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Vista ducked under the fence, using her power more to minimize her profile than to get around. She was sure that if she was right, if Starcrowned was hiding out if the DWA headquarters, and if she got caught as Vista, she would have to fight the tinker on her own, in their lair. Starcrowned had, after all, made their opinion on the Protectorate very clear.
In part because of that, Vista had come out of costume. Not maskless, of course; she wore all black with a simple domino mask. She’d rather be treated as a young, unknown cape than as a cape connected to the Protectorate, which Starcrowned seemed to hate.
It didn’t seem like anyone was watching, though. Missy heard no alarms being raised and no armed guards came rushing out of the buildings. Vista, it appeared, had all the time in the world to investigate the area.
Most of the buildings were more empty than not; worn machinery and tools collected dust in corners and where they were scattered on ancient shelves. Each warehouse felt abandoned.
Perhaps that should have been unsurprising, not what Vista thought about it. Since it was midnight, everyone who could be would be at home. Still, though, Missy would have expected at least a few guards from the group the PRT officers described. Hadn’t a bunch of them complained about how they couldn’t search the place?
Yet there was nobody there, just like a normal, non-important business place. Nobody was out there because nobody wanted to be.
Except for the capes. Vista could be safe at home, but she wasn’t. She had chosen to come here, to do something above and beyond the call of duty.
Wasn’t that what a true hero did?
Vista had saved the main building for last. If someone was hiding in the DWA lot without the Union’s permission, why would they be in the main building? Even if they were there with permission, the fact that no one had heard any whisper about Starcrowned in the DWA suggested that they weren’t known to most if they were hiding there.
But as Vista approached the back door of the main building, she heard someone. The soft thump of footsteps, the crinkle of a wrapper. Vista used her power to make the slight crack under the door big enough to scramble through.
Once inside, Vista realized she had been a little reckless. Her use of her power had been overly obvious, and the person inside was watching.
Fortunately, Vista recognized the person there.
“Taylor?” Missy gasped.
Taylor was leaning against some sort of counter, near a sink. Vista belatedly realized that they were in a kitchen, full of cold ovens and unlit stoves. Taylor was holding an opened energy bar, though in the low light, Vista couldn’t tell what kind.
“Vista, I presume,” Taylor said. Her tone was mildly surprised and, unfortunately, displeased.
Vista stepped closer, peering at the older girl. She looked fine, healthier and more muscled than the pictures Vista had seen of her. She was wearing a tank top and some non-descript pants, both in dark colors that blended into the shadows. Anything more was obscured. But she was definitely looking very alive for a girl who had been declared dead months before.
Vista vacillated between two responses. Taylor’s death had caused Vista some pain and had caused Miss Militia more, since Miss Militia thought it was her fault. Perhaps Vista should be celebrating Taylor’s miraculous survival. It was for the best. Miss Militia would be delighted. But at the same time, Vista wanted to demand an apology from Taylor.
She ended up somewhere in between.
“What are you doing here?” Vista demanded.
“Getting a snack.” Taylor held up her energy bar.
“No, I mean,” Vista shook her head as she tried to find the words. “I went to Image to try to get them to update my costume. But they were working on your costume, instead. They told me you were going to join the Wards.”
“A bit overconfident, there,” Taylor scoffed. “Working on my costume before forcing me to join.”
Vista hesitated slightly. The anger in Taylor’s voice felt dangerous. But Vista knew her power was only locking and unlocking doors. Vista was far more powerful.
“Is that why you faked your suicide?” Vista demanded. “You didn’t want to join the Wards? You could have just refused! They wouldn’t force you.”
“I faked my death, thank you very much. And they were trying to force me,” Taylor snapped. “They were framing me for orchestrating my own trigger event! And my dad doesn’t have the money to hire a team of lawyers to stop them. So yeah, I did have to fake my death to stop the Protectorate’s schemes against me.”
“I…” Vista didn’t know what to say to that accusation. It had to be false, of course. Thinking otherwise was unimaginable, and a betrayal of her fellow heroes. Heroes simply did not do things like that. But Taylor seemed so certain that Vista didn’t know if anything she said would convince the other girl.
