“Emerson Pennyworth would climb through the air vents to escape detection,” Sylvia eagerly suggested. Aster looked up at the ceiling of their room and saw only a solid surface of plaster with no tiles to push up and a vent with an opening no larger than a small dog at the far end, which Sylvia was excitedly eyeing.

We will get stuck and die, was the response on the tip of Aster's tongue, but seeing Sylvia's beaming face, chock-full of the excitement of someone out on a field trip, she decided to ask a question instead.

“Who the fuck is Emerson Pennyworth?”

Sylvia's brow wrinkled in befuddlement as her hands shot to her hips. “Only the number one spy extraordinaire!” she proclaimed with a tone of great chastisement and an eye of suspicion as if Aster were an alien masquerading as her friend. “You really were asleep in the theater, weren't you?!”

Aster flushed and attempted to redirect the conversation.

“Well, h-how would a spy make their escape?” she asked nervously, hoping, as a dog fetches after a stick, to use Sylvia's innate excitability to throw her off the possibility of making Aster watch yet another spy film.

Sylvia continued to hold Aster in appraisal, but as Aster prayed, her internal excitement tempered her wish to prod further. She responded with a look of pouty acceptance.

“We will have to move like ghosts,” she said, unfolding her arms and brightening once again. “We may be only rookies but you have me— a trainee of Pennyworth's— to rely on!”

—

A morning radio appearance was followed by an interview with a paper was followed by a charity event was followed by a photoshoot in which no suitable photos of Aster were taken was followed by an afternoon concert was followed by a second interview with a second paper was followed by lunch with the mayor of Carmandine City was followed by a call-in to Willie Cooper's early evening show was followed by a window of opportunity: thirty minutes to get to Bonnie Godiva's concert while Floyd and Mareby-Roquefort were kept at bay by Cecil's phony promise of an interview with none other than Arlington Eves, head editor of Cherryaire's premier music publication, the Jingle Jangle Journal.

Cecil had managed to draw Floyd away in the nick of time, stopping him just as the steady trot of his cane, whose strikes came down like a mallet upon Aster's timpani heart, echoed feet away from the door to their room. His warble of “Oh, Miss Aster, Miss Sylvia!” was cut short by a violent eruption.

“Why are you only coming to me with this now?!” sounded his voice through the door. “I am entirely under-dressed you dunce! First, you advise me against a hotel suitable for Mr. Applegate's tastes, then you try to ruin me by having me appear on the front page looking no better than one of Marion's goons?!”

“He sounds so excited,” noted Sylvia, wearing a guilty look. The prospect of lying to Floyd, especially about something so dear to him, hung heavy on her shoulders, but Aster's happiness and the chance to play spy proved a greater enticement than any misgivings.

His diatribe eventually sputtered out and soon their footsteps could be heard sounding down the hall before fading from earshot completely. With glacial hesitance Aster opened the door, beads of sweat racing down her face as the creak of its hinge filled the silent passageway. Sylvia's head followed, poking out eagerly like a lemon-colored gopher through the doorway as she moved to scan the area. She looked down the hall towards where the voices had been, face full of concern.

“Look, Aster! There's the eye patch!” she exclaimed, pointing wildly down the hall as the ghost of Floyd and Cecil's figures rounded the corner. Aster squinted. Sure enough, Floyd's snow-white hair was parted by the strap of an eye patch. She wrinkled her brow, bewildered. Sylvia had been going on all morning about how Floyd had turned into a supervillain, and her chief piece of evidence had been an eye patch that Aster had not seen, until now.

Why is he wearing that? she wondered, stepping cautiously into the hall.

“He probably has Marion in his lair, suspended above crocodiles!” Sylvia went on, following her. She looked back at her as if to rebuke but hated that she couldn't entirely discount such a wild statement; what else could account for Marion's seemingly overnight change in demeanor, paranoid air, or his disappearing after that afternoon's show without a trace? Floyd and Mareby-Roquefort assured the group that he was fine, but judging by the last thing she had heard Floyd say to Marion being, “I won't forget what you've done”, Aster couldn't be quite sure.

“If he did that to Marion, then what's he gonna do to Cecil if he finds out he was lying?!” Sylvia blurted, bringing her hands to her mouth in terror.

