by J Bennett
Ash Anders doesn’t forget.
Neither do I. “You were out of position,” I say to Mermaid. “You were supposed to provide cover for Gold.”
She glances at me then back out the windshield. “I thought you’d gotten the mayor. I was moving toward my exit.”
“I never had him.”
“I misheard.” Her voice is steady. “It was loud.”
“Strange,” I say.
“It’s fine,” Sequoia speaks up. “Gold’s only stunned. He’ll come around in another hour or so.”
“It was only shining luck,” I say. “That could have been a kill laz.”
“We all knew the risks,” Mermaid whispers, almost to herself.
“Let us not focus on what could have been,” The Professor says. He can barely keep the grin off his face. “This night has been a triumph. Tomorrow, the whole country, no, the whole world will be talking of our heist.”
I slump back into my seat. Ash Anders is looking at me, but I turn my face toward the window and watch the road slip by.
On the way back, The Professor keeps up a mostly one-sided convo, idly planning the hostage vid we will shoot the next day. Ash Anders asks small, safe questions that Sequoia answers. Eventually, the talking dies away and we each retreat into our own reflections while Anders fires off messages to his staff and takes another call from the Chicago Chief of Police and repeats his code again.
I close my eyes as exhaustion ripples through me. Was this all worth it? I remember Alby’s video, the sun on his pale face. I hope so, but I’m becoming less sure.
All is quiet until we cross over into Biggie LC.
“Something’s wrong,” Mermaid says, her voice flat. She almost sounds weary.
“What?” The Professor snaps.
The soft glow of her bowtie highlights Mermaid’s high cheekbones. “The cams haven’t moved for the last ten mins. They’re on auto.”
Two small cam drones sit in the car with us, the other two cling to the outside. One drone sits on the dashboard and the other hangs in the back corner. There’s little room to maneuver, but now that Mermaid mentions it I haven’t heard the soft buzz of the lens adjusting or seen the cams rotate in the last few mins.
“Maybe Leo went to bed,” Sequoia says.
“Right in the middle of our biggest heist?” I’m already shaking my head. No, Leo will be waiting for us in the lair. I can almost see the tight expression in his amber eyes. He’ll be raging pissed at the risks we took tonight, but he’ll also recognize the sheer ratings potential we’ve handed him. I bet he’s already working on teasers with tonight’s footage to drop on our show Stream, and of course, there’s the hostage vid to begin planning.
I stare at the quiet cam, passively recording. Leo wouldn’t go to bed. He wouldn’t put the cam on auto. Fear lances through my stomach and suddenly the exhaustion weighing me down like an unpowered exoskeleton evaporates.
“What did you do?” I growl at Ash Anders.
He holds up his hands. “Nothing. Not yet.”
“He couldn’t know where Leo is,” Sequoia tells me gently. “If he wanted to stop us, he could send our GPS coordinates to the authorities at any time.”
It’s true, but the emotions inside of me slosh angrily, desperate for an outlet. I drop back into my seat, my shoulder bumping Ash Anders.
“It could be Beacon,” Mermaid says.
We all digest that terrifying possibility as our car slowly cruises the quiet backroads of Biggie LC. The Professor orders the car to pull over two blocks away from the mansion. Someone has to go check out the situation.
Mermaid is our best fighter but she volunteers to guard Ash Anders. It’s a surprising decision. Babysitting our hostage won’t get her any screen time. Then again, our producer isn’t filming, so maybe this is a canny move on her part. As I consider the possibility of Beacon waiting to ambush us, I wish I’d requested hostage-watching duty.
Just as I’m about to open my car door, Gold sighs. His head lolls on Mermaid’s shoulder and she touches his leg.
“Gold?” she whispers.
“I think…” his voice is soft, webbed with dreams. “… I fell.”
“We caught you,” Mermaid says.
“Good.” He puts his hand on top of hers and is quiet.
“He’s coming round,” The Professor states, sounding relieved. For all his excitement and gloating over the past few hours, I’ve noticed his eyes darting to Gold again and again and the way he’s been gnawing his lip. It can’t be easy asking others to put their bodies on the line for you.
