You're a total lifesaver."
"We have to move," said Brian. Tracey had seen the big guy on the front desk a few times, but this was the first time she'd learned his name. "They will be looking for us, and we need to find a way out before they find us."
"I thought Mr Grayson, I mean Victor, was still in a wheelchair," Greg said as they started hustling down the corridor, or at least moving as fast as Tracey could totter.
Taylor was assisting her, which was a great help, as were the water and protein bar she was ingesting as fast as her body would allow her to. She could almost feel the energy flowing back into her body. Or perhaps that was adrenaline.
"Othala," Brian stated flatly. "When this all kicked off, he probably asked her to finish up the healing in one hit. Chances are, they've been stringing it out to make it look natural."
"Yeah, that makes sense," agreed Taylor. "Something else I'm wondering, though. Why didn't we grab the guards' guns? At least give us a fighting chance if they catch up with us. Or am I missing something?"
"Ho ho ho, now I have a machine gun?" Greg added.
Brian shook his head. "Not going to happen. Stallone's character in that movie was a cop. He was trained in using firearms. I know which end bullets come out of, and that's about it. We don't know the safe way to handle them, and we don't know how to use them properly. Maybe with an hour or two to look them over carefully, we could chance it, but we don't have an hour."
A four-way junction lay up ahead, and he gestured everyone to stay back while he crept up to the corner. Somehow, with a wave of his hand, he created a puff of black smoke, which he stuck his head into briefly before it dissipated again.
"What just happened?" Tracey asked, looking to Taylor for an explanation.
"Brian's a cape," Taylor said quietly. "Long story. All clear?" she asked, raising her voice a little.
"All clear." Brian gestured them forward. "I think there's an elevator down along the left corridor."
"We've just come around three sides of a square," Greg agreed. "That's probably the same elevator that the ladder came down beside." As everyone looked at him, he shrugged. "I counted my paces."
"Fair." Brian pulled out his swipe card. "Now, does anyone think we've used up all our luck so far, or should I try to see if my card still works to get us up to lobby level so we can bust out of here?"
Taylor
I shook my head. "They control the elevators. We might not get dropped fifty feet into the sub-basement, but they could totally open the doors right where Hookwolf and Cricket are waiting for us." In my mind, I still had trouble envisaging the rough-hewn but helpful Bradley as Hookwolf, but somehow it was a lot easier to see Melody as Cricket. Probably because I'd associated with him more than her, and because she'd never really been nice to me.
And now they were hunting us with murder in mind. It was something I had to keep reminding myself of, which was why I was calling them by their villain names instead of their civilian identities. The villains weren't my friends.
I was starting to realise they never had been. They'd only protected me because I was the clever intern who found the moles and saved them money, not because they liked Taylor Hebert the person. Of course I was valuable to them, because I protected their bottom line … until I didn't. And then I was just a liability.
"Maybe we could risk it?" Tracey's tone was both tired and wistful. "I'm sick of this place. I just want to get out."
Greg shook his head. "No, Taylor's right. The moment we ping that elevator, they'll know … shit. Shit, shit, shit."
By this point, we were close enough to see the elevator floor display, which was why Greg had started swearing. Because the display was active, and the number was counting downward. And not one of us was optimistic enough to assume they weren't coming for us.
Greg
"Fuck it. "Brian slapped his access card and keyring into Greg's hand. "Everyone, back against the wall beside the elevator. Taylor, hold hands with Greg. Tracey, hold hands with Taylor. I'm going to try to separate Stormtiger from the rest and disable him, then get back to you. If I can't, I'll kick that maintenance door in and go up the ladder. Either way, thirty seconds, you get in that elevator and get the hell out. Understand me?"
Even as Brian gave his rapid-fire instructions, he was pouring huge volumes of that same inky black smoke from his free hand, filling up the corridors. Greg could see the stress on his face, the knowledge that his lone stand, even aided by his powers, would most likely see him dead or seriously injured. "I could stay," he offered tentatively.
Brian's large hand clamped on his shoulder and pushed him back against the wall. "Appreciate the offer, man, but nobody can see in my darkness but me. I've got to do this on my own. But if anything happens, I've got a sister. Take care of her for me."
The inky wall was already starting to close in, as Brian's cape power obscured the overhead lights. Greg clasped his wrist briefly. "We'll bring them down. All of them." For you, he meant. Your sacrifice won't be in vain.
Brian's eyes searched his face for a moment, then he nodded. "Yeah." Then the darkness became complete. Greg's questing hand found Taylor's and her fingers squeezed his. He squeezed back.
The vibration of the wall told him the elevator had reached the floor they were on, and he started the mental countdown. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi …
Brian
I've got one chance to get this right. Brian braced himself in front of the elevator doors, standing a little off to the side in case someone blindly threw or shot something straight ahead. They didn't know he was a cape yet, so with anything resembling luck, he might be able to take them by surprise and remove Stormtiger from the equation.
He'd never directly fought any of the Empire capes before, but he knew damn well that trying to beat up Hookwolf was a losing proposition, especially after he popped armour and blades all over his body. When facing an opponent that more closely resembled a combine harvester, discretion was by far the better part of valour. Which also meant that he couldn't afford to get surrounded by the others and herded into Hookwolf's arms.
He pulled out his baton and flicked it to its full length, wishing heartily that they'd gotten around to putting him through the training courses for tasers or mace. Knowing what he did now, he was less than surprised that they'd been dragging their heels on the matter. But given the current situation, the less time spent wishing and the more time spent doing was probably a good idea. At the very last second, as the number panel displayed SB2, he pulled off his socks and shoes, then picked up a shoe.
The elevator doors opened. If Brian had needed any proof that Taylor had been telling the truth about the Empire Eighty-Eight running Medhall, he now had it. Stepping forward out of the elevator, hands held out in front of him, was Hookwolf. The villain even had his trademark metal mask on.
Behind him was Stormtiger, flanked by Cricket; last out were Victor and Kaiser himself. Brian breathed as quietly as he could, aware that Stormtiger would probably smell him (and the others) as soon as he started using his powers. Victor was armed with a pistol held low against his leg, not that it would do him any good until he could see something. Brian didn't intend to give him the chance.
"What the hell?" asked Hookwolf. "What happened to the lights?"
"Fuck," Stormtiger replied. "Cape. Gotta be. Go careful."
Tossing the shoe off to the left, Brian sidestepped quietly to the right in his bare feet. These were less than optimum in a combat situation, but he wanted to be silent as possible. The ruse was almost certainly older than civilisation, but it was still a good one; as muffled as it was, the sound of the shoe hitting concrete still turned all four heads.
"You hear that?" That was Hookwolf.
"Yes," agreed Kaiser.
Brian moved in as silently as he could, his feet skimming over the concrete. Hookwolf, Victor and Kaiser were all going in the wrong direction. All he needed was for Cricket to step away from Stormtiger and he'd be able to incapacitate both of them in short order. It was easy, even against skilled opponents. Very few people practised blindfolded against sighted foes, after all.
The burst of disorientation took him by surprise and nearly knocked him off his feet. He staggered, staring with disbelief as Cricket moved directly toward him. Even as he tried to evade and block her incoming blow, she sent him reeling again with what he belatedly realised was a sonic attack to his inner ears.
A snap-kick sent the baton spinning from his hand, then a backfist to the jaw rattled his cage and loosened teeth. He was still up, but disoriented, and she hit harder than any woman he'd ever gone up against. Before he could do more than put a basic guard together, she buried her heel in his solar plexus. The breath went out of his lungs in a painful whoosh and he began to involuntarily double over, only to meet her knee coming the other direction at speed.
He straightened up from the impact, but his consciousness was already flickering around the edges. The full-blooded kick to his sternum arrived like a battering ram and drove what little air he'd gotten back into his lungs straight out again. He vaguely felt his feet leave the floor before he crashed down on his back.
His last thought before real darkness closed in on him was, I'm sorry, Aisha …
Taylor
I couldn't see a thing; all I knew was that Greg was holding my right hand and Tracey my left. Noises were happening in the darkness right in front of me, and I was trying to silently count seconds in my head, but I didn't know if I was doing it right, or if Brian was even okay. Despite me knowing that it wouldn't matter if my eyes were open or shut, I had them as wide as I could, just in case I might spot something that could be of use.
The first inkling I had that things were going badly—that is, even worse than they'd already been—was when Brian's darkness started to shred and fade away before my mental countdown had quite hit twenty seconds. Kaiser, Hookwolf and Victor were about twenty feet away, looking in the wrong direction, but Brian was down with Cricket standing over him, and Stormtiger was close by her. And both Cricket and Stormtiger were looking directly at us.
Tracey froze, her hand clenching painfully tight around mine. I wanted to move, but I had no idea which way to go. We couldn't run and we couldn't fight; with Brian down, we couldn't hide either.
