by E. C. Myers
Neo squinted her right eye. She stepped back and pointed at the Vale Police Department shield on the door. She raised her eyebrows.
The second cop laughed. “I’m just messing with you.”
“Uh, what kind of crime? Are you hurt?” the driver asked.
Sort of, but that’s not the point. She shook her head. She typed again. Roman Torchwick was just kidnapped. She pointed to the top of his building.
“What’s that say?” his partner asked. “I can’t read that. What’s she doing with that Scroll?”
“She can’t talk,” the driver whispered. “She says Torchwick was kidnapped.”
“Torchwick?” The partner looked at Neo. “What do you know about that crook?”
Oops. Maybe that wasn’t the right approach. Never mind. I have evidence that a crime boss has been spying on citizens in Vale. At the highest levels!!! She hoped three exclamation points would convey the seriousness of the situation and put her hands to her head for good measure.
The partner looked around. “Is there a hidden camera? Are we being put on for a show?”
Neo rolled her eyes. Yes, literally hundreds of hidden cameras, everywhere. That was the point. But it was too much to type. She really missed Roman. Most of the time she didn’t need to say anything and he knew exactly what she was thinking.
The exasperation must have shown on her face. The driver narrowed his eyes. “What did you say your name was?”
She started typing Neo, then deleted it and wrote “Trivia Vanille.”
“Right. One second, Ms. Vanille.”
He rolled the window up and consulted with his partner while they ran her name. If not for her father, she would have had a rap sheet for all her crimes and misdemeanors before, all of which paled in comparison to the crimes she and Roman had done.
He stepped out of the car and opened the back door. “Okay. Come with us,” he said.
Neo felt relieved. She doubted she could get the cops interested in saving Roman Torchwick, but they’d definitely be interested in capturing him, and bringing in Lil’ Miss Malachite and Lady Beat.
But they didn’t bring her to the police station like she’d expected. Instead, they rolled up to a nightclub downtown called Junior’s.
Neo raised an eyebrow. Why would the police bring her here? She tightened her grip on Hush. She wasn’t really worried, especially since they thought she was just Jimmy Vanille’s mute and meek daughter. She would let this play out a little longer.
They marched her through the club. She hated the loud music pounding all around her. This looked like the kind of place Melanie and Miltiades would hang out, and she really didn’t get the appeal.
She made note that there were a few exits, and each of them was guarded by a man in a suit with red aviators and a red tie. Similarly dressed goons, obvious members of some crime organization, were situated throughout the establishment. In fact, there were more of them than there were customers, so it didn’t seem like the business was doing particularly well.
The music stopped when the cops were spotted. A tall man with a scraggly beard walked up. Neo thought he was just another bouncer until he greeted the cops by name.
“Officers Dunn and Looney. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“We’re here to see your father.”
“In the back.” His eyes moved down Neo’s body. She gritted her teeth and concentrated on not kicking him in the face.
“She’s eighteen,” Officer Looney said.
“Right.” The man wandered off.
They shepherded Neo through a back hallway and then through another large room—a casino. No one looked up as they passed through to another door, which led to another short corridor with a steel door at the end of it. If this were a video game, that would be the door leading to the final boss.
So Neo was a little disappointed when the door opened and she was propelled into a messy office. Behind a modest desk sat a broad-shouldered man with long, graying black hair and a bushy beard, wearing a loose pinstriped suit. He was missing most of his left ear. On his left was a willowy woman with a smart brown blazer and matching skirt. Neo noticed a familiar triskelion pin on her lapel, marking her as a Browning Academy graduate. The woman took more interest in Neo when she noticed the identical pin on Neo’s lapel—both of them illusory replacements for the real thing, just for show.
“Good work, boys,” the man said in a gruff voice. “See Junior for your weekly bribe.”
“Do you need to call it that, boss?”
“I call it what it is. You call it whatever you want. The money will spend the same. Now leave us.”