“Nothing,” Aster replied, bopping her head. “He's just going to yell at him.”

“You saw the eye patch, Aster! We know Mr. Floyd isn't a pirate, so that can only mean one thing!”

“He got so angry he blew a blood vessel?”

“That he's turned evil!” Sylvia cried, throwing her hands up.

'Turned' is debatable, Aster thought.

She drew a deep breath.

“All the more reason why we can't let this be in vain,” she said resolutely.

The moment was now: they had to make a run for it, relying on luck alone to not only carry them through the labyrinthine floor that their room was nestled on but down several floors to the hotel lobby, beyond which a large palatial lawn awaited. Only then, after clearing that, would their shot toward the venue have any real hope of succeeding. This was all to be undertaken while avoiding hotel staff who had been informed by Floyd beforehand to keep an eye on the band lest this exact scenario try to play out, requiring Aster and Sylvia to proceed with the subtlety of an evening breeze; as 'masters of disguise', as Sylvia was eager to put it.

Aster looked over her shoulder back at Sylvia, bouncing to and fro in excitement, and halfway wondered if it would be more prudent to just repel out their fourth-story window on bed sheets, but knew that Sylvia would even take the joke of a suggestion too seriously. It was down, like most things in life, to luck, then.

“Wait!” Sylvia suddenly called out as Aster began to move. Aster circled to find Sylvia eye-smiling, awaiting a response she thought common sense but of which Aster had no clue.

Aster watched her with an expression that asked, “What?”.

“We need codenames first, silly!” Sylvia chirped.

Aster squinted. “Codenames?”

“Yeah! So the enemy can't figure out our true identity! We can't be spies without codenames!” But before Aster could tell her that they weren't in fact agents and needed to be leaving immediately, Sylvia had indicted the both of them into the worldwide consortium of Peppermint Plains espionage.

“Agent Casanova,” peeped Sylvia with satisfaction. A red not unlike the crushed burgundy of the hall blinds overtook Aster's face as she began to move forward without a sound.

“Casanova works because you're so darn good at writing love songs! And I'm—” she stopped, giving herself a silent drum roll.

“Agent Peppermint Brain,” Aster muttered, carrying on. A lightbulb-in-head look came over Sylvia, who brightened. She rushed down the hall to catch up with Aster.

“That's so cool!” she squealed. “That works so much better than what I was gonna say!”

After about a minute of careful walking, slowed unnecessarily by Sylvia's insistence they crept along the walls and numerous dead-ends, the pair came to a stop to reassess that they weren't just walking in circles. Aster turned to meet the eyes of a haggard old lady clutching an umbrella within a painting and quickly snapped her gaze away.

“This corner is clear, sir!” Sylvia announced, punctuating her call with fake walkie-talkie static. Aster walked past, all dead-pan in the eyes.

“What do you think Cecil's got planned?” Sylvia asked, catching back up. Aster's irises like sentries swept about in search of staff.

“What do you mean?” she replied half-attentively.

“He's never ever been this nice before!” Sylvia exclaimed, throwing her hands up. “The Cecil I know is a big jerk-head!”

The pair stopped, standing before another dead-end.

Why the fuck are there so many dead-ends?!

“Maybe he's planning to ask for a big favor,” Sylvia went on as the two turned around and began off again.

“I think he's just pissed at Kyrietone,” Aster mumbled, though found herself sharing in Sylvia's skepticism. The risks that he was taking, the consequences that awaited him if Floyd found out were so grave that she couldn't help but believe there was some ulterior motive at work. It just didn't make sense otherwise; for as little as she knew Cecil, he did not seem like the person to deal in plans. But, then again, he did not seem like the type to deal in great sacrifices, either. This can't just be out of generosity, she thought.

The halls bent and twisted and interlocked with other sections at odd junctures, leading to seemingly everywhere but the elevator they were so desperately in search of to take them to the lobby. Trepidation waited behind each corner like a madman with a bat; Aster's stomach accordioned as they rounded each, fearing that if it was not this one that harbored a laundry lady, a manager, or anyone on high alert for the roving gang, it would certainly be the next.

And then came Sylvia's cry.

“Aster, there's that painting again!” she exclaimed after a minute of their wandering.