Greg acted, hauling on my arm and bodily dragging Tracey and me to the lift. "Go-go-go!" he yelled, slapping Brian's swipe card into my hand and shoving us inside. I managed to make myself react, swiping the panel inside the elevator and blindly stabbing at the buttons with my fingers. But just as Greg started to jump back inside with us, metal-clawed fingers closed around his arm and he was hauled out again with a yelp.
Cricket stepped into the open door of the elevator and gave us what might have been a smile. "Hi," she rasped, every word an effort. "Didn't really think you'd get away, did you?"
I pushed Tracey to the back of the elevator and got myself between her and Cricket. "Don't you dare hurt her!" We were screwed, I knew we were screwed, but I couldn't help myself. Tracey had already been through enough. And maybe if she agreed to say nothing …
Even though I was looking for it, I barely spotted Cricket's shift in balance before her casual backhand bounced me off the side of the elevator and dropped me to the floor. "Never tell me what to do." Even through the ringing in my ears, I heard death in her tone.
My head was spinning, but I tried to get up anyway. Tracey was screaming somewhere above my head, then I was grabbed by the collar and dragged out of the elevator. Suddenly, the screaming stopped and I tried to focus, fearing the worst.
"We have here an unfortunate mess." As my head cleared, I recognised Mr Anders' voice, though with an extra edge and echo to it that I'd never heard before. My glasses had been knocked off in the elevator, but I was able to make him out, wearing his Kaiser armour, standing before us.
Of much more urgency to me was Cricket; she was holding me up against the wall with a very sharp-looking curved blade not very far away from my neck. The side of my face where she'd hit me throbbed and felt swollen, but that wasn't even remotely the worst of my problems right then.
I looked into her eyes, and there was nothing there. No warmth, no recognition of a fellow human being. Then and there, I knew that she was just waiting for the word to end my life, and she wouldn't even spare a second thought afterward.
From the corner of my eye, I could see that Tracey was alive, mainly because Victor was holding her up with a pistol barrel pressing up under her jaw. Beyond her, Greg was at Stormtiger's mercy. I may have been imagining things, but the blue-masked villain seemed bitter over the trick with the cleaning products. And finally, Brian was slumped on the floor with Hookwolf standing over him.
We were done, I could see that. There was no hope for escape, no hope for rescue. All that was standing between us and death at the hands of the Empire Eighty-Eight was whatever passed for mercy in Kaiser's mind.
I wasn't exactly optimistic on that count.
My stomach clenched as I realised that I was going to die here. Today. Now.
I don't want to! It was a despairing wail against the inevitable darkness.
"It doesn't have to be this big a mess." Victor didn't turn his head away from Tracey. "There's a possibility we can salvage something out of it."
I didn't dare hope that we'd get out of this, but his words still snared my complete and total attention.
"I'm listening." Kaiser strode toward Victor, his metal armour clanking on the concrete floor.
"We've already seen how much value Taylor Hebert can be to Medhall," Victor began. "And Veder is also highly resourceful in that regard."
"You're just sayin' that 'cause she saved your life, an' he clocked Shadow Bitch." Stormtiger didn't sound convinced on either instance.
Cricket nodded. "Plus, that just makes them dangerous."
"Granted on both instances," Victor acknowledged. "But hear me out. Suppose we could secure their guaranteed loyalty? Given a little supervision, they could continue to be real assets to Medhall and the Empire."
I really, really didn't like the sound of the phrase 'guaranteed loyalty'. Part of me wanted to lash out and yell at him that I'd never agree to work for him again, but the part that was involved with self-preservation desperately told it to shut the fuck up. I was still alive, and I wanted to stay that way, however forlorn a hope that might be.
"Interesting concept." Kaiser sounded mildly intrigued. "How would you go about guaranteeing their loyalty, so they didn't just email our secrets to the PRT and Protectorate at the first opportunity?"
"A couple of little carrots, and a few sticks." Victor sounded pleased with himself. "Hebert and Veder care for each other. Guaranteeing Veder's safety would help keep Hebert in line, and vice versa. Also, we could allow them to spend time with each other. A raise in salary couldn't hurt either. As for the sticks, there are several we could use; blackmail, threats to family, and so forth."
"Fuck that." Stormtiger actually sounded pissed now. "This little shit made me snort bleach. I'm gonna rip his guts out an' make him choke on them."
"Stormtiger." Kaiser's tone was mild, but we all heard the edge underneath it. "Not at the moment. I'm still thinking about this. Victor, where would we get blackmail material from? You've already checked Hebert and Veder out, and they're depressingly well-behaved."
"Ah, that's the best bit. It's ready-made, just waiting for us to use it." Victor nodded toward Tracey, then inclined his head in Brian's general direction. "Hebert kills Grimshaw, Veder finishes off Laborn, I get footage of both instances, and we hold that over their heads in case they ever decide to be heroes and expose the evil deeds of Medhall." There was definitely sarcasm in the end of his statement. "And if they think they can talk their way out of it anyway, they've still got family."
I'd thought my stomach was filled with dread before, but now it froze completely solid. No, not Dad.
"I like it." Kaiser nodded slowly. "And if they decide to die instead of committing murder, their families' lives are forfeit as well. All the sticks. Cricket?"
She only paused for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, sure. She won't have the guts anyway."
Kaiser turned his head to look at me. "She might just surprise us. Stormtiger?"
"Fuck, no. They're too dangerous, like Cricket says. An' this little cocksucker needs to suffer an' fuckin' scream before I'm finished with him. I nearly died, back there."
"Well, he was running for his life, so we can't really blame him …" Kaiser sighed. "Hookwolf?"
"Hm." The burly villain thought about it. "Yeah, why not give it a try? Hebert's got grit. She might even come around."
"Well, that's two for and two against. I've got the tie-breaker, and I also think it's worth a shot." Kaiser dusted his hands off with a clash of metal on metal. "So. Taylor, Greg. Are you willing to buy your lives and your families' lives with a little bloodletting? Grimshaw and Laborn are going to die anyway, but this way you get to survive. What do you say?"
Terror filled my every cell. I tasted bile at the back of my throat, but all I could think of was Tracey's face when I stepped into her room. Killing her was unthinkable. Refusing to kill her and letting Dad die was equally inconceivable.
I was locked into a dilemma that I couldn't see my way out of. One way, I died, along with everyone I loved, while the other would require me to sacrifice part of my soul forever. I turned my head to look past Tracey, whose terror was manifest on her face, to see that Greg was equally conflicted.
Through the roaring in my ears, I heard Kaiser's voice. "Well, then. It seems—"
My mind broke.
Or rather, that was how it seemed. I floated, apparently weightless, in what appeared to be interstellar space. Greg and Tracey were there as well, both looking as stunned as I felt. Two gigantic things spiralled past us like active embodiments of DNA, and five smaller objects orbited between us like crazy planets.
Unseen cords bound around us and pulled us together, while the 'planets' crashed together soundlessly and formed a single mass. Then they split apart into three and shot toward each of us. There was an inevitability about the whole process; I felt that even if we'd been able to dodge, they still wouldn't have missed.
The impact staggered me on a visceral level, and then I saw the cords. One linked me to Tracey and one to Greg, and there was a third one linking Tracey and Greg together.
And then, of course, I forgot it all.
Kaiser
Max staggered, then caught himself. What had he been saying? "Uh, seems that—"
Everyone appeared to be on the back foot. That was a bad thing. Why was that a bad thing? His brain was still rebooting, as though he'd just drifted into a daydream. But he didn't do daydreams.
Something was wrong.
"You. Starved. Me." Tracey Grimshaw was a gentle young woman, who had never raised her voice in anger that he knew of. Now her tone was harsher than he'd ever heard it before. Victor, just coming back to himself, was a fraction too slow to react when she grabbed him. Or maybe she was just too fast. One hand around his wrist, and the other around his throat.
Max's feeling that something was badly wrong ramped up at that blatant action, and then jumped into turbo overdrive when tendrils of dark energy began flowing from Victor's body into hers. Other tendrils reached out to Cricket and Stormtiger, groping hungrily through the air.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She's triggered with powers.
He gathered his mental resources and focused on the area under Grimshaw's feet. Metal spikes impaling her body would surely break her concentration—
He hadn't noticed the Veder lad sidestepping around Stormtiger until it was too late and Veder had hidden behind the aerokinetic's bulk. And then, just as Max was about to shred Grimshaw, there was a crack like a bomb going off and Stormtiger was sent flying—directly toward him. Max had just enough time to see that Veder was holding his hands in a double palm-strike pose before Stormtiger barrelled into him, bowling him over.
Fuck, they both triggered!
As Max rolled to a halt, he saw Hebert fend off a strike by Cricket and neatly disarm her of one kama, something he wouldn't have believed possible if he hadn't seen it. Then she made a tossing motion, there was a flicker of blackness through the air, and she dropped through the floor and out of a black patch on the ceiling to land behind Cricket. Twisting in midair, she tried to come down with a dropping elbow strike, but fortunately Cricket picked up on the teleport gambit (this was absolutely not her first rodeo) and turned in time to deflect it.
