by Robin Hale
That expression had haunted me since she’d left my apartment. Cloying guilt churned in my stomach as I replayed that split second over and over in my mind. She’d seemed devastated when I’d told her I couldn’t accept the necklace. I lifted an absent-minded hand to the top of my breastbone, feeling for the pendant beneath the lightweight knitted fabric of my sweater. I’d put it on and I couldn’t bring myself to take it off, even knowing that I was unlikely to see Lana again. It had become a focus for my obsessive overthinking, unfortunately, and if I could have brought myself to talk to Jade about it, I knew that she would have told me to either make up with the Silhouette or take off the damn necklace.
She’d tell me that I wasn’t doing anyone any good by existing in limbo like that.
So I didn’t tell her, because I didn’t want to hear it even if I knew that she was right. I sighed and pressed at my eyes, trying in vain not to smudge the makeup I’d optimistically applied before heading into the lab.
I’d hurt Lana.
That much was painfully obvious with enough distance. I’d genuinely hurt her. The thought quickly became an all-consuming one. I’d hurt her. My babbling, my knee-jerk reaction as I tried to regain my footing…I’d managed to hurt the devastatingly compelling woman who had taken every ounce of my attention and had given me hers in return. At least, for a while.
I frowned as I fingered the edges of the gem.
It didn’t fit. The idea that she’d grown bored of me, that she no longer had any interest…it didn’t fit with that look on her face. That pain. Lana hadn’t looked like I’d taken a toy away, she’d looked like I’d carved something out of her chest and had taken it with me.
I’d never hurt Jenna, I was certain of that. I’d annoyed her. I’d angered her. But I’d never landed anything even remotely like a painful blow.
Strangely — perversely — that thought was an uplifting one. Lana must have cared about me. She must have. I wouldn’t have been able to hurt her otherwise. A garbled laugh, something halfway between delight and grief, bubbled up in my throat and I clapped a hand to my mouth.
God, I was a mess. I cast a glance toward the door but saw no one through its window. If Kevin — if Captain Colossal had walked into my office just then, dropped to his knees and professed his undying devotion to me…would I even want it?
The pendant pressed satisfyingly into the pad of my thumb.
I’d spent ages half in love with the Captain, nursing a crush that couldn’t lead anywhere. Nursing it because it couldn’t lead anywhere. But if I could have it, would I want it?
I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that I wouldn’t.
The thought was thrilling. Terrifying. How had Lana burrowed in so deep, so fast? How had she seen me through my excellent camouflage? How had she managed to get past all of my carefully erected defenses?
She was a thief. That should’ve explained it but it didn’t, because she hadn’t stolen my heart. She hadn’t overwhelmed me, hadn’t subverted some rightful claim that the Captain had on me. She’d just seen me. Seen me and liked what she saw. Made sure that I knew that she liked what she saw.
How could I not have given my heart to her? When she saw me as I was and looked at me like I was magic?
Kevin would always be dear to me. He would always be a friend that I loved and appreciated, but he was no longer the person I held deep in my heart, wishing only for their smile. That was Lana. And it might have been Lana since the first time I met her. The horrible feeling churning in my gut began to subside as I let the thought of my affection, no, my…my love for Lana roll around in my mind.
I loved her. I’d been letting the idea settle into my bones, coming to terms with it, but this was the first time loving her had felt like freedom rather than condemning myself to exile. It was the knowledge that I had hurt her that showed me the way out of the desert I’d been stumbling through.
How could I have ever thought of fading back into the background, content with eyes sliding over me, relying on my presence like they relied on gravity but never actually seeing me? How could I think that I would be content to dream of something better but never quite get it?
How could I have ever thought I could go back to being invisible, now that I knew what it felt like to be seen?
A rush of adrenaline swept through me as I resolved myself. I would make it up to her. I pressed my fingers harder against the pendant, relishing the way the metal bit into the skin of my chest. I wanted to always be aware of it, to always have that reminder that Lana had gone out of her way to do something romantic for me. That she’d wanted to see me wearing a gift from her. A smile tugged at my mouth until my cheeks ached with it, and I laughed in the stillness of my lab.