“Now, what are you doing here?” Taylor asked. “Not getting a snack, I presume.” She shoved the entire energy bar into her mouth and began chewing.
“I was looking for a cape. Have you kept up with cape news?” Vista asked. Taylor shrugged. Vista continued; “Well, I was looking for the tinker Starcrowned. Have you seen them?”
Taylor shook her head.
Vista didn’t say anything for what felt like an age. Taylor didn’t say anything either, just chewing. But the older girl’s eyes never let Vista’s. It was a little intimidating.
“I mourned you,” Vista blurted out.
Taylor’s eyebrows rose and her eyes widened. The rhythm of her chewing stuttered briefly. Then she continued chewing and schooled her face.
“I was very excited to have another girl on the team,” Vista explained. “When they told the Image team you had committed suicide, I was devastated.”
Taylor’s eyes bore into Vista’s with the weight of her entire focus.
‘Even if I didn’t find Starcrowned, I’m glad I found you,” Vista declared. “Maybe we’ll be able to work one day, after I prove to you that your recruitment wasn’t going the way you thought it was.”
Taylor held up a finger and swallowed her mouthful.
“I apologize for disappointing you,” Taylor said. She shook her head sadly. “But you should not be glad you found me. This risks destroying my life.”
Vista groaned out loud.
“You’re being dramatic,” she scolded Taylor.
“You should not be here,” Taylor said evenly. “You should not have come here.”
Vista scowled. “Why not?” she demanded. “I have as much right to be here as you.”
“Do you? My father works here. I was given permission to hide here by all those who work here. And I am loyal to the Association,” Taylor said coolly. “I know you cannot say the same.”
“Fine. So I don’t have permission to be here,” Vista snapped. “Is that all?”
“That is not why you should not be here,” Taylor said. She leaned forward slightly. “You should not be here because I cannot trust you to keep my survival a secret.”
Vista shrugged.
“Seems like a you problem,” Vista said. “Miss Militia needs to know. She’s been shaken ever since you tricked her.”
“And I suppose how I feel matters not at all,” Taylor said. Not bitterly, though, which Vista would have expected from her words. It was more amused than resigned, but a mix of both. Taylor continued, “I suppose your intent, though clearly stated, does not matter.”
Taylor shoved herself off the counter. Only now did Vista realize how tall Taylor was. She loomed over her. It would have been a bit intimidating even if Taylor were as skinny as in her pictures, but her muscles made it worse.
“Are you…” Vista trailed off. What would Taylor do? Try to beat her up to extract a promise from her? Try to kill her? How serious was Taylor?
But Vista was still the stronger cape by far. If Taylor charged, she would step aside, stretching space to make her step carry her across the kitchen. No. That would put her in an unfamiliar building with a potential hostile familiar with the building. Better to get outside, in the open, where Vista could take a single step from warehouse to warehouse and outpace Taylor easily. Vista used her power to pull the crack of the door open wide.
“Sleep,” Taylor said. Her voice sounded like something more than a voice.
The darkness of sleep seemed to call, easily within reach. Vista’s knees buckled. Taylor moved forward gracefully and caught Vista before she fell to the ground.
“Impressive, that you haven’t succumbed to my command,” Taylor said. “You must be stubborn.”
Missy struggled as the call of sleep seemed to grow stronger. But Taylor didn’t let go or ease up on the master effect.
“Sleep,” she said again.
Missy slept.
When Missy woke, her first thought was that she had horribly underestimated Taylor’s power. It wasn’t really her fault. The Image team had been sure Taylor’s power was locking and unlocking doors. Maybe it was, but Taylor clearly had some sort of verbal Master power.
Missy wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Missy’s second thought was to wonder where she was. She was lying on her back on something hard. A floor, probably, though there was something softer under her head. Above her, she could see a ceiling with a half-pained mural. Missy could make out some figures and trees in the background, but most of the foreground was just blocky outlines that Missy couldn’t make sense of. The walls seemed to be made of some sort of white stone or concrete. Missy couldn’t see any cracks in it. Between the ceiling and the walls, instead of a normal, boring corner, there were strips of light that gently illuminated the whole room and particularly the mural.