The Professor looks away from Gold and turns to me. “You two had better go, assess the lair.”
I nod.
“Be careful,” my boss says quietly.
If Beacon is lying in wait, we won’t be coming back. It’s the reason our boss isn’t going with us. No sense in giving up our vil after we just pulled off such a lobotomy heist. I open the car door and step out. The night seems chillier. Dawn is still a few hours away.
“Shining luck,” Ash Anders says, a little smile playing on his face.
Without a word, I close the door. The sky spits down a light drizzle. I take a breath and then Sequoia is by my side, a weak smile on his face.
“Here we go again,” he murmurs.
“Record yourselves with your Bands,” Mermaid calls out the window. “And put on your goggles so we won’t have to blur your faces.”
Oh, right. I sheepishly open the car door again and dig around the pile of my discarded clothes on the floor until I find my green-tinted goggles. I slip them over my eyes then trace the pattern to turn on my Band. The screen alights and resolves into the pudgy, unshaven face of my Totem.
“What’s happening? Why was I turned off? Why are you dressed all glam?” Bob tosses these questions at me and burps. He doesn’t allow me to answer. “Your Iron Stream has 500,432 followers and 82,342 pings. You’ve got another interview request from Reena Masterson and sixteen requests from other outlets still pending. Oh, and your Alice Stream has one ping. Ollie wants to know when you can study.”
“Quiet,” I hiss at him. I’ll have plenty of time to study for the chem midterm in the hospital or the Biggie LC jail – both equally likely destinations if Beacon is indeed waiting for us.
Sequoia puts his goggles into place and turns on his Band. “Good evening, Chauncy,” a beautiful female sprite says from his screen. “What can I do for you?”
“Just record me,” I mumble to Bob. “Don’t post.”
“Hi, Evangeline,” Sequoia says. “I’d like you to start recording until instructed to stop.”
“Whatever,” Bob says.
“Of course,” Evangeline chirps.
As we walk to the mansion, the rain seeps into my dress, gradually flattening the ruffles. I can practically hear Tickles the Elf whispering for me to start some jaunty banter with Sequoia. This is primo lens opportunity right here, but all I can do is watch a reel of Beacon’s best fights play in my head.
There was that epic fight on top of the BLC Express against The Professor that put her name on the map. Then the time she took on the entire Beast Horde at the end of Season Six and put Cerberus in traction. I see her in my mind tearing through Cleopatra’s serving men, pummeling Evil Santa’s lunatic elves through Iconic Square, and tossing Lotus Ninja across an entire warehouse with her Aura Arcs.
Hell, just last month, she survived a gritty punch-fest with Zombie Lord and then crushed half the League of Darkness with Shine by her side. They say Lady Silver still has a limp from that fight.
“How are your feet?” Sequoia’s voice pulls me from my spiraling dread.
I look down at my bare feet. They feel numb with cold. “Fine,” I say and shiver. I tuck myself closer into Sequoia’s big body. The rain flattens his wavy orange hair and it dangles into his goggles.
“What will you do if Beacon’s in the lair?” I ask.
He’s quiet for a moment and then a big, warm jacket drapes over my
shoulders. It’s a little musty from all his nervous sweating, but I appreciate the warm shield from the rain.
“I’m going to fight her,” Sequoia says. “We have to. It’s our job.”
“I was thinking about running away and screaming,” I admit and pull the jacket tighter around my body.
“Well, maybe your screams will distract her and I’ll get in a hit or two before she knocks me out.” He gives me a wan smile, but it’s not really a joke. Sequoia is an excellent fighter, but Beacon is the best. She is a master of practically every fighting style, and with her Light Blade in hand, she’s practically untouchable.
No one has ever been able to beat Beacon, and Sequoia and I certainly won’t succeed where hundreds of vils and henchmen have failed before.