What could I do? I could give her a gift in return, but I knew that I’d never be able to match how perfect the pendant was. I could show up at her apartment again — with a heist movie and something romantic for dinner? Show her that I wasn’t shying away from who she was? No, that wasn’t enough at all. I needed to go to her and apologize, obviously, but the problem was that she thought I wanted to hide her. Cloistering ourselves in her apartment would only convince her that it was true. It needed to be visible. If Lana was hurt because she thought that I was ashamed of her, what better way to prove that I wanted her by my side than taking her someplace public?
My mind whirled with lists and plans, filtering over Opal City’s fine restaurants and looking for the sort of see-and-be-seen restaurant I’d always hated, but that would leave no doubt as to how happy I was for everyone to see us together.
Maybe…maybe La Fontaine? A glass-walled dining room, the city’s elite all around us…surely Lana couldn’t imagine that I was ashamed to be seen with her if I took her there. I’d make sure that they seated us in the center of the room. No hiding. And I’d wear something that would show off the pendant, something low-cut.
I grinned to myself as the plans began to come together. I could fix things and I would. And when I was done, I’d tell Lana how I felt about her, and she would have no reason to doubt that I was proud to have her by my side. Not ever again.
A loud crash broke me from my gleeful planning and sent my heart leaping into my throat. I whirled around to face my closed office door, surprised by the dimmed lights in the hallway. A glance at the wall clock proved what I should have realized — it was well after nine o’clock and the building should have been practically empty as it waited for the next day’s work cycle to begin.
Then who…?
I didn’t have long to wonder about the source of the crash as the door to my lab burst inward in a shower of splintered wood and shattered glass. Instinctively, I turned away from the destruction, flinging my arms over my face and careening into the far wall. The collision jolted through my shoulder in an agonizing wave, every nerve alive with the impact, every inch of my shoulder and back clenching in response as shards of glass and wood licked lines of fire over my exposed skin.
“She’s in here!” A rough, masculine voice cut through the ringing in my ears.
I needed to get out. I needed —
The disorienting feeling of being thrown against the wall and striking the side of my head warred with my self-preservation instincts. I staggered toward the back of the room, toward the emergency exit that would lead into the back hallway. If I could just get there, if I could just get outside I would be safe. The floor swung like a carnival ride, like the funhouses from my childhood where Jade and I had held hands and giggled our way through, stumbling and grinning and wild-eyed with too much sugar.
But Jade wasn’t with me, and the sounds filling my ears were the sounds of pursuit, not music and laughter. I slammed into the side of a lab bench, heavy granite scoring my hip in a deep, bruising blow as I hurled myself forward. I was almost there. Just a few more steps.
My hands were outstretched, grasping at the door handle. If it would just stay still, I was sure that I could —
My aching shoulder screamed again as hands
wrapped around my upper arms and yanked me backward, away from the door I had fought so hard to reach. No! No, I was almost — I was almost —
“Got her!” That rough, growling voice roared past my ear, mixing with the ringing, the alarm, the sirens that I was just beginning to hear over the swirling in my head.
I couldn’t keep my feet under me, couldn’t coordinate my mouth and my lungs enough to shout. I stumbled and struggled and felt wave after wave of pain as hands dug bruisingly into my limbs and bore me out of the building. Eventually, the incomprehensible swirl of color and motion around me went black as something was dragged down over my eyes, and I remembered the panic button in my pocket.
I couldn’t reach for it. I couldn’t get my arm free from whoever was holding me still long enough to trigger the button, but I knew that my moment would come if I were patient. I would trigger the panic button, Captain Colossal would find me, and these guys wouldn’t even know what hit them.
I just had to be patient. I just had to wait.
As I settled into the darkness of the blindfold over my eyes and tried to calm my rebelling stomach, I thought of Lana. Of her smile. Of the way she’d touched me. Of the date I would take her on when I was out of this mess. Whatever happened, it would be fine because on the other side there would be Lana.