Officer Dunn patted Neo on the shoulder. “I don’t know what you did, but good luck.” Then he left with his partner.
Neo didn’t know what she had done, either. She had done a lot of things, but she didn’t know which one it was that had gotten the attention of whoever this guy was.
“Please, have a seat. Would you like something to eat or drink?”
Neo shook her head and sat down.
“You don’t remember me, but I’m a friend of your father’s.” He pointed to a photo on his wall of him and Papa standing together outside one of Papa’s warehouses on the waterfront. Judging from the amount of hair still on Papa’s head, it had been taken a few years earlier.
“I’m Hei Xiong. You can call me Uncle Hei. I didn’t see you around the house too often, but I used to bring you presents. Fairy tales mostly. Something told me you liked to read.”
Now she remembered him. He had been at that party the last time she’d been picked up by cops in the city.
She remembered those books, too. She had wondered where they’d come from, because her parents certainly never would have thought to buy them for her. She’d particularly liked the story about the girl trapped in the tower by her evil father. She could relate, though not so much with the powerful magician coming to her rescue. If only real life were more like the stories she liked to read.
She nodded and typed on her Scroll. Thank you. I loved those books.
“Good. I’m glad.” He smiled. “I’ve been looking for you for a while. That’s why I had the boys keep an eye out for you, in case you turned up.” He shook his head. “Your parents did a good job of hiding you.”
Hiding? Neo raised an eyebrow.
“But now that I’ve found you, I have the leverage I need to renegotiate my deal with Jimmy. He’s been cutting me out more and more, and I can’t say I like it.”
Neo’s jaw dropped.
“I don’t like to involve an innocent girl in my business dealings, but I promise you’ll be treated well.” He looked at the blond woman behind him. “My associate Stella will take care of you. Anything you need.”
Neo stood and shook her head.
“No? What do you mean, ‘No’? I wasn’t asking.”
That isn’t why I’m here, she typed. I have information.
Xiong leaned back in his seat and chuckled. “She has information. Okay, whaddaya got?”
Neo looked at Stella nervously. Which was he more likely to be interested in? The data drive and the surveillance plot or Lil’ Miss Malachite kidnapping Roman Torchwick?
Neo blew the bangs out of her eyes. She might as well go “all in,” as Roman would say.
She held up a finger, telling him to wait a moment. This was going to take her a moment. Then she typed:
Lil’ Miss Malachite has been spying on everyone in Vale using cameras hidden in alumnae pins from Lady Browning’s Preparatory Academy for Girls. She used that surveillance network to locate Roman Torchwick and she kidnapped him tonight.
Xiong looked shocked. He glanced at Stella, who had taken off her pin and was staring at it.
Xiong took it from her, took out a pistol, and smashed the butt of the gun down on the pin. There was a tiny puff of smoke and Neo smelled burnt Dust. He poked through the components with a pen and then picked up a tiny, broken lens.
“I’m so sorry, sir. I had n
o idea,” Stella said.
Xiong clenched a fist. “What’s done is done. Why should I care now, if Malachite is leaving and taking Torchwick with her?”
Neo needed him to believe her. She typed, Torchwick has the data drive with all the business you’ve been conducting for the last six months on it. Malachite is going to use it to take you down and take over your operation in Vale.
Xiong’s face turned red. He was silent, and then he nodded. “Sounds like something she’d do.” He pointed at Stella without looking at her. “Get the Bullhead ready. We’re taking a team to go after her.”
Stella hurried out of the room.
Thank you, Neo typed.
“I don’t know what your whole deal with Torchwick is, but you’ve fallen in with the wrong crowd. Obviously. I’m going to set it right—you belong home with Jimmy and Carmel. And I’ll take you back there, as soon as Jimmy agrees to my demands.”
You’re going to ransom me? Neo typed.
“Ransom is such an ugly word.”
I call it what it is, she responded.