Sonovabitch. It's all of them. We have to lock this down hard. "Cluster trigger!" he yelled.
There was no more thought of perhaps salvaging Hebert and Veder. That had gone out the window when they triggered. Now it was a case of dealing with three pissed-off grab-bag capes.
Victor was already on it. Still holding his pistol, he angled it toward Grimshaw's head and pulled the trigger with zero hesitation. But instead of punching through her skull and spraying her brains all over the wall and ceiling, the bullet … splashed off her skin like water? That was what it looked like to Max, anyway.
And she wasn't even finished. Her eyes now glowing with darkness (Max wasn't sure how that worked, but power weirdness was weird by definition) she let him go and gestured with her hands. A long cylinder, outlined by webs of the same dark energy, formed behind him, an instant before Victor was sucked into it by a howling gale and spat out the far end to tumble off down the corridor. Max was reminded of a wind tunnel in an aerospace facility he'd toured at one time.
Stormtiger climbed to his feet and sent a couple of air-blades hurtling toward Veder, who held out his hand, palm out. A spinning, shimmering disc formed in front of him; when the air-blades hit it, they were sucked in and dispersed. Then Veder held out his other hand. Stormtiger's chains rattled; disbelievingly, Max watched them come apart link by link, the metal flying across to the teenage boy. It solidified on his forearms, forming midnight-black metal bracers. And then Max's armour started to come apart at the seams, also flying toward Veder.
Come on, we're better than this. Even four on three—now that Victor had been tossed out of the fight—they should be able to make a better showing. Max didn't want to try spiking Hebert, due to the fact that she was sparring with Cricket at lightning-fast speeds—where the hell did she learn to fight like that?—and Grimshaw didn't seem to be fazed by high-speed metal, so he turned his attention to Veder. Iron spears erupted from the wall behind the boy, only to be pulled away from it and absorbed directly into the armour that was constructing itself around Veder.
Hookwolf mustn't have seen or realised that Grimshaw could splash bullets, because he headed for the young woman in a full charge, bristling with spikes and blades. Max turned his attention to Hebert, who'd just hit Cricket in the chest with a palm strike, hard enough to knock her onto her ass. This meant she was clear to be attacked, so he sent a bunch of spikes erupting from the wall and floor, intended to kill her or at least pin her in place long enough to be killed at their leisure.
But she pirouetted out of the way, then threw Cricket's kama. It whickered across the distance between them and sank into his unarmoured shoulder. Screaming from the unexpected agony, he spun around and fell to the floor.
Stormtiger threw air-blades at Hebert, who threw up her hand and generated a ball of pure blackness, three feet across. The air-blades went into the ball heading for Hebert, but came out at an angle and smashed into Hookwolf's side just as he reached Grimshaw. His unarmoured side; not satisfied with Kaiser's armour, Veder had stolen Hookwolf's metal as well, and had formed it into a set of glossy black plate armour, complete with kite shield.
As Hookwolf staggered, Grimshaw grabbed his arm. The dark tendrils latched on and crawled all over him, then more lunged out toward Max, Stormtiger and Cricket. Bleeding and dazed, trying and failing to grow more metal, Hookwolf fell to his knees. Veder stomped forward, still pulling in metal—Cricket's face-cage was now gone, as were the spikes Max had intended for Hebert—and sending it to his companions, building armour around them as well.
Stormtiger launched an air-blade at Grimshaw, only for her to throw a tendril at it; the air-blade dissipated before it got halfway to her. And then she sent out brightly glowing tendrils that latched onto her allies, as well as the downed Laborn. Even as he backed off to avoid the black tendril reaching for him, Max had a really bad feeling about what the glowing ones did.
"What the fuck do we do?" demanded Stormtiger, pulling Max to his feet by his uninjured arm.
By now, with all the metal that had been thrown around, Veder had put substantial armour on all three of his comrades. Worse, when Max tried to grow spikes on the interior of this armour, it just wouldn't take. No matter what he tried, no matter what his allies tried, it was countered.
He was losing, and he didn't like it.
The moment of inattention was all that was needed for the tendrils seeking him and Stormtiger to latch on. Immediately, he felt the sharp, agonising drain, the steadily encroaching weakness. He instinctively threw up a barrier between them and Grimshaw, interlocking metal blades going between the floor and the ceiling. As the last blade slid into place, the tendrils cut out; he staggered, looking at the angry red patch on his hand.
"We can't fight them." It was only the truth. "We need backup. Find Victor and call in everyone else. They'll be trying to get out and go to the authorities. We have to capture or kill them before they leave the building."
Stormtiger shook his head disbelievingly. "What a clusterfuck."
Max didn't disagree.
Taylor
I stared around wonderingly. My mind was still buzzing with the after-effects of the skills I'd 'seen' in the capes we'd been facing. Button-mashing my brand-new abilities, I'd yoinked everything—tapping, not stealing, it seemed—and shared it out to everyone.
And then I'd fought Cricket. And I could teleport, kind of. I'd beaten Cricket. Hookwolf was down and unconscious. The others had run away.
"Did we win?" asked Greg disbelievingly. "I think we won."
"We won, for now." Tracey was walking tall in the armour Greg had put around her. "But they aren't done yet. We need to get to the PRT now."
Brian sat up and looked around. He went to rub his head, then encountered the helmet Greg had put on him. "What happened? And why am I wearing armour?" He looked around. "Why is everyone wearing armour? And how come we're still alive?"
"So many questions, so little time." I headed over and helped him up. "We'll fill you in along the way, once we figure out everything that happened. How do you feel?"
"Pretty amazing for someone who just got the shit kicked out of them," he admitted after a second. "I'm not even feeling any bruises."
"More walky, less talky." That was Tracey. She ran her hands over the closed elevator doors. "Where's the swipe card?"
I frowned. "Pretty sure I dropped it inside there when Cricket hit me."
"Non-issue," said Greg. "Because apparently I can do this—" and with a wave of his hand, the entire elevator door came apart and particles of aluminum flew to his armour, where they provided swanky-looking highlights. The steel framework was redirected to the rest of us, where it made the armour a little more complete. "Voila. No door."
Beyond was an empty elevator shaft. "Also no elevator, it seems," I observed, leaning and looking upward. "I can see it, though. A bunch of floors upward." It took me a second to realise that the near-total lack of light in the elevator shaft didn't bother me in the slightest, or that my awareness of all the metal around didn't go away when I looked in different directions.
Another moment later, I realised that I could see perfectly in darkness, but I was still short-sighted in normal light. How unfair was that?
"Okay," said Brian. "That's all well and good. But how do we get up it?"
Greg stepped up. "I think I can get us out, but it'll involve property damage." He looked at the remains of the elevator doors. "More property damage."
Hookwolf groaned and tried to get up. Tracey zapped him with one of those weird black energy lines, and he subsided again. "I have an amazing lack of care factor, right now."
"Time to make some headlines." Greg jumped into the elevator shaft. In the next instant, there was a deafening WHOOOOSH and he rocketed up the shaft while a solid gale-force wind blew out the open elevator doorway. A few seconds later, I heard a KBOOOM and bits of debris fell back down the shaft.
"Well, that happened," I said.
Brian raised his eyebrows. "He's really, really into this."
Tracey chuckled dryly. "We noticed."
Greg dropped back down the elevator shaft, slowing his fall with regular doses of whatever his rocket ability was. He actually went below the level of where we were, then blasted himself upward just enough to land in the doorway. "Holy shit!" he yelled. "That was amazing!"
"We've got an opening?" I asked.
"Yeah." Greg seemed to be trying not to hyperventilate. "Goes to the lobby. Ten feet up the wall. I miscalculated a teensy bit."
As I recalled, the lobby ceiling was thirty feet high. "I think we can manage."
Leaning into the open shaft, I called up one of the shadow-patches I'd used to teleport around Cricket—it seemed I could also step through shadows, which was wild as fuck—and tossed it upward. It hit the edge of the hole Greg had blasted, and stuck there. To anyone else, it would be a blot of anomalous shadow, as though something was obscuring the light, but to me …
I moved up to the wall, face-first, close enough to cast a shadow, then stepped right through. On the other side of the shadow was a ragged hole in the concrete elevator shaft wall, chunks of reinforced concrete littering the floor below. For a mercy, nobody had been hurt, though I made a mental note to talk to Greg about being more careful in future.
On the other hand, this was Medhall. As far as I could tell, this was Nazi fucking Central for Brockton Bay. Like Tracey had said, my care factor wasn't exactly overflowing at that moment. Less than five minutes before, I'd been faced with the choice between me murdering Tracey or letting me and Dad get murdered, by Max Anders himself.
Fuck him, and fuck all of them.
