by Robin Hale
Fawn had confused herself by including irrelevant data.
The shape took form almost immediately. It was stark. It was obvious. It was entirely terrifying because it betrayed the mark of an amateur hand, and an amateur hand was no villain I wanted in possession of brachnine. I spared a moment to thank the universe for Captain Colossal’s swift arrival at Core Labs, and then promised myself that I’d do something to irritate him at my earliest opportunity, in order to balance my internal scales.
My phone was out of my pocket and in my hand practically before I had consciously recognized the location on the map. There was a spider web appearing on that map of Opal City. It reached the furthest streets and neighborhoods and worked more and more densely in the heart of downtown. Newcomers did that. They planned their jobs in relation to the places they felt safest. They didn’t think, or didn’t have the resources, to hide pockets of safety all over the city like I did. They just put themselves at the center of the universe. And taken that way, with all of the relevant information and none of the confounding data, it was clear that the people plucking the strings were doing so — sitting like a fat spider in the center of their web — from the corner of High Street and Hamilton Avenue.
The same intersection where Izzy’s consignment store was.
“Hello?” The phone in my hand crackled to life with Izzy’s voice as the call connected.
“Izzy?” I said urgently.
“Yeah, Lana? What’s up? You know it’s late, right? Shouldn’t you be nose-deep in your girl right now?” Her voice had that strange resonance that always said ‘the shop’ to me. The ceilings there were paneled in that weird acoustic foam, it was more open than either of our apartments, and the entire place always hummed with the sound of its neighbors.
“Are you in the shop?” I didn’t mean for my voice to be so sharp, but there was something happening, something building, and I needed to get Izzy out of the way. I needed her out of the way so I could find Fawn without worrying about anyone else.
“Yeah, I got a call from my security company about a blip, but they sent someone to check it out and said it was fine. I decided I wouldn’t sleep right until I made sure nothing was missing. Why?” Izzy’s voice had the hint of a yawn in it, like she’d been roused from her well-earned sleep by the call.
“Get out of there, Izz.” My mind was moving quickly, drafting the next twelve steps of the plan to get to Fawn’s side and getting her out of whatever mess she’d fallen into. It was probably Colossal’s fault. “Fawn’s gone. She was taken. There’s something — just get out of there. Take your strong box and go home. Or go to my place.”
“Lana, what’s going —”
Even through the phone, the sound of the power failing was unmistakable. And Izzy had never needed much prodding to know when it was time to run.
“Okay. I’m grabbing the box and going.” Her syllables were sharply clipped and she never sounded so much like her mother as she did when shit was hitting the fan. “Don’t — Lana, don’t try to be a hero, okay?”
I was moving through the lab, jotting down a couple of notes from the board before darting down the hall to look at the glass-walled room where I’d returned the atomizer.
Its pedestal was empty. Fuck.
“You know me, Izz. No danger of that,” I said breezily, as though my lungs weren’t currently trying to escape through my ears. “Text me when you’re safe.”
“You too. Love you, Lana.”
“Love you back, Izzy.”
The line went dead, and I was darting from the building as fast as my boots would carry me. I needed my suit, my goggles, all of the little tools and conveniences I kept on my belt. I plotted a route in my mind from the lab to the safe house I needed, then from the safe house to the intersection where Izzy’s shop sat. From there, I’d have to do some sleuthing to figure out where they were keeping Fawn.
Fawn and the atomizer.
Dread settled, low and solid and acidic, in the base of my spine. But first things first. My gear.
I willed Fawn to know that I was coming and that I would hurry.
27
MOLLY
It was time to accept that there was something wrong with the panic button.
The blindfold — or hood? It was difficult to tell — obscured most of my face, but even without my sight, I could tell that we were still in Opal City. We hadn’t driven long enough to get out of the city limits, and there had been a dip, like the driveways that led to the parking garages beneath the buildings downtown. When I was transferred from the van into an elevator, I could hear the faint sounds of the city. It was good. It meant that I wasn’t too far from all the people who cared about me.
All the people who would be looking for me. All the people who might have the ability to help me.
I’d managed to get a hand into my pocket to press the button two minutes after I’d been thrown in the back of my abductors’ van. Captain Colossal’s receiver should’ve pinged right away. His phone should’ve lit up with one of his code-word messages, and there should’ve been a display of my GPS coordinates updating in real time. He should’ve watched the van leaving the lab, heading toward…well, I didn’t quite know that part. But I was sitting in a room that sounded large and open and smelled like an office building.
There was nowhere in Opal City that it should’ve taken the Captain hours to find. It didn’t make any sense.
The only explanation I could find was that, for whatever reason, the panic button had failed. Which meant that I was on my own until the police realized what had happened. I frowned at that. I had been so sure that I had heard sirens when the explosion in the lab occurred. Were they not coming? Had they — oh no, had something happened to them?
Sitting in that strangely open room — surrounded by glass, based on the air currents I could feel and the lack of air conditioning humming in the background — it was all I could do to keep my wits about me as the time stretched immeasurably onward and it became less and less likely that the Captain was coming.
