by E. C. Myers
It was mostly instinct, and Roman had honed good instincts during his time in the organization. It was a bit of luck.
It also helped that he and Cammie had sparred with each other quite a bit over the years. He had probably trained more with her than he had anyone else in the gang.
“You’re holding back,” Roman said.
“I’m just toying with you,” she said. “You should know the difference. I learned it from you.”
So she was trying to slow him down. For what?
He ducked and felt her fist whiff by his head, nearly knocking off his hat. He swept his cane out low. When he felt it make contact, he twisted to hook her ankle and he pulled. She slammed down hard and for a moment a rainbow rippled across her skin from the impact. He fired at her. She rolled out of the way just in time and disappeared again.
He looked around, but he couldn’t see her telltale shimmer anymore. Either she had stripped for added stealth—it wouldn’t be the first time—or …
He looked up. One of the bare fixtures dangling on a long cable from the ceiling swayed slightly.
“I’ve learned some things from you, too.” Roman shot at the light. The bulb exploded and glass tinkled down. A moment later, Cammie reappeared—in the process of flying toward him. She hit Roman headfirst and pushed him backward. She held tight to his lapel, so that as her momentum carried her in a backflip over his head, she pulled him along with her and flipped him over her head.
Roman soared across the shop and landed in a pile of broken computers with a jarring crunch. The air went out of him.
“Cute.” He wheezed.
“You aren’t bad yourself.” Her skin took on a rosy tint. “Except for that ponytail.”
“What’s wrong with my—” He blinked and she was gone.
Two could play at that game. Roman raised the reticule on his cane and aimed carefully, panning around the room. Something shimmered in the corner of his eye, but he ignored it until he found his true target.
He fired at the light switch by the door and the room plunged into darkness, lit only with dim bands of light from the streetlamps outside seeping through the slats of the window blinds.
“You always did like the shadows,” Cammie said. “People say I have a lot to hide, but you have more secrets than anyone.”
“Secrets are deadly, but the truth kills.”
Roman fired randomly around the room, the resulting fireworks briefly filling it with a red glow. Something caught fire.
The adaptive tech on Cammie’s clothing took a moment to adjust with the sudden shift in illumination, and tiny shards of the broken bulb twinkled in the flickering light of the flames.
Roman kept her in his sights as he continued to fire, scoring three out of five hits on her. The last one broke her Aura and she faded back into view as she stumbled, fell, and skidded to a halt. Roman approached her prone form and rolled her onto her back with his foot.
She glared at him.
“Still glad you came to kill me?” Roman asked.
Her face relaxed. “You idiot.”
“Excuse me? That’s an odd choice for your last words.”
“I didn’t come here to kill you. I came to say good-bye.” She rolled her head in the direction of the door. Spotlights were shining on the front of the store, and Roman saw silhouettes slowly moving in. “They’re here to kill you, in case I failed.”
Roman stared at her in disbelief.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because we might have made good partners once.”
“I work better alone.”
“That wouldn’t be my takeaway from this situation.” She coughed. Maybe from her injuries, maybe from the smoke starting to fill the room. “Consider that you might have gotten what you wanted after all if you hadn’t been in it only for yourself. If you had allowed yourself to trust someone.”
“Life doesn’t work that way. Not mine, anyway.”
The only person Roman had ever trusted, his mother, had left him in a children’s orphanage in Wind Path. That had taught him an important lesson that he would never forget.
Lie. Cheat. Survive.
And maybe it was time to work on that last part.
“Go on. You have to do it,” Cammie said.
Roman lifted his cane over his head.
“Bye, Roman.” She closed her eyes just before he whacked her. She was knocked out cold.
Better that way for her, he thought, as he snuck out the back door. He heard shouting from inside the shop. Sirens from the fire brigade. He’d made a mess of things, just the way he liked to.
He took one of the longer twisting routes back to his old hideaway. He had to get out of the city, but he needed two things first: a change of clothes, because these were all sooty and smoky, and the money he’d packed away over the years—his very small cut of jobs done for Lil’ Miss, the spoils of some of his side jobs, and the more sizable funds he’d been collecting for six months as part of his unsanctioned extortion.
He slid aside the secret panel above the window and reached in.
Empty.
He slammed his fist against the wall. He’d been so careful, but someone had found his hideout and stolen from him. It was probably the same someone who had ratted him out. So much for honor among thieves. They could have at least given him the chance to pay them off for their silence.
Whoever it was must have had something to gain by eliminating Roman. Or a bone to pick with him. He could obviously rule out Chameleon, begrudgingly. But when he found out who it was—
He smashed his cane into his table, cracking it in two. He took a deep breath. He reached back into the hidden compartment and pushed up gently, releasing a second hiding spot. A tight roll of Lien dropped into his hand.
They had taken a lot from him, but not all of it. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for a fresh start. But where?
Nowhere in Mistral would be safe for him with a hit out on him. In fact, if Lil’ Miss really wanted him dead, nowhere in Remnant would be safe.