"Hey!" The voice caught my attention. Two security guards were pointing pistols at me from about thirty feet away. I hadn't even known they had firearms until now. "Get down from there! Hands behind your head!"
I had a better idea than surrendering. Diving back into the shadow, I rolled out from underneath the security desk. The guards were less skilled overall than Hookwolf and Stormtiger and Cricket, but I found I could tap into those just as easily as I had the others. This built on the meagre training I'd already had, so I was reasonably confident I could take them down if I could just get the jump on them.
When I was fighting Cricket, she'd tried to use some kind of sonic ability to put me off balance, but to her surprise and mine, I'd had a counter; the ability to silence a small area around me. I used it again now, to sneak up on them.
Which would've worked if the damn phone on the desk hadn't started ringing just before I got close enough to put them inside the six-foot radius of the silence effect. One of them turned to look and saw me. I couldn't hear what he said, but it really didn't matter. They knew I was there, so I dropped the effect.
Both of them turned and pointed their guns at me. I didn't have flashy ranged effects like Tracey or Greg had gotten, but I could detect all metal in a sixty-foot radius, more or less. I knew exactly where each gun barrel was pointing, and I could even 'see' the bullets inside the guns.
"Down on the floor!" yelled one of the guards.
"Hands behind your head!" the other one countered.
The phone rang again.
I raised my hands. "One of you might want to get that."
There was no doubt about who was on the other end. Kaiser would be circling the wagons, telling security to lock the building down, probably making it a terrorist threat. Telling them to shoot to kill.
There was a roar from the hole in the wall. One kept his pistol on me, while the other turned back toward the hole. I was pretty sure I knew what was going to happen next, so I braced myself.
Greg, still clad in his ornate armour but with his shield on his back, came up the elevator shaft and out through the hole like he'd been doing it all his life. I personally suspected that he'd bounced off the walls a few times until he got it right, but his entrance was better late than never. I was glad to see that he had passengers: Brian on one arm and Tracey on the other.
He misjudged the landing a bit, probably because of the extra weight. They hit the floor hard, and Greg had to go down onto one knee, the armour over his kneecap smashing a marble tile. I couldn't be certain that the tiles where Brian and Tracey had landed weren't cracked either, but I didn't give a flying fuck. They weren't my tiles.
In the ensuing silence, the phone rang again. Then the guard who wasn't covering me called out in tones of disbelief. "Laborn? Veder? What the fuck?"
I felt vaguely insulted that they hadn't recognised me as yet, but figured that it was the whole lack of glasses and black armour thing.
The guard facing me half-turned his head. "What, really? Laborn?"
"You know," Brian said as he strode forward, "a crapload of things are a whole lot clearer to me now. Gus, I'm gonna take a wild stab and say you're a card-carrying follower of the Empire Eighty-Eight. Joe, I'm not so sure about."
"That's actually a good thing, Joe," I added helpfully. "Just saying."
"I don't give a fuck what you've got to say," said the guy with his gun on me. "Get over there with the rest of them, or—"
"No." Greg stood up. "After the day I've had, idiots pointing guns at me really shit me off." He gestured and both pistols disintegrated, the metal particles flying toward him and becoming part of his armour. "Now, you two can step aside or we will go right through you." He shrugged his shield onto his arm. "I really don't give a damn which one it is."
"What he said." I flipped a shadow-patch onto the floor on the other side of the security barrier, then threw more at the security cameras. The cameras would be blind as long as the patches lasted. One more patch went to the ground at my feet; I stepped into it, and popped up next to the sliding doors.
"Joe?" asked the guy who'd been covering me; I assumed it was Gus. "What the fuck do we do?"
Joe backed up, hands in the air despite not having been ordered to put them up. "What do you think? We step aside and we let them leave. I'm not paid enough to go up against capes, especially if they're leaving."
I noted that neither of them queried Brian's reference to the Empire Eighty-Eight. This meant that either they hadn't noticed it, they figured it wasn't important, or they didn't want to acknowledge it. If I was a racist dirtbag facing off with a black cape, I'd probably choose not to emphasise that part of my lifestyle too.
The phone on the desk continued to ring, but neither Joe nor Gus made a move toward it as Greg led the way out through the security barrier, with Tracey behind him and Brian following up. As they joined me at the doors, Brian turned toward Joe. "Oh, and by the way? I quit."
As an exit line, it wasn't too bad. I smacked the big green let-me-out button, and the doors rumbled open. We walked out of Medhall, still wearing our armour, drawing the curious attention of passers-by. I half expected cop cars, helicopters and guns pointed at us, but it had only been a few minutes since Kaiser had made his getaway. Even if cops were on the way right now, we still had a little time.
The PRT might be a little quicker—I could actually see the top of the PRT building in the distance—but even they'd need time to mobilise.
"Okay, we're out," Greg said, as we set off down the street. "Now what?"
I'd actually been thinking about this. "First, we contact our families and tell them to go to ground. Kaiser is absolutely going to try to grab them for leverage. Second, we get to the PRT building and get our story in first."
"Damn right," Brian agreed. "The last thing we need is a kill order."
"But how are we going to get to the PRT building?" asked Tracey. "Walk? No bus is going to take us."
Brian rubbed his chin. "Once we get hold of a phone, I have a friend I can call."
"One that would give us all a lift?" I asked sceptically. "Looking like this?"
He grinned. "Oh, you have no idea."
End of Part Twenty
Part Twenty: All For One
[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Tracey Grimshaw
The voices outside the cell were barely audible to Tracey, but the single shot startled her badly. What's going on?
And then, after a few moments, she heard a key rattling in the door lock. Sitting up from her slumped position on the cold concrete floor, she prepared to plead for her life with whoever opened the door. Pride was all well and good, but you couldn't be proud if you were dead.
The door opened, and the last person Tracey hoped or expected to see looked into the room. "Tracey?"
"Taylor?" Her one-time intern looked terrible. Taylor was filthy, her normally immaculate hair was downright bedraggled, her Beautiful Me outfit was stained and creased, and her eyes looked haunted. Tracey's heart plummeted toward the centre of the earth. "Oh, no. They got you too?"
"No. No, no, no." Taylor limped into the room. She had grazes on one knee and both elbows, but there was a smile of pure joy on her face as she knelt down beside Tracey. "Brian and Greg got me out just in time. How are you alive? They said you crashed your car, but I knew that couldn't be true, so I thought Mr Ferguson had gotten to you. Then I saw what was on the computer, and I thought they'd killed you for knowing too much."
She hugged Tracey then, dispelling any notion that this might be a particularly vivid hallucination. Tracey hugged her back, holding her close. "No, they've been trying to find out who I sent the text to. How did you find me, anyway?"
"By sheer accident." Taylor stood up and helped Tracey to her feet. "We're running from Hookwolf and the others, and Greg's escape plan led us here. Brian beat up the guards, then I got curious about what they were guarding. Can you walk?"
Despite the dire circumstances, Tracey had to chuckle. Taylor getting curious about something and making a totally serendipitous discovery was totally on-brand for her. "I think so, but I haven't had anything to eat or drink since … how long's it been? They never switch off the light in here." She would've broken it if she'd been able to reach it, or had anything to break it with. Instead, she'd had to cover her eyes with her arm to get away from the endless glare.
"It's Wednesday afternoon, a bit after three." They got to the door, which Greg helpfully held open for them. "Greg, do you have anything in your backpack for Tracey to eat or drink?"
God, forty-eight hours. No wonder my stomach feels like a wrung-out sock. Tracey looked on as Greg produced a water-bottle and a protein bar out of his backpack. "Oh, thank you. You're a total lifesaver."
"We have to move," said Brian. Tracey had seen the big guy on the front desk a few times, but this was the first time she'd learned his name. "They will be looking for us, and we need to find a way out before they find us."
"I thought Mr Grayson, I mean Victor, was still in a wheelchair," Greg said as they started hustling down the corridor, or at least moving as fast as Tracey could totter.
Taylor was assisting her, which was a great help, as were the water and protein bar she was ingesting as fast as her body would allow her to. She could almost feel the energy flowing back into her body. Or perhaps that was adrenaline.
"Othala," Brian stated flatly. "When this all kicked off, he probably asked her to finish up the healing in one hit. Chances are, they've been stringing it out to make it look natural."
"Yeah, that makes sense," agreed Taylor. "Something else I'm wondering, though. Why didn't we grab the guards' guns? At least give us a fighting chance if they catch up with us. Or am I missing something?"
"Ho ho ho, now I have a machine gun?" Greg added.
Brian shook his head. "Not going to happen. Stallone's character in that movie was a cop. He was trained in using firearms. I know which end bullets come out of, and that's about it. We don't know the safe way to handle them, and we don't know how to use them properly. Maybe with an hour or two to look them over carefully, we could chance it, but we don't have an hour."