The only thing that kept me from shaking apart in a panic was the way that my captors, in the grand tradition of criminals who were genuinely too stupid for the job, seemed to believe that my blindfold had rendered me deaf as well.
Or — and the thought was enough to send a chill down my neck — they weren’t worried about what they said in front of me, because they didn’t expect me to survive the experience. But then why blindfold me? Why the secrecy? Why had they taken me to begin with? If they wanted the Captain’s attention there should’ve been police sirens. If they just wanted a hostage they could’ve taken anyone. But they had been looking for me. Why?
Their plans were becoming clearer and clearer as time wore on, even as the sound of their voices drifted away from me. There was the sound of a closing door and then silence. Damn it. I couldn’t be confident that I was alone. There might’ve been someone left to watch me, tied as I was to what felt like a conference room chair. But if there were such a person, they weren’t making themselves known.
I twisted my hands in my binds, feeling at the edges of them for the catch or knot that would let me know how to get out. It was with mounting disappointment that I realized that the restraint was a plastic zip tie. I needed something sharp and I had — foolishly — left my pocket knife in my bag instead of in my hip pocket where I usually kept it. It didn’t take too many hostage situations before a girl started to plan ahead, and it was frankly embarrassing that I had been caught as unaware as I was.
“I don’t know how to feel about this, darling.” A familiar drawl broke through my careful analysis of my surroundings, and, despite the blindfold, I whirled to face the source of that velvet purr. “One argument and you’re already running off and getting kidnapped by other villains. It’s enough to make a girl wonder.”
“Silhouette,” I breathed in a near-sob of relief. How on earth had she gotten in? The elevator ride had not been a short one. “How did you find me?”
There was an amused huff of air and I felt gloved hands on the sides of my face, lifting the blindfold away and revealing, even in the dim light, the Silhouette’s fox-like grin.
“This entire block is completely black, except for an extremely well-lit penthouse level. I might not have a doctorate, but I’ve never had trouble sniffing out treasure, my dear Doctor Fawn.”
I wanted to kiss that smile, to nuzzle against her hands. I wanted to apologize for my part in our argument and reassure her of my feelings. But there wasn’t time for any of that. Not with the jerks in the next room planning what they were planning.
“How did you get in here?” I asked instead of any of the things I wanted to say. God, she was beautiful. The truly awful fluorescent light spilling under the doorway didn’t do anything to downplay the perfect peaks of her cheekbones or the way her dark hair tumbled around her shoulders.
“Oddly enough,” the Silhouette said breezily as she set to relieving my ankles of their bindings. “I find that most people don’t bother to lock windows on the seventeenth floor.”
My heart fell into my stomach at the thought of her scaling the side of the building to creep in through the window, even though I was aware, logically, that the danger had past and there was no point worrying about that anymore. There were other things to worry about.
“They would choose the tallest building in Opal City, wouldn’t they,” she continued idly. “Just to be precious. I swear, this whole thing screams amateur hour. I’m almost embarrassed for them. Or I would be,” her eyes flicked up to mine, and even through the goggles, I could see the possessive glint in them. “If they hadn’t touched you. As it is, I’ll happily sabotage something of theirs on the way out. I can’t fly, but if you’ll trust my knots I can get the two of us to the ground perfectly safely, I promise.”
“Oh, no, we can’t just leave!” I blurted before I’d even thought the sentence all the way through.
The Silhouette sat back on her heels and raised a single brow. “You must be joking, darling.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s — they’ve got the atomizer.”
“Yes, I did notice that was missing from your lab.” The Silhouette nodded, still seeming entirely unconcerned. “I don’t see how that prevents us from leaving. It’s inconvenient, but I’m sure you have the plans to make another one if you really need to.”
“No, you’re not understanding.” I tried to pull my hands from the Silhouette’s gloved grasp, and she looked up at me again. “They have the atomizer. They have the bonding agent from the university. They have pressurized gas. They have all those millions of idiotic things they’d been gathering.” The thief at my feet looked unimpressed. “They have brachnine, Lana.”
Her eyes went wide for a moment, then narrowed. “Colossal was supposed to take care of that. I was told they’d all been arrested.”
I shook my head. “Apparently not. We stopped five.”
Lana let out a low breath and a vehement curse. “There were six.”
I nodded, although what I was agreeing with I wasn’t quite sure. That there’d been a mistake? That the Captain should’ve realized, or that I should have? That if I hadn’t been so flustered, I could’ve gotten the information that Lana had been trying to hand off to me that night?
“All the more reason for the two of us to get out of here.” Her hands were on my wrists again. The tip of a sharp metal tool slipped between my skin and the plastic tie that held my wrists together, guided by the carefully placed, leather-clad finger of the woman kneeling in front of me.
“They have brachnine!” I hissed again, willing the words to break through the haze of self-preservation that I could practically see hanging around the Silhouette like armor.
“Nasty way to go,” she agreed. “We should get out of range.”