Vacuo was a good place to hide, but the desert was probably one of the few fates worse than Lil’ Miss. And while there was a thriving criminal element, it wouldn’t be particularly welcoming to a newcomer. There was no future for Roman there.
Atlas?
Roman laughed to himself. Mantle offered slim pickings for criminals like himself. The crime syndicates ran on Atlas money, so it was hard to make a dent on your own. Plus, the price of getting caught was too high. Solitas was also a little too frigid for a fair-weather guy like him.
So Vacuo was too hot; Atlas was too cold—that left Vale. Plenty of territory, lots of opportunity to carve out a niche in the capital city, and those crime bosses had never seen anyone like Roman Torchwick before. As an added bonus, Lil’ Miss had made plenty of enemies in Vale, which made the insider knowledge Roman had of her operations extremely valuable.
He’d be running the show there in less than a year.
Trivia knelt before her bedroom door, probing the lock with a tension wrench and pick rake she’d fashioned from a hairpin. She just couldn’t get this one to open. She consulted the tutorial video “How to Pick Any Lock” on her Scroll once more, and repeated the motions exactly.
She applied gentle pressure to the tension wrench, so it would rotate the plug slightly. Then she scraped the pick against the binding pins. She felt some of them slide up and lock into place above the shear line, but she just couldn’t get one of them to budge. She tried to hold everything in place while she reached for another pick, but the slight movement caused the pick to slip and all the pins fell back down.
No! She had almost had it!
She threw the picks across the room, narrowly missing Neopolitan. Her friend was wearing a brown duster over a rose-pink corset and black tights, something Trivia had seen online and thought might make a fun outfit. It suited Neo, at least.
Neo scooped up the picks and held them up, a smirk on her face.
Trivia gestur
ed at the first three locks that she had managed to unlock, though they had taken her most of the night. Over the last few months, the locks on her door had been increasing in complexity; in the process, she was becoming quite the lock pick. But this last one was just too tricky and too new. She hadn’t even been able to find any diagrams or guides on cracking it yet.
Papa had promised that if this didn’t keep her in, he’d upgrade to a hard light force field, joking that the Altesian tech would be cheaper than putting their local locksmith’s children through Beacon.
Neo’s face lit up and Trivia groaned to herself. That always meant that her friend had come up with an idea that was likely to get Trivia in trouble. An idea she just couldn’t say no to, because it was also too much fun to pass up.
Neo dropped the lock picks and pointed at a can of hair spray on Trivia’s makeup table.
Hair spray? Trivia picked it up. She shot Neo a questioning look.
Neo swept a hand toward Trivia’s night table, which held a book of fairy tales, a hand bell, and a chocolate-scented candle. Trivia guessed and held up the candle.
She studied the two objects in her hand for a moment before she realized what Neo had in mind. She looked up at the girl.
Neo winked.
Trivia lit the candle and wondered how much heat it would take to melt it. She shook the can of hair spray. Did she have enough?
Even if it didn’t melt the lock, the heat would cause the metal to expand slightly, which might make it easier to coax the tumblers into place.
Here goes. Trivia held the burning candle in front of the lock and pressed her index finger against the little button on top of the can, aiming the nozzle at the small flame.
She pushed a little harder, wincing in anticipation.
Neo clapped and Trivia pushed down hard, spraying a fine chemical mist toward the candle.
WHOOSH!
The small flame burst into a plume of fire. Trivia felt the heat on her face. She leaned back and held the makeshift flamethrower steady on the lock. The shiny brass turned black and the paint around it blistered and bubbled. It smelled like melting crayons.
And then the door caught fire.
Trivia gasped and dropped the candle and can. She stomped on the candle to stamp out the flame, but fire continued to envelop the door, smaller, bright blue flames dripping from it onto the carpet.
Neo stepped up to the door and knocked gently on it. She looked at Trivia, her mouth a small O.
The door is made of wood.
Trivia grabbed a pillow and started beating at the fire, but all she did was set the pillow on fire. She tossed it on the ground and kicked it. It burst into a cloud of burning feathers. She rolled her eyes and backed away. The room was filling with smoke, and the fire was spreading rapidly.
Trivia couldn’t call for help of course. She looked down at where she had left her Scroll, on the floor by the door, which was already consumed in fire. So she also couldn’t text for help either.
Do something! Trivia glared at Neopolitan. Neo crouched down and warmed her hands over the spreading flames, rubbing them together.
Trivia looked around her room for something that she could use to put out the fire. Why wasn’t there an extinguisher in here?
All she saw were copious amounts of stuff that would feed the fire: books, board games, clothes. Useless junk that her parents had kept giving her, thinking they could buy her love or make her room seem less like a prison. Stuff that she had fantasized about burning in a bonfire to show them how little she cared for it all.
She coughed and blinked. It was getting hard to see now.
Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to start a fire in a locked room. The damn door was probably going to burn down before the lock melted.
She could have used her hair dryer to heat up the lock instead, she realized now.
She retreated deeper into her suite, but without inner doors to close, she was just buying herself a little time. The smoke was probably going to get her before the fire would.
In the distance, a smoke alarm went off. But Trivia was home alone for the evening. Her parents had gone out and locked her into her room to prevent her from getting into more trouble.