A four-way junction lay up ahead, and he gestured everyone to stay back while he crept up to the corner. Somehow, with a wave of his hand, he created a puff of black smoke, which he stuck his head into briefly before it dissipated again.
"What just happened?" Tracey asked, looking to Taylor for an explanation.
"Brian's a cape," Taylor said quietly. "Long story. All clear?" she asked, raising her voice a little.
"All clear." Brian gestured them forward. "I think there's an elevator down along the left corridor."
"We've just come around three sides of a square," Greg agreed. "That's probably the same elevator that the ladder came down beside." As everyone looked at him, he shrugged. "I counted my paces."
"Fair." Brian pulled out his swipe card. "Now, does anyone think we've used up all our luck so far, or should I try to see if my card still works to get us up to lobby level so we can bust out of here?"
<><>
Taylor
I shook my head. "They control the elevators. We might not get dropped fifty feet into the sub-basement, but they could totally open the doors right where Hookwolf and Cricket are waiting for us." In my mind, I still had trouble envisaging the rough-hewn but helpful Bradley as Hookwolf, but somehow it was a lot easier to see Melody as Cricket. Probably because I'd associated with him more than her, and because she'd never really been nice to me.
And now they were hunting us with murder in mind. It was something I had to keep reminding myself of, which was why I was calling them by their villain names instead of their civilian identities. The villains weren't my friends.
I was starting to realise they never had been. They'd only protected me because I was the clever intern who found the moles and saved them money, not because they liked Taylor Hebert the person. Of course I was valuable to them, because I protected their bottom line … until I didn't. And then I was just a liability.
"Maybe we could risk it?" Tracey's tone was both tired and wistful. "I'm sick of this place. I just want to get out."
Greg shook his head. "No, Taylor's right. The moment we ping that elevator, they'll know … shit. Shit, shit, shit."
By this point, we were close enough to see the elevator floor display, which was why Greg had started swearing. Because the display was active, and the number was counting downward. And not one of us was optimistic enough to assume they weren't coming for us.
<><>
Greg
"Fuck it. "Brian slapped his access card and keyring into Greg's hand. "Everyone, back against the wall beside the elevator. Taylor, hold hands with Greg. Tracey, hold hands with Taylor. I'm going to try to separate Stormtiger from the rest and disable him, then get back to you. If I can't, I'll kick that maintenance door in and go up the ladder. Either way, thirty seconds, you get in that elevator and get the hell out. Understand me?"
Even as Brian gave his rapid-fire instructions, he was pouring huge volumes of that same inky black smoke from his free hand, filling up the corridors. Greg could see the stress on his face, the knowledge that his lone stand, even aided by his powers, would most likely see him dead or seriously injured. "I could stay," he offered tentatively.
Brian's large hand clamped on his shoulder and pushed him back against the wall. "Appreciate the offer, man, but nobody can see in my darkness but me. I've got to do this on my own. But if anything happens, I've got a sister. Take care of her for me."
The inky wall was already starting to close in, as Brian's cape power obscured the overhead lights. Greg clasped his wrist briefly. "We'll bring them down. All of them." For you, he meant. Your sacrifice won't be in vain.
Brian's eyes searched his face for a moment, then he nodded. "Yeah." Then the darkness became complete. Greg's questing hand found Taylor's and her fingers squeezed his. He squeezed back.
The vibration of the wall told him the elevator had reached the floor they were on, and he started the mental countdown. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi …
<><>
Brian
I've got one chance to get this right. Brian braced himself in front of the elevator doors, standing a little off to the side in case someone blindly threw or shot something straight ahead. They didn't know he was a cape yet, so with anything resembling luck, he might be able to take them by surprise and remove Stormtiger from the equation.
He'd never directly fought any of the Empire capes before, but he knew damn well that trying to beat up Hookwolf was a losing proposition, especially after he popped armour and blades all over his body. When facing an opponent that more closely resembled a combine harvester, discretion was by far the better part of valour. Which also meant that he couldn't afford to get surrounded by the others and herded into Hookwolf's arms.
He pulled out his baton and flicked it to its full length, wishing heartily that they'd gotten around to putting him through the training courses for tasers or mace. Knowing what he did now, he was less than surprised that they'd been dragging their heels on the matter. But given the current situation, the less time spent wishing and the more time spent doing was probably a good idea. At the very last second, as the number panel displayed SB2, he pulled off his socks and shoes, then picked up a shoe.
The elevator doors opened. If Brian had needed any proof that Taylor had been telling the truth about the Empire Eighty-Eight running Medhall, he now had it. Stepping forward out of the elevator, hands held out in front of him, was Hookwolf. The villain even had his trademark metal mask on.
Behind him was Stormtiger, flanked by Cricket; last out were Victor and Kaiser himself. Brian breathed as quietly as he could, aware that Stormtiger would probably smell him (and the others) as soon as he started using his powers. Victor was armed with a pistol held low against his leg, not that it would do him any good until he could see something. Brian didn't intend to give him the chance.
"What the hell?" asked Hookwolf. "What happened to the lights?"
"Fuck," Stormtiger replied. "Cape. Gotta be. Go careful."
Tossing the shoe off to the left, Brian sidestepped quietly to the right in his bare feet. These were less than optimum in a combat situation, but he wanted to be silent as possible. The ruse was almost certainly older than civilisation, but it was still a good one; as muffled as it was, the sound of the shoe hitting concrete still turned all four heads.
"You hear that?" That was Hookwolf.
"Yes," agreed Kaiser.
Brian moved in as silently as he could, his feet skimming over the concrete. Hookwolf, Victor and Kaiser were all going in the wrong direction. All he needed was for Cricket to step away from Stormtiger and he'd be able to incapacitate both of them in short order. It was easy, even against skilled opponents. Very few people practised blindfolded against sighted foes, after all.
The burst of disorientation took him by surprise and nearly knocked him off his feet. He staggered, staring with disbelief as Cricket moved directly toward him. Even as he tried to evade and block her incoming blow, she sent him reeling again with what he belatedly realised was a sonic attack to his inner ears.
A snap-kick sent the baton spinning from his hand, then a backfist to the jaw rattled his cage and loosened teeth. He was still up, but disoriented, and she hit harder than any woman he'd ever gone up against. Before he could do more than put a basic guard together, she buried her heel in his solar plexus. The breath went out of his lungs in a painful whoosh and he began to involuntarily double over, only to meet her knee coming the other direction at speed.
He straightened up from the impact, but his consciousness was already flickering around the edges. The full-blooded kick to his sternum arrived like a battering ram and drove what little air he'd gotten back into his lungs straight out again. He vaguely felt his feet leave the floor before he crashed down on his back.
His last thought before real darkness closed in on him was, I'm sorry, Aisha …
<><>
Taylor
I couldn't see a thing; all I knew was that Greg was holding my right hand and Tracey my left. Noises were happening in the darkness right in front of me, and I was trying to silently count seconds in my head, but I didn't know if I was doing it right, or if Brian was even okay. Despite me knowing that it wouldn't matter if my eyes were open or shut, I had them as wide as I could, just in case I might spot something that could be of use.
The first inkling I had that things were going badly—that is, even worse than they'd already been—was when Brian's darkness started to shred and fade away before my mental countdown had quite hit twenty seconds. Kaiser, Hookwolf and Victor were about twenty feet away, looking in the wrong direction, but Brian was down with Cricket standing over him, and Stormtiger was close by her. And both Cricket and Stormtiger were looking directly at us.
Tracey froze, her hand clenching painfully tight around mine. I wanted to move, but I had no idea which way to go. We couldn't run and we couldn't fight; with Brian down, we couldn't hide either.
Greg acted, hauling on my arm and bodily dragging Tracey and me to the lift. "Go-go-go!" he yelled, slapping Brian's swipe card into my hand and shoving us inside. I managed to make myself react, swiping the panel inside the elevator and blindly stabbing at the buttons with my fingers. But just as Greg started to jump back inside with us, metal-clawed fingers closed around his arm and he was hauled out again with a yelp.
Cricket stepped into the open door of the elevator and gave us what might have been a smile. "Hi," she rasped, every word an effort. "Didn't really think you'd get away, did you?"
I pushed Tracey to the back of the elevator and got myself between her and Cricket. "Don't you dare hurt her!" We were screwed, I knew we were screwed, but I couldn't help myself. Tracey had already been through enough. And maybe if she agreed to say nothing …
Even though I was looking for it, I barely spotted Cricket's shift in balance before her casual backhand bounced me off the side of the elevator and dropped me to the floor. "Never tell me what to do." Even through the ringing in my ears, I heard death in her tone.
My head was spinning, but I tried to get up anyway. Tracey was screaming somewhere above my head, then I was grabbed by the collar and dragged out of the elevator. Suddenly, the screaming stopped and I tried to focus, fearing the worst.