Aster turned to see the same old haggard lady and her parasol and let loose an exasperated cry. “What the fuck?!”

“Do you think it's following us?!” Sylvia asked, snapping her head left and right as if something lay in wait just around the corner. Aster told her that paintings weren't alive and joined her in observing the hall. From the top of the granite ceiling made immaculate with its Greco-esque reliefs to the milky-white, sand-fine carpet that lay under their feet, there wasn't a single ding or blemish to be found; not one sign of imperfection anywhere that might prove that the two had indeed gone in circles. The soft sound of waves outside preceded the saline scent of the ocean's breath; Sylvia cried: “I think I saw her eyes moving!”

“Why is this the first time he doesn't book a motel?!” Aster blurted out, overcome by her loss of bearings. A dumbfounded nostalgia for the dim, straight, and short hallways of the previous dumps they'd been staying at followed, and it pained her to imagine how simple escaping one of those would've been.

“Because Mr. Floyd would rather be caught dead than to be seen in one of those dumps'!” Sylvia quoted, all the while keeping the hallway under her paranoid glances.

—

There was no price point Floyd would not meet to ensure that Neil Applegate did not look down on him in the way that Eugene or others in the business had. He was now the manager of the hottest up-and-coming band in the world, he reminded himself almost every waking minute, and to be seen as anything but the chief beneficiary of that ultimate success would be akin to failure in and of itself. This mindset was how a substantial invoice, deeply alarming both the band and Mareby-Roquefort, made its way to Kyrietone, looking to secure funds for a one-night stay at Chez Carmandine, the largest seaside resort in the region.

“Invoices have to be paid back!” Mareby-Roquefort tried to remind him en route to the resort. “I already had to tell Sylvia about the complimentary food. Please, Floyd, for the love of God; we only make so much ourselves!”

“Would you rather discuss the future of our careers in the rat-infested dump we stayed at last night?” Floyd retorted, turning to him mad-eyed.

“Why not just meet him someplace else, then, like a diner?” suggested Cecil.

“Why not greet him on my hands and knees in the mud like a pig while I'm at it?!” Floyd roared, swiping his cane every which way in the cramped bus. “You should be excited!” he screamed, his beady eyes bouncing to every head in the van. “The beach! Doesn't every superstar dream of relaxation away from the rigors of touring by the lush call of the seaside?!”

And this was enough to win the support of Sylvia and Marion, whose jubilant calls and songs of the beach buoyed the bus all the several dozen miles towards Chez Carmandine until Marion disappeared and Sylvia was told that they'd seldom have a moment to sleep let alone spare a second 'clogging their gear with sand'.

“We will not be here a second longer than it takes to do the meeting,” Floyd declared as they marched their luggage up to their fourth-floor rooms. “I'm not made of money; if I don't at least get my deposit back I'm ruined!”

They then made like tartars to the grand dining hall, where Sylvia was keen to nurse her dashed beach hopes with the all-you-can-eat buffet. With a great white bib coiling down his food-blossomed gullet Floyd regaled the dining room with tales of his group and their meteoric rise to fame, although the affluent patronage that passed through its halls hadn't so much as heard of rock 'n' roll let alone 'The Love You Forevers'. Nor did their table, a corner spot in a great room full of several dozen or so tables, present much of a podium. His voice simply warbled limply into the great hall where other patrons repaid him with a cold hostility and a shallow gaze that passed over the group as if at a bug that couldn't leave a second too soon.

“Screw em',” was Marion's response, asserting that they were no different than the puffed-up guests who had left them for dead at the Savoy Ballroom, and he moved to fetch a second rack of ribs when suddenly a call rang from somewhere in the hall. “Albion?” sounded the deep, matronly voice. Floyd froze and grew silent. The group looked on in curiosity as the pale man went paler still and then rose with a defensive start.

“What's the matter, Mr. Floyd? I don't see any cops around,” noted Sylvia, basting her tub of salad with a helping of Thousand Island. “You're getting that shifty look again!”

Floyd didn't respond; he continued to look around the large room like prey who had heard a twig break somewhere in the forest.