Missy sat up slowly. Her vision swam before clearing up.
The room she was in wasn’t very large. It was around twice the size of Missy’s bedroom…
But normally, Missy simply knew the exact dimensions of a room or object on sight. But the numbers weren’t coming to her. She had no clue how many inches long the room was.
Missy knew, academically, that her power hadn’t always been there, that there was a time when she had been powerless and fine with that. But her simple inability to see the precise dimensions of the room made Missy panic.
Still sitting, Missy tried to flex her power. She tried to shrink the room. She tried to stretch the room. Her breath came faster. The room remained static.
A scream gathered on Missy’s lips.
A door thudded closed.
Missy turned around, the scream dying on her lips. There was a door, painted a pale blue and set into the wall. The only door, Missy realized belatedly.
Taylor stood in front of it. Missy guessed she had just come in, though Missy had no way of really knowing.
“What did you do to me?” Missy demanded.
Taylor just sighed. Missy scrambled to her feet. Fortunately, she was still wearing her clothes from her excursion, though her face felt bare.
“It is temporary,” Taylor said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you kidding me?” Missy laughed involuntarily, and not from amusement. “You’ve kidnapped me, and you’re telling me not to worry?”
“Oh, no,” Taylor smiled slightly. “You shouldn’t worry about your loss of powers, specifically. There are better things to worry about. Like the fact you have been kidnapped to an unknown fate.”
It took Missy a moment to understand the last sentence. But it sounded like Taylor was implying that she might kill Missy, or something else awful.
“You can’t kill me,” Missy said. “That would be against the Unwritten Rules.”
“The Unwritten Rules,” Taylor repeated skeptically, cocking her head. “Those are real? I thought they were just an internet rumor.”
“They are real!” Missy exclaimed. “So, you can’t kill me.”
“The Protectorate would have broken the rules first, when they tried to buy my remaining childhood,” Taylor said. “Plus, does anyone know where you are?”
“Yes,” Missy said, because she knew better than to admit otherwise. Her mother had made her promise to never admit that nobody knew where she was.
“You lie,” Taylor said. Her smile was triumphant. “How will anyone punish me for your death when there is nothing to connect your disappearance to me? Why would they even suspect me?”
“So, what, you’re just going to kill me?” Missy asked. Her mouth was dry and her hair on her neck stood on end. She had no more arguments. “Why haven’t you, yet?”
“Well, for one, I don’t want to kill you,” Taylor admitted. She looked up at the half-painted mural and began walking off to one side, leaving the door unguarded. “I haven’t killed anyone yet. I certainly don’t want my first kill to be of an unarmed child.”
The normal burn at being called a child was less than Missy expected.
Taylor folded her arms over her chest and stared at a seemingly random part of the mural, where a white and golden starburst seemed to shine in the background. Hope rose in Missy’s chest. Taylor wasn’t looking at her. Missy looked at the door. She hadn’t heard Taylor lock it, and it didn’t look like it had a lock anyways. Missy began creeping towards the door.
“I know what I don’t want to do,” Taylor mused out loud. “But what I do want is more difficult. I know I can’t let you go; you already said you’d tell Miss Militia I’m alive. I don’t want to keep you here, in this room; that would be solitary confinement, which is torture, and I would rather kill you than torture you.”
Missy wasn’t sure how to feel about that. But maybe it wouldn’t matter. She put her hand on the doorknob and turned it slowly. She began to edge the door open as stealthily as she could.
“Imprisonment in the larger complex could be difficult, too,” Taylor continued. “I imagine you would continue to try to escape. Unless, of course, you realize it is impossible. So, you can stop being so stealthy, little warrior. I give you permission to try your best to escape today.”
Missy froze, halfway through the door. Taylor hadn’t turned around, still staring at the mural.
“Oh, yes, I know you are trying to leave,” Taylor said. She turned around, then. Her expression was calm and a little amused. “Run, little warrior. If you make it far enough, I will make you a gift.”
Missy broke into a run, slamming the door behind her and abandoning stealth entirely. How Taylor had been so sure of what she was up to, she didn’t know. But that didn’t matter now. Missy had no one between her and freedom. She had to take the chance.