"We have here an unfortunate mess." As my head cleared, I recognised Mr Anders' voice, though with an extra edge and echo to it that I'd never heard before. My glasses had been knocked off in the elevator, but I was able to make him out, wearing his Kaiser armour, standing before us.
Of much more urgency to me was Cricket; she was holding me up against the wall with a very sharp-looking curved blade not very far away from my neck. The side of my face where she'd hit me throbbed and felt swollen, but that wasn't even remotely the worst of my problems right then.
I looked into her eyes, and there was nothing there. No warmth, no recognition of a fellow human being. Then and there, I knew that she was just waiting for the word to end my life, and she wouldn't even spare a second thought afterward.
From the corner of my eye, I could see that Tracey was alive, mainly because Victor was holding her up with a pistol barrel pressing up under her jaw. Beyond her, Greg was at Stormtiger's mercy. I may have been imagining things, but the blue-masked villain seemed bitter over the trick with the cleaning products. And finally, Brian was slumped on the floor with Hookwolf standing over him.
We were done, I could see that. There was no hope for escape, no hope for rescue. All that was standing between us and death at the hands of the Empire Eighty-Eight was whatever passed for mercy in Kaiser's mind.
I wasn't exactly optimistic on that count.
My stomach clenched as I realised that I was going to die here. Today. Now.
I don't want to! It was a despairing wail against the inevitable darkness.
"It doesn't have to be this big a mess." Victor didn't turn his head away from Tracey. "There's a possibility we can salvage something out of it."
I didn't dare hope that we'd get out of this, but his words still snared my complete and total attention.
"I'm listening." Kaiser strode toward Victor, his metal armour clanking on the concrete floor.
"We've already seen how much value Taylor Hebert can be to Medhall," Victor began. "And Veder is also highly resourceful in that regard."
"You're just sayin' that 'cause she saved your life, an' he clocked Shadow Bitch." Stormtiger didn't sound convinced on either instance.
Cricket nodded. "Plus, that just makes them dangerous."
"Granted on both instances," Victor acknowledged. "But hear me out. Suppose we could secure their guaranteed loyalty? Given a little supervision, they could continue to be real assets to Medhall and the Empire."
I really, really didn't like the sound of the phrase 'guaranteed loyalty'. Part of me wanted to lash out and yell at him that I'd never agree to work for him again, but the part that was involved with self-preservation desperately told it to shut the fuck up. I was still alive, and I wanted to stay that way, however forlorn a hope that might be.
"Interesting concept." Kaiser sounded mildly intrigued. "How would you go about guaranteeing their loyalty, so they didn't just email our secrets to the PRT and Protectorate at the first opportunity?"
"A couple of little carrots, and a few sticks." Victor sounded pleased with himself. "Hebert and Veder care for each other. Guaranteeing Veder's safety would help keep Hebert in line, and vice versa. Also, we could allow them to spend time with each other. A raise in salary couldn't hurt either. As for the sticks, there are several we could use; blackmail, threats to family, and so forth."
"Fuck that." Stormtiger actually sounded pissed now. "This little shit made me snort bleach. I'm gonna rip his guts out an' make him choke on them."
"Stormtiger." Kaiser's tone was mild, but we all heard the edge underneath it. "Not at the moment. I'm still thinking about this. Victor, where would we get blackmail material from? You've already checked Hebert and Veder out, and they're depressingly well-behaved."
"Ah, that's the best bit. It's ready-made, just waiting for us to use it." Victor nodded toward Tracey, then inclined his head in Brian's general direction. "Hebert kills Grimshaw, Veder finishes off Laborn, I get footage of both instances, and we hold that over their heads in case they ever decide to be heroes and expose the evil deeds of Medhall." There was definitely sarcasm in the end of his statement. "And if they think they can talk their way out of it anyway, they've still got family."
I'd thought my stomach was filled with dread before, but now it froze completely solid. No, not Dad.
"I like it." Kaiser nodded slowly. "And if they decide to die instead of committing murder, their families' lives are forfeit as well. All the sticks. Cricket?"
She only paused for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, sure. She won't have the guts anyway."
Kaiser turned his head to look at me. "She might just surprise us. Stormtiger?"
"Fuck, no. They're too dangerous, like Cricket says. An' this little cocksucker needs to suffer an' fuckin' scream before I'm finished with him. I nearly died, back there."
"Well, he was running for his life, so we can't really blame him …" Kaiser sighed. "Hookwolf?"
"Hm." The burly villain thought about it. "Yeah, why not give it a try? Hebert's got grit. She might even come around."
"Well, that's two for and two against. I've got the tie-breaker, and I also think it's worth a shot." Kaiser dusted his hands off with a clash of metal on metal. "So. Taylor, Greg. Are you willing to buy your lives and your families' lives with a little bloodletting? Grimshaw and Laborn are going to die anyway, but this way you get to survive. What do you say?"
Terror filled my every cell. I tasted bile at the back of my throat, but all I could think of was Tracey's face when I stepped into her room. Killing her was unthinkable. Refusing to kill her and letting Dad die was equally inconceivable.
I was locked into a dilemma that I couldn't see my way out of. One way, I died, along with everyone I loved, while the other would require me to sacrifice part of my soul forever. I turned my head to look past Tracey, whose terror was manifest on her face, to see that Greg was equally conflicted.
Through the roaring in my ears, I heard Kaiser's voice. "Well, then. It seems—"
My mind broke.
<><>
Or rather, that was how it seemed. I floated, apparently weightless, in what appeared to be interstellar space. Greg and Tracey were there as well, both looking as stunned as I felt. Two gigantic things spiralled past us like active embodiments of DNA, and five smaller objects orbited between us like crazy planets.
Unseen cords bound around us and pulled us together, while the 'planets' crashed together soundlessly and formed a single mass. Then they split apart into three and shot toward each of us. There was an inevitability about the whole process; I felt that even if we'd been able to dodge, they still wouldn't have missed.
The impact staggered me on a visceral level, and then I saw the cords. One linked me to Tracey and one to Greg, and there was a third one linking Tracey and Greg together.
And then, of course, I forgot it all.
<><>
Kaiser
Max staggered, then caught himself. What had he been saying? "Uh, seems that—"
Everyone appeared to be on the back foot. That was a bad thing. Why was that a bad thing? His brain was still rebooting, as though he'd just drifted into a daydream. But he didn't do daydreams.
Something was wrong.
"You. Starved. Me." Tracey Grimshaw was a gentle young woman, who had never raised her voice in anger that he knew of. Now her tone was harsher than he'd ever heard it before. Victor, just coming back to himself, was a fraction too slow to react when she grabbed him. Or maybe she was just too fast. One hand around his wrist, and the other around his throat.
Max's feeling that something was badly wrong ramped up at that blatant action, and then jumped into turbo overdrive when tendrils of dark energy began flowing from Victor's body into hers. Other tendrils reached out to Cricket and Stormtiger, groping hungrily through the air.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She's triggered with powers.
He gathered his mental resources and focused on the area under Grimshaw's feet. Metal spikes impaling her body would surely break her concentration—
He hadn't noticed the Veder lad sidestepping around Stormtiger until it was too late and Veder had hidden behind the aerokinetic's bulk. And then, just as Max was about to shred Grimshaw, there was a crack like a bomb going off and Stormtiger was sent flying—directly toward him. Max had just enough time to see that Veder was holding his hands in a double palm-strike pose before Stormtiger barrelled into him, bowling him over.
Fuck, they both triggered!
As Max rolled to a halt, he saw Hebert fend off a strike by Cricket and neatly disarm her of one kama, something he wouldn't have believed possible if he hadn't seen it. Then she made a tossing motion, there was a flicker of blackness through the air, and she dropped through the floor and out of a black patch on the ceiling to land behind Cricket. Twisting in midair, she tried to come down with a dropping elbow strike, but fortunately Cricket picked up on the teleport gambit (this was absolutely not her first rodeo) and turned in time to deflect it.
Sonovabitch. It's all of them. We have to lock this down hard. "Cluster trigger!" he yelled.
There was no more thought of perhaps salvaging Hebert and Veder. That had gone out the window when they triggered. Now it was a case of dealing with three pissed-off grab-bag capes.
Victor was already on it. Still holding his pistol, he angled it toward Grimshaw's head and pulled the trigger with zero hesitation. But instead of punching through her skull and spraying her brains all over the wall and ceiling, the bullet … splashed off her skin like water? That was what it looked like to Max, anyway.
And she wasn't even finished. Her eyes now glowing with darkness (Max wasn't sure how that worked, but power weirdness was weird by definition) she let him go and gestured with her hands. A long cylinder, outlined by webs of the same dark energy, formed behind him, an instant before Victor was sucked into it by a howling gale and spat out the far end to tumble off down the corridor. Max was reminded of a wind tunnel in an aerospace facility he'd toured at one time.