Trivia laughed, but her throat was so raw it came out as a wheezing cough.
She had to open a window.
In the back of her mind, she realized that opening a window would only feed the fire, pulling it through the room more quickly. But if she didn’t get air, she would die.
The window stuck at first. She shoved until it swung open. She leaned out of it, sucking in fresh, cool air. Smoke billowed around her, spilling into the night. Their house was miles from anyone, but she hoped someone would see the smoke in time.
She felt a wall of heat pushing against her back. She looked down. Her room was on the top floor, at the back of the house, about forty feet above the ground. Too far to jump, even if she rolled like she had learned in gymnastics. But her Aura should give her some protection. If only she had something to slow her fall.
She ducked back into the room. She couldn’t see anything now, but she felt her way to her bed and reached under it. She fumbled around, grasping, until her hand closed on the handle of the parasol she had stolen three years before. The one she had used to strike Papa.
She ran back toward the window and leaped, before she could change her mind.
She flew out and away from the burning room and immediately felt relief from the raging inferno. She wasn’t burning anymore, but now she was plunging downward.
She held the parasol up, grabbed on to it with both hands, and pressed the button to open it.
It flew open and she was yanked up and back as the paper canopy caught the air. She dangled as she drifted down toward the sprawling garden. She had seen this in a movie once, but she couldn’t believe it was actually working.
As she drifted down, she felt like Alyx falling through the world. Then she heard a tearing sound. She looked up and noticed the constellation of scorch marks in the paper as the wind and gravity began to rip it apart. She concentrated and patched it up with her Semblance, reinforcing the fragile paper, imagining it as a thin, light, durable film that absolutely would not shred and drop her twenty feet to the ground.
She drifted lower, but so did her Aura—already drained from protecting her from the heat of the fire for so long. She looked down past her kicking legs. Fifteen feet, maybe. She had a choice. Hold the umbrella together for as long as possible, risking a bad fall, or releasing her physical illusion and hoping she had enough Aura left to cushion her landing.
She let go of the illusion and the parasol in the same moment and plummeted, eyes squeezed shut. To her surprise and relief, someone caught her before she hit the ground. She opened her eyes and Neopolitan smirked before her form glitched and Trivia dropped through her briefly insubstantial arms to the ground. Neo covered her mouth in a silent laugh.
Trivia was on the verge of exhaustion, but she kept burning the last of her Aura to hold Neo together. To hold herself together.
Trivia sat at the entrance to the garden, arms wrapped around her knees. Neo curled beside her with an arm over her shoulder. They watched the top floor of the Vanille mansion as it was consumed by flames.
It’s so pretty, she thought.
She heard sirens in the distance at the same time a car roared up the driveway. Her mother shouted at the front of the house, calling for her.
Trivia and Neo waited until Mama and Papa found them. Her parents pointedly ignored Neo, as they always did when she appeared in their presence.
“Thank the Brothers you’re all right!” Mama said.
Papa seemed more concerned about the house than Trivia. He gazed up at the fire eating away at the top floor. A section of roof caved in where Trivia’s room had been. He flinched.
“What have you done?” Papa roared. He rushed toward Trivia and grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her to her feet. “You stupid girl!”
; “Jimmy!” Mama grabbed his arm. “It’s all right. We can fix the damage.”
He shoved her off him, but he let go of Trivia. Her arms stung where he had squeezed them with a clawlike grip. Papa turned away from both of them and resumed watching the window of her room, as if he was expecting something to happen.
Trivia stepped back, appalled. Papa had yelled at her, punished her, even ignored her over the years, but he had never hurt her before.
Trivia looked to her mother for help. She was flustered and confused. “Jimmy, what is it? What are you looking for?”
“She could have blown us all up,” he muttered. “And now the fire department will be in there, and who knows what they’ll—” He shook his head. “Cops too. They’ll want to search the house.” He glanced at his wife. “We could be ruined.”
“I don’t understand. What are you worried about? At least we’re all safe.”
“Forget it,” he said. “Better if you don’t know.”
“It was just an accident.” She looked at Trivia. Her voice hardened. “It was just an accident?”
Trivia nodded.
“I can’t imagine what were you thinking, Trivia.”
Trivia shrugged. She pointed at Neo, who smiled and flipped her hair back. She held the singed and torn parasol over her right shoulder.
“No!” Papa said. “This is all your fault, Trivia!”
“I’m so tired of ‘Neo this’ and ‘Neo that’!” Mama stalked toward the pink-haired girl. “She. Isn’t. Real.”
She drew her right hand back and slapped Neo. The girl shattered into hundreds of small pink shards. Trivia rushed forward and tried to gather the pieces back together but they fell through her fingers. The last of her Aura fizzled out and Trivia collapsed to her knees as the broken fragments of her only friend swirled around her like flower petals in the wind … and faded.
The approaching sirens grew louder. Trivia stared at the empty space where her friend had been, tears streaming down her face. She had felt a shift inside her at the moment Neo had vanished—like her heart had broken, or something had been set free.