The hallway outside the room went in two directions. Missy chose one at random and ran. The hall curved gently, the same white stone or concrete almost glowing in the illumination from the lightstrips running along every edge. There were no windows, but there were more blue doors, identical to the one Missy had come through, dotting the side of the hallway. She ignored them. Maybe one was a disguised exit door, but Missy simply didn’t have time to check all of them.
Missy came to an intersection. In front of her, the hallway continued, curving the same way. To her left, a hallway went towards the inside of the curve, straight and ending in double doors. To her right, a similarly straight hallway, though with heavier doors, pointed towards the outside of the curve.
After a moment’s hesitation, Missy chose the hallway to her right. It felt like it should lead to an exit, from the way it pointed outside of the curve to the heavier doors.
Missy ran and slammed into the doors. She used her full body weight and all the force she could generate in her legs to push one of them open. She gritted her teeth from the effort, but slowly, the door opened. The moment the crack was wide enough for Missy to slip through, she did so, and let the door swing shut behind her.
The hallway in front of her was darker than the first hallway. It was colder, too, Missy realized. The cold implied she was closer to the exit.
Missy started to run again. Her breath came fast, but she regularly ran and walked on patrols and during training. She knew she could continue to run for a while yet.
The hallway had no doors leading off it. But every so often there were open doorways with heavy doors much like the ones at the beginning. Missy was relieved she didn’t need to open them. Each was around an inch thick and looked like they were made of solid metal.
Eventually, the hallway ended. Missy skidded to a stop, panting. The wall blocking her way was made of metal, oddly, instead of the stone or concrete of the rest of the walls. And there was a diagonal crack through it.
Missy looked around for any hint of what to do next. She was far enough that she had no wish to go back. If there was any chance, she needed to take it.
There was a button on the wall. It was green, and set in metal. Missy pressed it, hoping it wouldn’t alert Taylor to her location.
There was a hiss and a rumble of machinery. The wall began to move, to slide away, separating along the diagonal crack. It revealed a second door behind it, with a crack along the opposite diagonal. A moment later, the second layer also began to separate.
Missy stared as the doors opened slowly. Each one was around half a foot thick, and there was a third door, which seemed to have started moving at the same time as the first. She shook her head. Why did Taylor have a foot-and-a-half thick door masquerading as a wall? It seemed like overkill.
Missy walked through once it seemed easy. To. The air on the other side felt even colder. It felt good on Missy’s overly warm body, but Missy was sure that if she stopped moving, she would soon be shivering.
There was another, identical button on the other side of the door. Missy hit it and grinned as she heard the door mechanisms engage again. She stayed only long enough to ensure the doors were closing before turning and trotting down the hallway.
This time, down was definitely the correct term. Missy frowned as she moved. From the layout, the pointlessly long hallway and the utter lack of windows, Missy had gotten the idea that she was underground. If that was the case, down was not the right way to go. But Missy had chosen this path, and she had no plans to return while she could forge forward. Even if it was a dead end, Missy could maybe use it to hide out until whatever Taylor had done to her power wore off.
The hallway didn’t involve stairs, oddly. It just sloped, and did so quite steeply. Missy couldn’t go back and check, but she was pretty sure the floor was less smooth than before. To give traction on the slope, Missy assumed. It was working for her. She didn’t slip.
Not seven when she got to the bottom of the incline and saw a familiar metal fake wall with a diagonal crack.
“Again?” Missy muttered to herself. One of these doors was overkill, never mind two.
Nevertheless, Missy found the green button and hit it. The doors began to hiss open, the outer layers followed by the inner layer.
“You have to be kidding me!” Missy exclaimed as soon as she could see what lay beyond.
There was a room of sorts. It was square, with a width and lengths about equal to the width of the hallway Missy stood in. At the opposite end was another metal wall-door.
Missy glanced back the way she came. What horror was beyond these doors, Missy wondered. What might need some much caution?
The doors clunked as they settled into the open position. Now it looked like nother more than a continuation of the hallway. But Missy did not continue. Would it be wise to stick to her path? Maybe Taylor was looking for her in all the rooms Missy had run past. Maybe Taylor had continued on along the curved hallway, and was searching there.