26
LANA
Fawn’s apartment was dark when I approached and perched outside the living room window, draped in the late night shadows of the fire escape. Slowly, cautiously, I slid the window up in its track and made my way inside. It’d taken longer than I had anticipated to get sober enough that Izzy would let me out of my apartment to go talk to Fawn. It’d taken most of a pizza, an entire pot of coffee, and a solemn promise that under no circumstances would I operate a motor vehicle for the next thirty-six hours.
It was an easy promise to make, really. I had high hopes that I would spend the next thirty-six hours making up to Molly for my foul mood. A hopeful grin plucked at my lips as I eased my way into the apartment. It wouldn’t do to startle Fawn, not after the way I’d left things.
I paused next to the couch, listening to the stillness of the apartment, and my grin slid from my face. It was quiet. Too quiet. I tapped the side of my phone, and the internal display lit up to show that it was close to half-past eleven. Surely she was just in bed. My plan immediately became less comfortable. I shouldn’t wake her, not if she was sleeping. There was nothing at all romantic about that, even from the perspective of a jewel thief.
But it wouldn’t hurt just to check.
I eased down the hallway into parts of the apartment I had never seen. Fawn’s bathroom was bathed in pink and gold, like all the most beautiful sunsets I’d ever watched. Her hall was arrayed with photographs of her family, of Molly and Ms. Jade Jones. Photos of graduations, of beach trips, of cheesy tourist poses in front of the Parthenon and the Colosseum. There was even a snapshot of Fawn in a bridal carry, flying over some part of the Opal City skyline I couldn’t quite identify from that angle, held in Captain Colossal’s absurdly proportioned arms. There, with no one to see me, I sneered openly at the image. Idiotic showoff.
The last door opened into a beautifully appointed bedroom, linens swept neatly into place, matching lamps winging the bedside tables. And entirely devoid of Molly Fawn.
My heart lurched in my chest and the acrid taste of panic began to gather in the back of my throat. She wasn’t there. There were no sounds of movement in the apartment, and I’d checked it already anyway. She wasn’t there.
Was she with someone else? The thought sprang, unbidden and unwelcome, into the front of my mind like the desperate worry of someone on a sinking ship. It felt inevitable. Irresistible. And I could no more ignore it than I could’ve ignored the sight of a derailing train.
But it was ridiculous. No matter what had happened between us, Fawn wouldn’t run into someone else’s arms like that. If she were with someone else, it would be that journalist friend of hers. Or her family. I thought back to what she had told me about her family and amended my guess. Not her family. Not unless I had fouled things up so thoroughly that even dealing with her parents’ guilt trips was preferable to being alone.
Or — another possibility occurred to me like turning on a lamp and I felt like an idiot for not considering it immediately — she was just at the lab. That thought slid comfortably into place. That was likely it. She was probably using her irritation with me to fuel her focus on some project she was working on. That sounded like my Dr. Fawn.
I turned immediately back the way I had come and slipped out through the living room window. It wouldn’t take long to get to the lab.
SLIPPING into the Opal City Research Laboratory was even easier than the first time I’d done it, which was a bit of a surprise given that the previous time had involved a recently demolished wall and a truly lackadaisical night guard. Unease swept through my limbs as I opened the unlocked front door. I hesitated, waiting for the beep that would suggest an alarm needed to be disabled — entirely within my skillset and not a cause for distress, but still something that would need attention if I didn’t want the police to interrupt my heartfelt apologies to Dr. Fawn — but no such sound came.
I glanced around the entryway. There was the reception desk, several potted ferns, the usual depressing array of office artwork on the walls, and — there. The control box for the security system.
I felt the frown on my face even before I’d consciously registered what was wrong with the image. All of the lights on the alarm box were out. All of them.
Someone had silently disabled the alarm system.
Someone had silently disabled the alarm system and the building was not swarming with police.