Stormtiger climbed to his feet and sent a couple of air-blades hurtling toward Veder, who held out his hand, palm out. A spinning, shimmering disc formed in front of him; when the air-blades hit it, they were sucked in and dispersed. Then Veder held out his other hand. Stormtiger's chains rattled; disbelievingly, Max watched them come apart link by link, the metal flying across to the teenage boy. It solidified on his forearms, forming midnight-black metal bracers. And then Max's armour started to come apart at the seams, also flying toward Veder.
Come on, we're better than this. Even four on three—now that Victor had been tossed out of the fight—they should be able to make a better showing. Max didn't want to try spiking Hebert, due to the fact that she was sparring with Cricket at lightning-fast speeds—where the hell did she learn to fight like that?—and Grimshaw didn't seem to be fazed by high-speed metal, so he turned his attention to Veder. Iron spears erupted from the wall behind the boy, only to be pulled away from it and absorbed directly into the armour that was constructing itself around Veder.
Hookwolf mustn't have seen or realised that Grimshaw could splash bullets, because he headed for the young woman in a full charge, bristling with spikes and blades. Max turned his attention to Hebert, who'd just hit Cricket in the chest with a palm strike, hard enough to knock her onto her ass. This meant she was clear to be attacked, so he sent a bunch of spikes erupting from the wall and floor, intended to kill her or at least pin her in place long enough to be killed at their leisure.
But she pirouetted out of the way, then threw Cricket's kama. It whickered across the distance between them and sank into his unarmoured shoulder. Screaming from the unexpected agony, he spun around and fell to the floor.
Stormtiger threw air-blades at Hebert, who threw up her hand and generated a ball of pure blackness, three feet across. The air-blades went into the ball heading for Hebert, but came out at an angle and smashed into Hookwolf's side just as he reached Grimshaw. His unarmoured side; not satisfied with Kaiser's armour, Veder had stolen Hookwolf's metal as well, and had formed it into a set of glossy black plate armour, complete with kite shield.
As Hookwolf staggered, Grimshaw grabbed his arm. The dark tendrils latched on and crawled all over him, then more lunged out toward Max, Stormtiger and Cricket. Bleeding and dazed, trying and failing to grow more metal, Hookwolf fell to his knees. Veder stomped forward, still pulling in metal—Cricket's face-cage was now gone, as were the spikes Max had intended for Hebert—and sending it to his companions, building armour around them as well.
Stormtiger launched an air-blade at Grimshaw, only for her to throw a tendril at it; the air-blade dissipated before it got halfway to her. And then she sent out brightly glowing tendrils that latched onto her allies, as well as the downed Laborn. Even as he backed off to avoid the black tendril reaching for him, Max had a really bad feeling about what the glowing ones did.
"What the fuck do we do?" demanded Stormtiger, pulling Max to his feet by his uninjured arm.
By now, with all the metal that had been thrown around, Veder had put substantial armour on all three of his comrades. Worse, when Max tried to grow spikes on the interior of this armour, it just wouldn't take. No matter what he tried, no matter what his allies tried, it was countered.
He was losing, and he didn't like it.
The moment of inattention was all that was needed for the tendrils seeking him and Stormtiger to latch on. Immediately, he felt the sharp, agonising drain, the steadily encroaching weakness. He instinctively threw up a barrier between them and Grimshaw, interlocking metal blades going between the floor and the ceiling. As the last blade slid into place, the tendrils cut out; he staggered, looking at the angry red patch on his hand.
"We can't fight them." It was only the truth. "We need backup. Find Victor and call in everyone else. They'll be trying to get out and go to the authorities. We have to capture or kill them before they leave the building."
Stormtiger shook his head disbelievingly. "What a clusterfuck."
Max didn't disagree.
<><>
Taylor
I stared around wonderingly. My mind was still buzzing with the after-effects of the skills I'd 'seen' in the capes we'd been facing. Button-mashing my brand-new abilities, I'd yoinked everything—tapping, not stealing, it seemed—and shared it out to everyone.
And then I'd fought Cricket. And I could teleport, kind of. I'd beaten Cricket. Hookwolf was down and unconscious. The others had run away.
"Did we win?" asked Greg disbelievingly. "I think we won."
"We won, for now." Tracey was walking tall in the armour Greg had put around her. "But they aren't done yet. We need to get to the PRT now."
Brian sat up and looked around. He went to rub his head, then encountered the helmet Greg had put on him. "What happened? And why am I wearing armour?" He looked around. "Why is everyone wearing armour? And how come we're still alive?"
"So many questions, so little time." I headed over and helped him up. "We'll fill you in along the way, once we figure out everything that happened. How do you feel?"
"Pretty amazing for someone who just got the shit kicked out of them," he admitted after a second. "I'm not even feeling any bruises."
"More walky, less talky." That was Tracey. She ran her hands over the closed elevator doors. "Where's the swipe card?"
I frowned. "Pretty sure I dropped it inside there when Cricket hit me."
"Non-issue," said Greg. "Because apparently I can do this—" and with a wave of his hand, the entire elevator door came apart and particles of aluminum flew to his armour, where they provided swanky-looking highlights. The steel framework was redirected to the rest of us, where it made the armour a little more complete. "Voila. No door."
Beyond was an empty elevator shaft. "Also no elevator, it seems," I observed, leaning and looking upward. "I can see it, though. A bunch of floors upward." It took me a second to realise that the near-total lack of light in the elevator shaft didn't bother me in the slightest, or that my awareness of all the metal around didn't go away when I looked in different directions.
Another moment later, I realised that I could see perfectly in darkness, but I was still short-sighted in normal light. How unfair was that?
"Okay," said Brian. "That's all well and good. But how do we get up it?"
Greg stepped up. "I think I can get us out, but it'll involve property damage." He looked at the remains of the elevator doors. "More property damage."
Hookwolf groaned and tried to get up. Tracey zapped him with one of those weird black energy lines, and he subsided again. "I have an amazing lack of care factor, right now."
"Time to make some headlines." Greg jumped into the elevator shaft. In the next instant, there was a deafening WHOOOOSH and he rocketed up the shaft while a solid gale-force wind blew out the open elevator doorway. A few seconds later, I heard a KBOOOM and bits of debris fell back down the shaft.
"Well, that happened," I said.
Brian raised his eyebrows. "He's really, really into this."
Tracey chuckled dryly. "We noticed."
Greg dropped back down the elevator shaft, slowing his fall with regular doses of whatever his rocket ability was. He actually went below the level of where we were, then blasted himself upward just enough to land in the doorway. "Holy shit!" he yelled. "That was amazing!"
"We've got an opening?" I asked.
"Yeah." Greg seemed to be trying not to hyperventilate. "Goes to the lobby. Ten feet up the wall. I miscalculated a teensy bit."
As I recalled, the lobby ceiling was thirty feet high. "I think we can manage."
Leaning into the open shaft, I called up one of the shadow-patches I'd used to teleport around Cricket—it seemed I could also step through shadows, which was wild as fuck—and tossed it upward. It hit the edge of the hole Greg had blasted, and stuck there. To anyone else, it would be a blot of anomalous shadow, as though something was obscuring the light, but to me …
I moved up to the wall, face-first, close enough to cast a shadow, then stepped right through. On the other side of the shadow was a ragged hole in the concrete elevator shaft wall, chunks of reinforced concrete littering the floor below. For a mercy, nobody had been hurt, though I made a mental note to talk to Greg about being more careful in future.
On the other hand, this was Medhall. As far as I could tell, this was Nazi fucking Central for Brockton Bay. Like Tracey had said, my care factor wasn't exactly overflowing at that moment. Less than five minutes before, I'd been faced with the choice between me murdering Tracey or letting me and Dad get murdered, by Max Anders himself.
Fuck him, and fuck all of them.
"Hey!" The voice caught my attention. Two security guards were pointing pistols at me from about thirty feet away. I hadn't even known they had firearms until now. "Get down from there! Hands behind your head!"
I had a better idea than surrendering. Diving back into the shadow, I rolled out from underneath the security desk. The guards were less skilled overall than Hookwolf and Stormtiger and Cricket, but I found I could tap into those just as easily as I had the others. This built on the meagre training I'd already had, so I was reasonably confident I could take them down if I could just get the jump on them.
When I was fighting Cricket, she'd tried to use some kind of sonic ability to put me off balance, but to her surprise and mine, I'd had a counter; the ability to silence a small area around me. I used it again now, to sneak up on them.
Which would've worked if the damn phone on the desk hadn't started ringing just before I got close enough to put them inside the six-foot radius of the silence effect. One of them turned to look and saw me. I couldn't hear what he said, but it really didn't matter. They knew I was there, so I dropped the effect.
Both of them turned and pointed their guns at me. I didn't have flashy ranged effects like Tracey or Greg had gotten, but I could detect all metal in a sixty-foot radius, more or less. I knew exactly where each gun barrel was pointing, and I could even 'see' the bullets inside the guns.