“We have to go— now!” he suddenly cried and began to leave his seat, but it was too late. A large-set elderly woman with a warm, inviting face and half an ocean's worth of pearls in her ears was making her way over to the group's table. Sylvia, her cheeks billowing out greenery like a little lawnmower, did a double-take as she looked back and forth between Floyd and the approaching lady. Her eyes went wide.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

“There's two Mr. Floyds!” she exclaimed, expelling her salad out all over the table to Cecil's visible disgust.

“Oh no, you won't escape me again!” the woman cried out, snatching Floyd's arm as he attempted to flee.

This woman, the group learned during the lunch that followed, was none other than Julia Childress— Floyd's oldest sister. She had decided to begin her yearly spring retreat to the coast a tad early, opting, by a stroke of luck, to stay in Chez Carmandine. She had not seen head nor tail of her brother for the better part of a decade, she said, and had given up any hope of locating the man who exchanged trades like hats.

“Imagine my surprise,” she tremoloed in a husky voice. “To find Albion in a moneyed place.”

“But Mr. Floyd loves money!” said Sylvia. Mrs. Childress exploded in laughter.

“Funny, he's always treated our family's fortune like it'd burn him to the touch!” she followed, still chortling, before turning to her brother. “Floyd, huh?” she teased with a devious smile. “You really do like your costumes, don't you?” and turned back to the group, mirthy-eyed. “I'd always heard that he'd settled in Peppermint Plains, but I could never really be bothered to go down there to find out for myself. Not like it'd have done me any good anyways, he'd probably have sold the shop the second he heard I was in town,” and she let out a great belly laugh as Sylvia clamored for illumination on the lore of Mr. Floyd, to which she happily obliged.

She regaled the band, as her brother lay face down in his lunch, with seemingly innumerable stories of the scams that defined his youth; variety shows, small-time circus acts, and a foray into being a farmer, to name a few of the tamer tales.

“He used to slick his hair back when this 'rock and roll' first started coming about in the mid-fifties, before this get-up,” she said, gesturing towards the shell-white powder he applied to his cheeks to hide the scald of embarrassment as his sister continued. “Said he'd be a regular 'Vallerio' or whatever his name was and bought himself a record shop!”

The group all turned to each other in unison, varying degrees of bemusement and disbelief plastered across their faces.

“It's best to not leave our rooms unless absolutely necessary,” Floyd rescinded later that afternoon, tucking away in the corner of his room with great embarrassment all of the beach props and other necessities for a stay of luxury he had brought to the resort.

“But Mr. Floyd, you said this hotel was your castle,” retorted Sylvia.

“No, it is my prison, now.”

—

“We're lost!” screamed Sylvia. “We're going to go round and round, and then we'll be trapped in a dead-end and have nothing to eat and—”

“Sylvia, chill!” Aster pleaded. “We're not going to be lost, we'll—”

She stopped as a shadow fell over Sylvia's face. Her excited pupils had shrunk into fear-constricted ruby peppermint swirls and she looked over Aster's shoulder as though end waited for them.

“What a wonderful sight to find in these halls,” Aster heard a voice trill from behind her. Her heart stopped.

Sylvia's bottom lip was shaking. A monosyllable kept sputtering out; an abortive “A-” that never finished. Aster, feeling the hair stand up on the back of her neck, could not turn around.

“Aster!” Sylvia at last got out, pointing wildly behind her. “The painting! It's alive!”

Aster whipped violently around, wholeheartedly expecting to receive an ax through the head courtesy of some living, satanic portrait, but found nothing of the sort. It was only the jubilant face of Mrs. Childress, who was twirling a parasol. And Aster in that moment quietly wished it had been an ax plunging into her and thought, 'That's it'. Her chances, much like the saliva in her rapidly desiccating mouth, were gone.

“The portrait!” Sylvia again cried, as if Aster hadn't heard.

“Please, doll, I know I'm a picture; you don't have to butter me up!” Mrs. Childress burst out, holding a gloved hand to her sagging cheek. Her smile beamed down on the two terrified girls as the stem of the parasol spun in her thick fingers. “Come now, what's with those terrified faces? What has Albion been telling you about me?” she cooed in her posh accent.