That didn’t make sense. There should’ve been a signal drop that alerted the alarm company that the system had been disabled. The fact that it was dark was suspicious, and no security providers other than the most useless would’ve failed to immediately send the police to the lab. Had they gotten complacent with security? Did they assume no one would be so foolish as to attack Colossal’s base of operations?
I approached the box on cautious steps, unsure what else might’ve been rigged if the alarm system had been disabled in such a sophisticated way. The cover of the system lifted easily, and there, set into the circuit board, was a small gray box that blinked an array of LEDs in the rhythm I expected from most modern security systems.
It was a location spoof. A chill ran down my spine. Location spoofing something set into the physical phone lines that still ran throughout Opal City was no small feat.
I needed to find Fawn.
I took off at a run down the hallway, abandoning my earlier caution and darting through the maze of turns and doors to find the entrance to the office and lab she used for her projects.
The squeaking of my boots as I skidded to a halt at the mouth of that hallway split the otherwise somber hum of the machinery running. It looked like a bomb had gone off. The door to her lab was destroyed, shattered into splinters and shards, not even dangling from its hinges any longer.
Oh god. Oh god, Fawn.
Panic swelled, and I fought to force it back down. Panic was the most useless of all human reactions. It introduced confusion. It caused second-guessing. It was practically fatal for a thief. I wouldn’t let it pull me under, no matter how the thought of Dr. Fawn tugged at me.
She must have been terrified.
No — no. It wasn’t useful.
I moved quickly into the room, stepping over glass as well as I could, and surveyed the rest of the lab. It was mostly intact. Whatever they’d come for, then, hadn’t been something they needed to destroy the room to get.
A chime came from the desktop rig to my back, and I whirled in place to see the reflection of its glowing screen in the whiteboard behind the desk. I moved closer and read a dialog box announcing that a query had just completed. I examined the UI, looking until I found the information I was looking for — there. Runtime: 3:06:11.
Fawn had been in her office as recently as 8:30, then.
Certainty settled over my shoulders with an uncomfortable finality. Then she was the prize they took from the lab. She was there. She had to have been. The muscles in my arms and chest tightened to the point of nearly unbearable pain and, strangely, offense. How dare they? Who the hell — in my city! — had the fucking nerve to lay hands on Dr. Fawn?
I skimmed the rest of the result, looking for anything that might tell me what had happened. It was unlikely that her work had anything to do with those who had taken her, but I needed somewhere to start.
The query had yielded a list of names, most of which seemed to overlap with a large swath of the lower level players in Opal City, along with a few I didn’t immediately recognize. They were ranked by a percentage, but I couldn’t tell what was being calculated. It was like a network or graph was being calculated, and it was incomprehensible to me. Damn it. I looked up from the display with a scowl and my gaze immediately lighted on a pair of cork boards near the back of the lab.
Why, hello there. As I approached, the cork boards crystallized into a visual representation of most of the contents of the report I had just skimmed. There were photos of low-level players, a timeline of incidents, of locations, and of connections through various stays in the Vernal Ward prison. Fawn had been working on exactly the same problem that I had been investigating.
The thought was both warming and frustrating. If I’d realized what she was doing, I would have included her in my own work — and Izzy wouldn’t have had to give me shit about ghosting Fawn.
I traced the lines of string that connected names and locations and frowned up at the board. That was…there was a dimension missing, I was sure of it. The second cork board included a map of Opal City and I began to lay out the events in geographical space, taking up Fawn’s spool of string and pinning out the locations. I added in a few from my own notes, disregarded others. It was moderately disheartening that she still included some of my own movements in her graphs, but I could tell she was figuring out that they were unrelated. Unfortunately, given that Fawn didn’t have the benefit of my particular vantage point on Opal City’s underworld, she’d also included some events that I knew to be coincidental. They’d had a spate of bad luck recently, but the document forgers on the east side had been running jobs to the next state over for decades and they would never stoop to including the untried idiots who’d been wreaking havoc lately.