"Down on the floor!" yelled one of the guards.
"Hands behind your head!" the other one countered.
The phone rang again.
I raised my hands. "One of you might want to get that."
There was no doubt about who was on the other end. Kaiser would be circling the wagons, telling security to lock the building down, probably making it a terrorist threat. Telling them to shoot to kill.
There was a roar from the hole in the wall. One kept his pistol on me, while the other turned back toward the hole. I was pretty sure I knew what was going to happen next, so I braced myself.
Greg, still clad in his ornate armour but with his shield on his back, came up the elevator shaft and out through the hole like he'd been doing it all his life. I personally suspected that he'd bounced off the walls a few times until he got it right, but his entrance was better late than never. I was glad to see that he had passengers: Brian on one arm and Tracey on the other.
He misjudged the landing a bit, probably because of the extra weight. They hit the floor hard, and Greg had to go down onto one knee, the armour over his kneecap smashing a marble tile. I couldn't be certain that the tiles where Brian and Tracey had landed weren't cracked either, but I didn't give a flying fuck. They weren't my tiles.
In the ensuing silence, the phone rang again. Then the guard who wasn't covering me called out in tones of disbelief. "Laborn? Veder? What the fuck?"
I felt vaguely insulted that they hadn't recognised me as yet, but figured that it was the whole lack of glasses and black armour thing.
The guard facing me half-turned his head. "What, really? Laborn?"
"You know," Brian said as he strode forward, "a crapload of things are a whole lot clearer to me now. Gus, I'm gonna take a wild stab and say you're a card-carrying follower of the Empire Eighty-Eight. Joe, I'm not so sure about."
"That's actually a good thing, Joe," I added helpfully. "Just saying."
"I don't give a fuck what you've got to say," said the guy with his gun on me. "Get over there with the rest of them, or—"
"No." Greg stood up. "After the day I've had, idiots pointing guns at me really shit me off." He gestured and both pistols disintegrated, the metal particles flying toward him and becoming part of his armour. "Now, you two can step aside or we will go right through you." He shrugged his shield onto his arm. "I really don't give a damn which one it is."
"What he said." I flipped a shadow-patch onto the floor on the other side of the security barrier, then threw more at the security cameras. The cameras would be blind as long as the patches lasted. One more patch went to the ground at my feet; I stepped into it, and popped up next to the sliding doors.
"Joe?" asked the guy who'd been covering me; I assumed it was Gus. "What the fuck do we do?"
Joe backed up, hands in the air despite not having been ordered to put them up. "What do you think? We step aside and we let them leave. I'm not paid enough to go up against capes, especially if they're leaving."
I noted that neither of them queried Brian's reference to the Empire Eighty-Eight. This meant that either they hadn't noticed it, they figured it wasn't important, or they didn't want to acknowledge it. If I was a racist dirtbag facing off with a black cape, I'd probably choose not to emphasise that part of my lifestyle too.
The phone on the desk continued to ring, but neither Joe nor Gus made a move toward it as Greg led the way out through the security barrier, with Tracey behind him and Brian following up. As they joined me at the doors, Brian turned toward Joe. "Oh, and by the way? I quit."
As an exit line, it wasn't too bad. I smacked the big green let-me-out button, and the doors rumbled open. We walked out of Medhall, still wearing our armour, drawing the curious attention of passers-by. I half expected cop cars, helicopters and guns pointed at us, but it had only been a few minutes since Kaiser had made his getaway. Even if cops were on the way right now, we still had a little time.
The PRT might be a little quicker—I could actually see the top of the PRT building in the distance—but even they'd need time to mobilise.
"Okay, we're out," Greg said, as we set off down the street. "Now what?"
I'd actually been thinking about this. "First, we contact our families and tell them to go to ground. Kaiser is absolutely going to try to grab them for leverage. Second, we get to the PRT building and get our story in first."
"Damn right," Brian agreed. "The last thing we need is a kill order."
"But how are we going to get to the PRT building?" asked Tracey. "Walk? No bus is going to take us."
Brian rubbed his chin. "Once we get hold of a phone, I have a friend I can call."
"One that would give us all a lift?" I asked sceptically. "Looking like this?"
He grinned. "Oh, you have no idea."
End of Part Twenty
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My_Game_Account
Getting sticky.
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Hell yes! The fun has kicked off! Is Greg a mini Magneto or just ferro-kinetic?
SMDVogrin
Getting sticky.
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Pretty sure that Aluminum is non-ferrous, so I think he just controls "metal". Similar to how Skitter controls "bugs", no scientific definition involved.
Sto Odin
Only a very distant relation
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I had been hoping Taylor wouldn't trigger, I admit.
But this? A cluster with all three of them pinging off six capes? That's a real chance to stretch your power-design chops. Will be very interesting.
But this? A cluster with all three of them pinging off six capes? That's a real chance to stretch your power-design chops. Will be very interesting.
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Impartial Panic
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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A Cluster trigger in close proximity to multiple capes for them to ping off of.
Yup looks like Medhall just got a prescription for getting it's ass kicked.
Yup looks like Medhall just got a prescription for getting it's ass kicked.
Lictre
Not too sore, are you?
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He got aluminum from the elevator, so I'd guess he's more of a metallo-kinetic, rather than ferro-kinetic, or using magnetism.
GladiusLucix
Versed in the lewd.
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Also, the "menaced by capes" probably adds a Trump aspect to their new powers.
I'm curious what the mental effects of the cluster are going to be.
I'm curious what the mental effects of the cluster are going to be.
Lictre
Not too sore, are you?
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FFN is being strange, claiming that I'd already commented on a chapter that was just published. So I'll put the review here, as well, just in case it somehow shows up in a while on FFN.
-_-_-
Hmmmm, intriguing! It appears that Taylor's still got an administration-related power, but instead of insect control, it appears that she's a power-administering trump by means of tapping powers from everyone in her radius, and lending them to her allies within that same radius. The interesting question will be how much of which powers were present around her during the cluster trigger-event she will keep for the long term.
From the way she described herself as tapping, rather than stealing and sharing, it appears that specifically included skills, since she tapped the melee skills of the security guards at the entry desk.
If she can identify which powers or skills come from which person in her zone of action, this will become a certified nightmare for certain villains, specifically including Coil and a number of groups. The FIRST thing she should realize is that she needs to drastically understate her actual radius of effect, which might be an approximate 60 feet radius surrounding her. I base that guess on how far out she could detect metal around her.
Her metal detection alone is fairly powerful, since not only can she apparently detect metal at a distance, she can differentiate between the metal of guns and the metal in the bullets, which are contained by the metal of the guns and their barrels, meaning she can differentiate types of metals, as well as shapes and their orientations in space.
I desperately want to see how her power testing goes, both on her own, with Greg, Brian, and Tracey (as a group), then adding other capes in. Adding her power-distribution as a central feature of her specialty, as well as lingering grab-bag cape powers from the triggering. Just WOW on the potential! The tapping and sharing of skills alone would make her an incredible force-multiplier in just about any setting. She walks into a room with a gifted programmer, taps and shares it out... suddenly, everybody within about a 40 foot radius of her, including vertically, can be just as good a programmer! Or surgeon, or .... you get the idea. So long as her powers are working, it sounds like she'd always be the equal of the most skilled person around her, no matter what skill.
-_-_-
Hmmmm, intriguing! It appears that Taylor's still got an administration-related power, but instead of insect control, it appears that she's a power-administering trump by means of tapping powers from everyone in her radius, and lending them to her allies within that same radius. The interesting question will be how much of which powers were present around her during the cluster trigger-event she will keep for the long term.
From the way she described herself as tapping, rather than stealing and sharing, it appears that specifically included skills, since she tapped the melee skills of the security guards at the entry desk.
If she can identify which powers or skills come from which person in her zone of action, this will become a certified nightmare for certain villains, specifically including Coil and a number of groups. The FIRST thing she should realize is that she needs to drastically understate her actual radius of effect, which might be an approximate 60 feet radius surrounding her. I base that guess on how far out she could detect metal around her.
Her metal detection alone is fairly powerful, since not only can she apparently detect metal at a distance, she can differentiate between the metal of guns and the metal in the bullets, which are contained by the metal of the guns and their barrels, meaning she can differentiate types of metals, as well as shapes and their orientations in space.
I desperately want to see how her power testing goes, both on her own, with Greg, Brian, and Tracey (as a group), then adding other capes in. Adding her power-distribution as a central feature of her specialty, as well as lingering grab-bag cape powers from the triggering. Just WOW on the potential! The tapping and sharing of skills alone would make her an incredible force-multiplier in just about any setting. She walks into a room with a gifted programmer, taps and shares it out... suddenly, everybody within about a 40 foot radius of her, including vertically, can be just as good a programmer! Or surgeon, or .... you get the idea. So long as her powers are working, it sounds like she'd always be the equal of the most skilled person around her, no matter what skill.