Sylvia, recognizing Mr. Floyd in her face as she drew closer, suddenly blinked. “Mrs. Floyd?” Finally realizing her mistake, she proceeded to fill Mrs. Childress in on all the details of their plan and the wrongs Kyrietone had done to Aster.

“It's just like Albion to rain on a parade!” she declared at the end of Sylvia's winded tale. “He was always a little tattle-tale, you know that? How many times did he tell Mother I was out late with my girlfriends?”

She lurched forward, bringing her face to within an inch of the two girls. “Now, why don't you tell me where he is?” she whispered with a sandpaper grit, grinning all the while. “And I'll make sure you sweethearts get all the time in the world.”

Sylvia received her with twinkling eyes, silent; a devilish smirk of her own.

—

Like Valhalla in the mist, the gleaming elevator doors finally appeared towards the end of a long hall.

“I half think the architect of this place drew up the plans in the dark,” said Mrs. Childress as she led them along. “Now go, leave Albion to me; if there's any power I still hold in this world it's that to reign my baby brother in.”

They lept on board and Aster prayed to every god she could think of us as the doors took their time grinding to a close, as if the mechanism had been greased with molasses and personally wished to mock Aster.

“To the lobby!” Sylvia cried, mashing the button. The slumbering contraption responded with a lurch and Aster let loose an exclamation of 'Oh, God!' as it began its clumsy, loud journey downstairs.

Sylvia laughed. “Have you never been in an elevator before?!” she asked. She couldn't help but give a large smile despite the alarm coming over her friend; she always found so much joy in Aster's apparently new experiences.

“Not one like this,” she mumbled, clutching awkwardly onto the handrail.

The elevator proceeded down the first few floors, before stopping, prematurely, at the fifth. The pair went silent as the doors rumbled to life.

Oh, come the fuck on!

They opened, and a hotel employee— a baggage boy, judging by his youth and the rounded cap atop his head— stepped onto the elevator, pulling with him a cart and several suitcases.

“Excuse me, ladies,” he apologized, trying to fit the cart on board.

Sylvia responded gleefully that it wasn't a problem and began to hum as the elevator resumed its journey. Aster could not speak, as her heart had lodged in her throat. Her eye shot to the corner of her peripheral, watching the boy. Hadn't he noticed them? The elevator fell a floor, then a second. He didn't so much as turn around.

Thank God! Aster shouted in her thoughts and watched with delight as the floor count sped towards zero. It was almost upon them: those doors would open, revealing the spacious lobby, and beyond them the glass doors which would open into the courtyard; the bosom of the outside world in which the glory that was Godiva's concert was nestled. Freedom was nearly hers! And then Sylvia began to make small talk.

“Beautiful day out, isn't it?” she said airily, bopping about on her tennis shoes. The young man turned to look at her.

“Gorgeous,” he concurred.

Aster sunk into the corner of the elevator, ready at any moment to die if he suddenly recognized them. But the doors opened, and the young man stepped out. Aster remained huddled in the corner moment, stunned. Sylvia turned to her with a confused but cheerful expression, awaiting her friend's revival. “Come on, silly!” she cried.

And with that, they were off. The lobby was a massive room: a plain of shag carpet in which curving, mustard-palleted furniture cropped up like rock formations in the swirling sand of a zen garden. Here was the critical zone in which there existed little to obscure their escape, the nerve center of the entire resort in which any one of a dozen pairs of eyes could light them up like a spotlight on the shores of Alcatraz without a moment's notice.

Should they run if caught? Just what would their chances be if all alarms triggered; if suddenly the entire front desk was lighting up Floyd's phone? There was no stop he would not pull to catch them, Aster knew.

But at last a chance of hope presented itself, though how much was mirage Aster could not be certain; a baggage boy, the same one clueless to their identities on the elevator, was now crossing the lobby pushing a cart of soft-serve ice cream towards the outdoor entrance. Sylvia's face immediately melted into the perfect sibling of the soft, dapper confections that sweated under the hotel's yellowing lights. Her tongue ran across her lips as she watched the swirls of chocolate and vanilla trickle down the sides like sugary pearls.

“Ice cream,” she grumbled, drooling.