The mansion looms ahead of us. I pull my stun laser from my purse. Sequoia has his at the ready. When we approach the front door, I shrug out of his jacket and he leaves it on the porch. My dress is heavy with rain and tight across my body. It won’t do me any favors in a fight, but maybe if I get tangled in my own ruffles I’ll make one of those “Hilarious Henchmen Fails” listicles I see popping up in my Stream every week.
The lights blink on in the foyer as we enter the mansion. My heart clobbers painfully in my chest as I swing around, casing the room with my stun laz. I cover Sequoia as he pulls away the trick bookshelf and puts in the secret code to bring up the hidden elevator.
We squeeze into the small elevator and it descends. Next to me, Sequoia is jumpy with nerves. I see Leo in my mind. Did Beacon hurt him? I try to imagine Leo fighting or running, desperate to escape her clutches, but I can’t see it.
Leo is too much of a pragmatist. He’d know better than to try to fight Beacon. No reason to take a pointless punishment. I can almost see him holding out his wrists, resigned as she clamped her energy cuffs around them.
Sequoia steps out of the elevator first, panning the open training area with his gun. I put my back to his and gaze around the connected lab area. The lights flicker on at our movements, sweeping the shadows away.
The room seems untouched. There’s the ancient chalkboard, still filled with our plans for the bank heist. Sequoia’s rack of beakers sits on a cluttered tabletop. There’s no one here. I take one step forward and then remember one of Tickles’s most strident warnings.
Quickly, I look up, panning my gun across the ceiling. So many henchmen forget to look up, and they pay the price. Hummingbird was particularly good at hovering above her enemies and dropping down on them when they least expected it.
Sequoia looks at me.
“Go to Leo’s office,” I tell him. “I’ll check on Shine.”
He nods. We move to the hallway and then split in different directions. It only takes me a few strides to reach Shine’s cell. The door is still closed but it now sports a wide hole, like someone used a fire gun to melt out a big circle.
It was a messy job. Low budget. No glam at all. But the hole is big enough.
“Empty,” Sequoia calls from down the hall. “No Leo. All his editing equipment is still here though.”
I take three slow steps forward and crouch next to the hole in the door of Shine’s cell. I already know what I’m going to find but I have to check just to be sure. It feels foolish to keep my gun ready, but I do it anywhere as I stick my head through the hole and peer into the cell.
“Leo’s gone,” Sequoia says behind me.
I sit back on my knees and lower my gun. “So is our prisoner.”
Sequoia looks confused. “What do we do?”
I set my expression. The cams are still rolling, after all. Now is not the time to look weak.
I look up at Sequoia and push back all the worry and doubt flooding through me. “We get Leo back. That’s what we do,” I tell him with as much confidence as I can muster. “But first, we find a new lair.”
Chapter 18
Of course I’m a natural blonde. ~ Beacon, Ask Me Anything forum on personal Stream
~
“Our show got swiped.”
These words drag me from a tangled, fitful sleep. “Uh?” I moan. I force my eyes open and stare at a decorative sconce on my wall. Except I don’t own any decorative sconces. I wouldn’t waste expensive material cartridges to print something so useless.
“Did you hear what I said? Is that big lout still sleeping?”
I push myself up into a sitting position and immediately realize that everything is wrong. This isn’t my soft, multi-colored blanket wrapped around my legs. These aren’t my peach pajamas I’m wearing. I’m not even in a bed.
Where am I? What happened? And who do these deliciously comfortable peach pajamas belong to?
And then it comes to me. The compromised lair, which also meant a compromised apartment. Fleeting memories wake in my tired brain.
A quick hustle out of the mansion with Leo’s editing equipment cradled in Sequoia’s arms.
A short, testy discussion with The Professor inside Mermaid’s car.
Ash Anders’s bemused smile.
The drive over here—to Sequoia’s house—just as dawn’s light cracked the hold of darkness.
I remember Sequoia offering Ash Anders his bedroom. The Professor took the guest room. It’s not like he could go back to his penthouse in our building either. And then Sequoia insisted I take the couch.
I look down and see my big friend sprawled on the floor, snoring away as bright sunlight from the window pours over him. He’d meant to print an air mattress for himself on his Anders 3100 3D printer, but I guess he didn’t want to wait the hour it’d take. I could barely keep my eyes open while Sequoia printed me these PJs and blanket. I must have conked out before he even printed himself a blanket.