He laughed and wagged a finger. “You’re clever all right. Jimmy always said you were a handful. I see where he’s coming from. I wish I had a daughter like you instead of my idiot son.”
Neo changed into his son, Junior, and winked.
“What the—?” Xiong practically fell out of his chair as he scrambled backward.
Neo stood and changed back to herself and unsheathed the blade in her parasol. Xiong drew a gun, but she knocked it out of his hand easily and cornered him, the sharp tip pressing against the artery in his neck.
She put a finger to her lips. Don’t make a sound.
She pulled out a pair of wrist restraints she had lifted from Officer Looney on his way out of the office and bound Hei Xiong with them.
“You aren’t going to get away with this,” he said.
She stuffed his tie into his mouth to keep him quiet before she changed into him, so his panicked screams were muffled. She stowed him on the couch and used her Semblance to disguise herself as him. Then she opened the door wide and found Stella waiting.
“We’re ready to move out, sir,” she said.
Neo nodded. She made sure Stella and the two bouncers she’d brought with her could see “Neo” sleeping on the couch. She once again gestured for them to be quiet, then pointed at the two guards and then at the door. They nodded and locked it behind her, then took up positions on either side.
Neo followed Stella through another twisty path of corridors to an elevator, which they rode to the roof. There, a small gray-and-black aircraft waited for them. Neo headed for the copilot seat.
“Sir? You usually sit in the back.”
Neo fixed an intense glare on Stella and held it steady until the woman blinked. “Of course. Buckle in.”
Neo carefully watched Stella’s preflight sequence and everything she did to get the Bullhead up in the air. She followed along on the user manual she had pulled up on her Scroll and compared the console to the diagram.
“Where to?” Stella asked.
Neo pulled out her Scroll and opened her tracking software. It took a moment to acquire a signal from the CCTS, but soon it fixed on a pulsing blue dot, moving steadily to the east.
There you are, Neo thought. Good thing Roman never left home without his hat.
She stuck the Scroll to the dashboard. Stella gave her a skeptical look, but she adjusted course to follow the map. Thirty minutes later, she pointed down through the windshield.
“We have visual on Lil’ Miss Malachite,” Stella said.
Neo leaned forward and looked down. About half a kilometer below them a purple sedan was driving ahead of a convoy, which was where Roman most likely was.
“Sir? Do we engage? Once we get close enough to attack them, they’ll be able to hear us. They’ll know we’re coming.”
Neo turned and looked behind her. There were a dozen of Junior’s bouncers back there, wearing helmets with red visors and combat vests, armed with machine guns. Neo waved at them and they looked at each other confused for a moment before waving back.
Then she reached for the button that would open the cargo door.
“Not that one!” Stella covered the button with her hand. “What do you think you’re doing? Sir.”
Neo smashed her fist against Stella’s hand, pushing the button. The doors opened and the men in the back were blown out of the Bullhead.
“Oh my gods!” Stella twisted around and saw the empty cargo hold. “Thank the Brothers they had parachutes. Why did you do that?” she shouted.
Neo dropped the Hei Xiong illusion. Stella gasped, but she was so surprised, Neo was able to reach over to unbuckle her seat belt. She pulled the woman out of her seat and tossed her into the back.
Stella managed to catch herself before she stumbled out the cargo doors. She pulled her gun and started firing at Neo. The windshield took two bullets and started to spiderweb.
Neo faced forward and pulled back on the stick, bringing the Bullhead sharply upward. She heard a shriek and when she glanced back, Stella wasn’t there anymore.
Did she have a parachute? Neo wondered. She shrugged and set a course for Malachite’s convoy.
Roman woke up groggy in the back of a convoy. His hands and legs were tied and he was buckled into a seat.
Slowly, through a throbbing headache, he remembered what had happened. Lil’ Miss Malachite had captured him and was taking him back to Mistral.
Neopolitan had turned him over, after he had spent months teaching her everything he knew, except how to double-cross someone. She was a natural at that.