“Come on, Peppermint Brain,” Aster called, pulling an unwitting Sylvia down to the floor beside the cart. Her shins burned as she shimmied them along the carpet, following the cart towards the door. The baggage boy looked down at them in confusion but did not stop, fearing the scowl Aster was flashing him would be the least of his worries if he did. It worked. At last, they reached the entrance and Aster and Sylvia made their escape, running to the door. Its huge, glass panes beckoned like sheets of shimmering sky; all that was needed now was to part them.

—

Nobody had inquired about their leaving, and Mrs. Childress promised to delay further, but still, Aster looked back in terror, fearing the furious form of Floyd at any moment. Sylvia grabbed her hand and the two ran off toward the lush lawn beyond the valet. It smelt of the perfume of trimmed grass which, upon entering her lungs, filled her with all the energy of those beautiful evenings when the sky is richly bruised and seems to sag as if relaxing after a long day.

Was it possible they could make it? Did her happiness for once have a chance? She wasn't sure. She knew that there were paparazzi on the lookout for them; they had swarmed the band at every stop on the tour thus far and Floyd had begun the morning raving about how close they were getting to the resort. The fact that they were nowhere to be seen as she and Sylvia crossed onto the lawn worried her deeply. Her eyes scanned the large field, trawling the grass and rising to the hedgerows and story-tall Cyprus trees which enclosed the courtyard; they had to be beyond them if they were anywhere. But the hedges themselves were impassable, and Aster was unwilling to risk circumventing them, despite all the enthusiasm Sylvia would likely show at attempting to vault over them— the last thing she needed was their escape to end in Sylvia overshooting her shot and flying into a neighboring business.

The only path, then, was the large gate at the front, which lay beyond a small hill. Aster's heart sank. It was not beyond the hedgerows that the paparazzi must be swarming like drones, she realized, but the gate. She brought Sylvia close as they reached the foot of the hill to bring her up to speed on the situation.

“Okay, you make a run for it, and I'll give them a good kick!” was Sylvia's response but Aster was adamant that was the opposite of what they needed.

“We need to think not like Marion,” she insisted.

At any rate, there was no time to spare and Sylvia and herself resumed a near sprint, taking care as she dashed to not let her feet, skating on the evening dew underneath, slip out from underneath. With every bit of ground they covered she felt the threat of a stitch in her side become more and more probable, and they had not even traveled half the lawn before she felt as though she were a tumbling boulder as opposed to anybody running.

Why don't I ever exercise? she thought as she wheezed on. Her breath was growing shallow and she light-headed, but the thought of her collapsing and the image of Sylvia desperately trying to pick her up and carry her onward like a fallen comrade pushed her body past its limits, absolutely refusing to die such an embarrassing death. With a final push the hill was crested, and Aster's eyes, dancing dizzily on oxygen deprivation, drank in the last lush quarter of manicured hedges, flower beds, and winding roads of sparkling, rosy stone.

“There!” she cried out, splaying a finger towards the path which led to the street. Sylvia retrieved a city map from her pocket and unfolded it, then began to scan it with a tongue stuck out in thought.

Aster looked on as if Sylvia had pulled out the Philosopher's Stone; the idea that people in the past had to rely on paper maps astonished Aster, and so she beheld Sylvia, screened by the large white sheet covered in intricate symbols and topographical information, like an explorer of legend; Aster would surely die in a day if she were lost without technology.

A few ‘hmms’ and ‘ahhs’ led to an exclamation. “To the street!” Sylvia declared with a shout delivered to the sky and began running down the hill like a cossack on charge.

“Sylvia, wait!” Aster cried after her, stumbling awkwardly down the face of the soft mound as she tried in desperation to catch up. Sylvia in her boundless energy would've made a track star if she had not been a musician, and very quickly became a peppermint-colored smudge in the distance, on the edge of contact with the hedgerows and the gate. It was at that moment that Aster could see a van— lawn maintenance judging by the markings on the side of it— pulled off the street through the wrought-iron gates, into the courtyard itself. Sylvia stopped beside it.

Sylvia, whatever you do do not talk to them! Aster cried out internally.

With all the grace of a sack of potatoes let down the hill Aster staggered towards the van. Huffing and puffing she fell beside it, and Sylvia giggled at the state of her friend.

“You were right, there's reporters by the gate!” Sylvia informed her. “Oodles!”