“They’ve been talking the whole time they’ve had me. They’re going to spread it over the city!” I leaned forward as well as I could, trying to insinuate myself into Lana’s line of sight.
I felt the tool jerk against my wrist, not cutting me, but slipping like I’d startled her.
A sharp shake of the Silhouette’s head sent a tendril of her perfume through the air, and it was a surreal backdrop to the threat of mass murder.
“Brachnine doesn’t like temperature fluctuations.” She sounded like a nervous flyer reminding herself of safety statistics. “If they’re going to set off a bomb, they’re going to find themselves with a lot of useless brachnine.” She looked up from the bonds she was still poised on the edge of cutting and caught my eye. “And I still don’t want you anywhere nearby when that happens.”
It sent a rush of warmth through my veins to hear her say that, even as she seemed to be willfully missing my point. Things weren’t okay between us, but aside from a breezy joke, she hadn’t made mention of it, and I knew that it wouldn’t stop her from protecting me if she could. Her fierce protectiveness was beautiful, and I loved her for it. But I couldn’t let her. Not yet.
“Lana…” I murmured, trying to keep my voice from carrying. “The atomizer. They don’t need high temperatures for distribution. We made the atomizer to solve that problem specifically.” Lana’s eyes narrowed, and I shook my head. “Not for brachnine, exactly, but for other temperature-destabilizing farm chemicals. Fertilizer, things like that. There are a bunch of more eco-friendly options that aren’t viable for small-scale farmers because of cost and — It doesn’t matter.” I shook my head again. “Lana. The point is that they can do it.”
Even behind the goggles, I could tell Lana was narrowing her eyes at me. “And yet you won’t let me get you out of here.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. I couldn’t live with myself if I were safe and the rest of the city wasn’t.”
Lana blew out a long, exasperated breath and sat back on her heels. “So, what are their demands?” She shrugged. “We’ll pay them.”
“I don’t think we can do that.” I bit my lower lip while my heart leapt in my chest. It was the most incredible feeling, having her on my side.
“Please, it’s only money. More common than dirt. Given enough time, we can even make sure it’s paid by people you don’t like.” Lana’s tone was breezy, playful, but I could hear the steel running through it.
“They want ten million dollars, the release of someone named Lars Johansson from Vernal Ward, and a helicopter to take them from this building,” I said with a sympathetic wince.
“Hell.” Lana swept a hand down her face. “Well, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a plan for getting out of Vernal Ward, but it generally relies on my being already inside, and I don’t think we have time to get me convicted of something. Johansson, you said?”
I nodded.
“Fuck. That’s…not ideal, darling.” A muscle in Lana’s jaw jumped and worked as she ground her teeth, staring away from me. “That’s…I should’ve guessed that.” There was a pause, and Lana frowned. “Do they know that they’ve picked a building that isn’t even flat on top? Let alone in possession of a helipad.”
“They seem a bit disorganized,” I agreed. “You recognize Johansson?” I was desperately curious. The name hadn’t come up in my Dangerous Brain investigations and I didn’t have any of my tech that was capable of searching records with me.
Lana swallowed and nodded, and there was so much grim resignation in that simple gesture that I could already feel dread pooling in my gut. “You might recognize him, too, if they called him the Gravedigger.”
The name was a shock to my system like jumping in the lake in January. Oh holy hell. “Oh god.”
Lana nodded again, wryly. “Yes, well. As I said, not ideal.”
‘Not ideal’ was milder than I might’ve put it. The Gravedigger had spent ages as Captain Colossal’s most dangerous enemy. He was the only person I’d ever heard the Captain describe as actually evil. Who would want him out of prison?
“His son, incidentally.”
Oh, I must’ve asked that last b
it out loud. “He has a son?”
Lana’s mouth took on a rueful twist. “The tragic prince of Opal City’s underworld. Powerful friends, no skill of his own. At least, I’d always thought so. Avoided him, myself. Not my kind of lowlife. And I wouldn’t let his father out if I could.”
That, at least, we agreed on. “So then you agree that we can’t just give them what they want.”
Lana’s sigh was theatrical, but genuine for all of that. “I suppose not, darling. Which brings me back to the plan where we fuck off and let someone else handle this.”
I shook my head. “No.”
The sharp tip of a knife slipped through the plastic of my bindings in lieu of a verbal response from Lana.
“No, Lana.” I took her wrists in my grasp and resisted the urge to stroke the fine features of her face. “I know the atomizer. I can disable it.”
Something cracked in her expression, her easy smile turning into a pained grimace. “You can’t expect me to leave you here.” She looked like the thought was no more palatable than gnawing off her own arm or returning everything she’d ever stolen.
“Go find the Captain,” I said firmly. “I used the panic button, but there’s something wrong with it. He should’ve come.”
An elegant brow arched behind Lana’s goggles. “Is this the part where you break your vow to never tell me his secret identity?”
I swallowed. She was right, there was nothing else I could do. I could only hope that he would forgive me for it. Surely, if there were any moment that it was called for, it was this one? I hesitated, lips parted as I tried to force my tongue to shape the syllables.