He pulled on his bonds, testing whether he could slide one of his hands free, but he’d been tied up real good. He wasn’t alone back here, either. There were four Spiders guarding him, and two more in the front, one driving and another riding shotgun.
“Uh, we’ve got incoming,” one of them said.
“Looks like one of Hei Xiong’s fleet.”
“Should we fire on them? They’re getting kinda close.”
“What’s that hanging out the back?”
“It looks like … a girl?”
Roman’s ears perked up. He craned his neck to try to look out the front window. He managed to unbuckle his seat and hop to the front.
“Get back there!” The goon in the passenger seat smacked him in the forehead with the butt of his rifle.
Roman tumbled backward. The knock on his head wasn’t doing his headache any favors, and for a moment he saw stars. But he also had seen a beautiful sight: Neopolitan was holding on to a line dangling from the back of a Bullhead, paragliding with her umbrella.
I hope that thing holds out, he thought.
He heard a thud on the roof of the convoy.
“What was that?”
“The girl! She’s on top of us!”
The convoy swerved back and forth on the road, bouncing Roman painfully all over the back of the convoy. One of the Spiders finally grabbed him and held him in place on the floor with a heavy boot to the groin.
“Thanks,” Roman groaned.
“I’m sure we lost her,” the driver said.
The footsteps on the roof proved him wrong. A clang and a sword tip appeared in the metal. It started to move in a rough circle, like a can opener.
The four Spiders in the back started firing at the roof. Roman heard an intermittent drumbeat as Neo dodged the gunfire—and then it stopped. The Spiders kept shooting for a while until it seemed like the coast was clear.
“She’s hanging off the right side!” the Spider in the front called out. Then: “Hold on, she’s gone. Must have fallen—”
The circular cutout in the roof fell in, and Neo landed in the center of the convoy.
“What?!” one of the Spiders shouted.
Neo quickly surveyed the situation, counting the Spiders and taking note of Roman. She moved toward him even as they tried to shoot her, swinging her parasol to deflect their guns to shoot at on
e another. More bullet holes appeared in the roof, sides, and floor of the convoy. The metal groaned under the stress, and the ride got bumpy again.
As Neo reached Roman, she whipped her parasol up to cut the ropes binding his feet and hands. She continued the motion to bring the parasol behind her and popped it open, just as more bullets rained down on the two of them. The reinforced canopy blocked the artillery, which bounced off and ricocheted around the cabin, causing yet more structural damage.
“Nice of you to drop in,” Roman said.
Neo rolled her eyes and handed him his cane. He kissed it, then looked at Neo. “Hey, we haven’t been separated for four years.”
Neo tipped her head behind her.
“I know. On three.”
Neo turned and put her back against Roman’s, still holding her parasol up as a shield.
He counted silently, holding up his fingers so she could see them. One. Two. Three!
On three, Neo and Roman moved counterclockwise, switching places. Roman fired a flare from his cane at the Spiders and they scattered out of the way. The flare blew a hole in the side of the convoy, which shuddered and veered wide. It hit the center divider and scraped alongside it, sparks flying through the air.
The convoy jerked to the right, knocking Roman out of the gaping hole in the side. Neo reached out for him as he fell behind the vehicle. He fired the grappling hook in his cane toward the top of the convoy and it caught on. He instantly retracted the line to pull him up onto the roof.
Neo had anchored the line from the Bullhead to the roof of the convoy. Roman grabbed on to it with one hand and then extended the handle of his cane down into the vehicle. Neo hooked the handle of her parasol around it and he lifted her up.
Neo grabbed on to the line, too, and when he nodded, she sliced through the end of it, separating it and them from the convoy. They held on tight as they lifted higher and drifted away from the road. Pieces of the vehicle were falling off and it didn’t look like it would last much longer. Shots rang out at them from the passenger seat and new vantage points in the side. More shots came from Lil’ Miss Malachite’s ride in the front. The woman herself was watching him and Neo intently.