Aster crept along the side of the van, stealing a nervous glance from beside it. Sylvia's blonde head poked out underneath hers. There could be no less than three dozen men.

“See?! I told you!” Sylvia suddenly squealed. “It's like we're on a real mission!”

“It's not exciting!” Aster replied, retracting and falling to her knees beside the van. “How are we getting through that?!”

“Well,” Sylvia hummed, bringing a finger to her chin in thought. “Emerson Pennyworth would throw a smoke bomb if he were in this situation!” Sylvia suggested. Aster grimaced. “We have no smoke bombs.”

“That's no problem!” Sylvia persisted. “Emerson Pennyworth has been in plenty of scrapes worse than this. We just have to put our heads together and think like spies. What could we do to distract them?” And with that she began to bop about her sneakers, humming Pennyworth's iconic spy-tune loudly.

Aster's eyes went wide and she looked beside the van in terror before turning back to Sylvia.

“Sylvia, stop!” she cried as Sylvia, hyping herself up with the devious melody, grew louder. It was too late. As quick as a cloud passing overhead the flash of camera light erupted, blinding Aster and Sylvia and announcing to them that all was over: they had been found.

“Run!” shrieked Sylvia, and she again snatched Aster's hand as the two ran out through the front gates in a blitz. A swarm of men came upon them, lighting them up with a wave of flash like an iridescent snowstorm.

“Just a second!”

“Will you write anything else for Johnny?!”

“Ladies, please!”

“What hair products do you use?”

A litany of questions were hurled from every conceivable direction and the crowd was so numerous that it became unclear where they could escape. Aster saw Sylvia's shin twitching out of the corner of her eye. 'Under no circumstances are you to kick the paparazzi,' everyone including Sylvia's dentist had told her. But without the aid of force Aster and Sylvia were left with no recourse but to barrel through the crowd.

Aster's heart galloped. The men pursued; they were larger, faster; they were gaining. Was she a sadist at heart? She couldn't help but wonder this, seeing what pursuit of fame brought her.

They cartoonishly ran down a city block here and there, sneaking through alleys, before at last, a library appeared on the horizon. They stopped as the echo of dress shoes scuttled on a block away. Aster did not think, she simply grabbed Sylvia on instinct and hurried through the doors.

A dead silence greeted them; a quiet which allowed Aster's thrashing heart to roar in her ears.

How did that work? she thought, looking incredulously back through the doors as the men ran past, half expecting a cartoon sound effect to play as Sylvia pushed open a second set of doors into the lobby proper. A service desk was now before them, behind which a tired woman in horn-rimmed glasses sat like a toad on a tree stump, looking with scorn at the two sweat-covered girls who had just barged in.

“May I help you?” she asked, puzzled.

“Yeah! Do you have any of the latest Zorg comic books?” Sylvia asked with a new excitement lighting up her eyes.

The woman snorted. “This is a library, miss; if you're looking to play go elsewhere.”

“Huh?!”

Aster went on past Sylvia, leaving her to her ramblings as she fell into the labyrinthine rows, looking up at the towering shelves and their dusted treasure the same way tourists gaze dumb and slack-jawed at the columns of Stonehenge.

There was nothing like this in 2066. What role libraries held had been relegated primarily to that of museums: with all recorded information in the known canon of human history at your fingertips, able to be consumed on devices that could mimic books down to the texture and smell, there was no need for a physical building to visit.

It's so quiet, she observed, thinking of the recreation room and feeling a pain of nostalgia.

“Hey, you... come here,” suddenly whispered a voice through her reverie. Aster spun around. The aisles, bathed in the premature night of a lilting evening's shade, held nobody.

“What the fuck was that?!” she asked under her breath and began to hurriedly walk back towards reception.

“PSST!” hissed the voice again.

“Uh, Sylvia?” she squeaked, now starting to half-run. Sylvia, still engaged with letting the receptionist know that Zorg literature had just as much of a right to be in a library as any other, turned around. Her eyes lit up.

“Aster, the secret agent!” she yelled. “He's right behind you!”

“Sylvia, we really should be getting out here,” she said, not daring to look back as she sped towards the desk.

Sylvia's expression brightened.

“Agent Marion!”