“I said OUR SHOW GOT SWIPED!”
“I heard you,” I snap at Gold who stands just inside the living room, both hands pressing on either side of the opening to the hallway. “Looks like you’re talking in complete sentences again. Shining job.”
He’d barely been able to string two words together last night when Sequoia half dragged him to the couch in the office. Mermaid had insisted on putting him to bed.
“Yes, my courageous injury was quite severe, but I have fully recovered to heist another day,” Gold proclaims. I notice that he’s reapplied his gold lipstick and painted gold bars down his face, which disappear and then reappear from the edges of his golden goggles.
“Wait, we got swiped?” I cry. His words are finally sinking in. I try to stand and almost fall off the couch as the blankets tangle in my legs.
“What?” Sequoia blinks awake. He looks around, confused, his eyes still clouded with sleep.
“Tatiana Wentworth was not pleased when I called her this morning,” Gold says. “She swiped us.”
I flop back on the couch with a groan. All of it was for nothing. If I had any food in my stomach, I think I’d vomit.
“She thought we came all the way to Chicago to steal that old ring.” Gold gives me a wide grin. “I told her we didn’t get the ring. We kidnapped Ash Anders instead.”
“Who’d we kidnap?” Sequoia asks with a yawn.
Gold frowns at him. “You’re really ruining my moment here.”
“Wait, wait, wait…” I swing my hand in front of me, trying to sort all the new info slamming into my brain. “How’d you get Tatianna Wentworth’s personal Stream number, and why were you even gabbing with her in the first place?”
“We needed a representative to negotiate on behalf of the show now that poor, dear Leo is indisposed,” Gold explains. “I humbly volunteered my services.”
“Big surprise,” I grumble.
“I don’t think I printed the air mattress,” Sequoia says. His hair is adorably flattened on one side.
“And The Professor had her private deets, of course,” Gold continues, ignoring Sequoia. “As you oh-so-shrilly pointed out the other day, she is our main sponsor.”
“Was our main sponsor,” I correct. “You just said she swiped us.”
<
br /> “She did,” Gold confirms, “but when I told her that the Mayor of Chicago was our special guest, she rebooted nice and quick.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “She tripled our show’s budget and gave us a guaranteed second season.”
“Holy Buddha!” I shove off the blanket and jump to my feet. Before I know it, I’m squeezing Gold in a hug, and then I’m dragging Sequoia up and wrapping my arms around his wide chest.
“We did it!” I cry. I’m pretty damn sure I could fly right now. After all the fear, all the worry, all the chaos of last night, our show survived after all.
“Course we came through,” Gold says as if our drooling, despo plan was always a sure thing. He wriggles out of my grasp and his brows furrow above his goggles. “But we’ve got a lot of work to do. There’s a hostage vid to record, a new lair to find, our producer to rescue, and an ep to put out.”
The reminder of Leo douses my enthusiasm. I release Sequoia and step back. He still seems a bit dazed but he smiles down at me. I pat him on the shoulder. Gold is right, we do have a lot to do. But it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate all that we’ve accomplished and all we could have lost.
“I’m glad you’re hardy,” I tell Gold sincerely. I notice a bruise on his cheek from where he fell and hit the stage. Still, his smile is as wide as ever.
“Aw, Wholesome, don’t get sentimental on me now,” Gold says. He glances away. “The cams aren’t even rolling.”
I wonder if he can possibly know how much he frightened me last night; how even Mermaid seemed worried for him.
“Now, enough resting and laurels and all that,” Gold says. “We’ve got a brills hostage vid to make.”
*
An hour later, Sequoia’s home is busy with moving bodies and voices. I fiddle with the buttons on my lab coat and discreetly sniff my armpit to see how ripe my uniform has gotten. Two cam drones swoop drunkenly around the main room as Kitty watches them with a wide smile on her face.
“Slower, darling” Gold instructs her. “We want nice, even shots.”