Missy took a step back, away from the third wall-door. Maybe, if she went back, she could find the real exit.
A hiss and the grinding of machinery made Missy tense. It didn’t come from in front of her, but from behind her. The wall-door she had already gone through was opening.
Taylor was near. Taylor was coming.
“Shit,” Missy mumbled.
She spent another moment frozen in indecision, and then dashed into the next space. There was no button, either to close the door she had just gone through or to open the next, but there was a lever mounted on the wall. It was currently pointed the way Missy had come, so she grabbed it and pulled until it was pointing in the direction of the closed door.
With a by-now familiar hiss, the open door began to close. Missy winced. If Taylor didn’t already know she was down here, that would have probably told her.
Missy scrambled to hide in one of the corners, pressing herself next to the moving slab of metal. Hiding was the only thing she could do, now.
Her heart pounded and the palms of her hands felt wet.
“Please hurry,” Missy whispered to the door. The uncaring machinery did not respond.
Then, finally, the door finished closing. Missy slumped against the door, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath of relief.
And then Missy screamed as frigid water was dumped on her.
Missy staggered to her feet, but the deluge did not stop. She stumbled in the direction of the lever, hoping to make it stop. Each step was harder than the last; first she was splashing into thin puddles, which rose to ankle height. Then she was wading through knee deep water, the smell of salt in their air. By the time it was waist deep, Missy wasn’t sure where the lever was. There was simply too much water pouring down everywhere.
“Help!” Missy called out. She could barely hear her own voice.
She was shivering, now. Only the water was keeping her upright, as it rose to her chest; her legs would have given out if they were forced to bare her weight alone. Her clothes were heavy, water-logged and chilled.
Without something changing, she knew she would die. The cold water was sapping her strength. If she couldn’t swim, she would soon drown. If the hallway filled with water completely, she wouldn’t be able to find any air, and she would drown.
The water stopped coming down. Missy gasped with relief. The water had stopped at her neck. Everything was silent, except for the sound of Missy’s gasping breaths. She was still freezing cold and in danger of dying, but it wasn’t as immediate as it had been before.
A hiss sounded. One of the doors began to open. Missy watched as the water began to train out through the door, slowly at first, but increasing quickly as the open diamond grew larger. Missy tried to fight the pull of the water, but it was too much and she was soon swept through the still opening door. She was fortunately small enough to fit through, but a burst of pain on one of her shins suggested she had not gotten through unscathed.
Missy was pushed into the shallows, and a firm grip lifted her up into a princess carry. Taylor’s face filled her view.
“You nearly got out of my base,” Taylor said almost approvingly. “If you had the right gear, you could have been in the Bay, now.”
“That leads to the Bay?” Missy wheezed. The warmth from Taylor’s body had started helping her a bit, enough that she felt up for talking.
‘That’ was probably an air lock, Missy realized. If she had survived the airlock, she would have ended up in the Bay, who knows how far down and who knows how far from the shore.
“Yes,” Taylor confirmed. She turned around and started splashing through the water back upwards.
Presumably, Taylor knew exactly how far down and exactly how far from the shore. And probably where the ‘right gear’ was as well.
“My leg hurts,” Missy muttered.
Taylor lifted Missy’s lower half up a bit and peered down.
“Looks like a small laceration,” Taylor said. “We’ll have to disinfect and clean it while you’re warming up.”
Well, at least Taylor hadn’t decided to kill her, Missy thought grimly.
“You should post a warning sign there, unless you mean it to be a death trap,” Missy snipped at Taylor.
“That sounds like a wonderful project for you,” Taylor said casually. “I’ll give you a pen and paper to design the warning and I’ll build the sign. How does that sound?”
Missy frowned. She was sure she was missing something important, but she had used up all her energy and her adrenaline was fading. The warmth of the older girl’s body heat radiated through their wet clothes. Missy’s eyes started to close.
The sound of the next set of doors opening forced her eyes open again.
“Who built the doors?” Missy asked.
“I did,” Taylor answered. “Hush, little warrior. Go to sleep.”
Unwillingly, Missy complied.