* * *

Pegasus found the infirmary no less busy despite the notable absence of most of its patients. Griffon and Scorpion were long gone. A nurse was heading into the operating room, Mermaid was still in there. From the general feeling in the air, her fate was still unsure.

Two other nurses organized the empty beds. Maybe they were preparing in case, as Cypher so eloquently put it, something else went boom.

It was a while before any of the nurses even registered his presence. He considered it good news that he looked healthy enough to be ignored.

“Dragon’s over there.” Nurse Able pointed him towards a corner bed, isolated by a curtain. “She’s still resting because of the sedation.”

It was probably a good thing Robyn was sedated; she’d be less likely to throw something at him when he started interrogating her for no apparent reason.

He paused at the edge of the curtain opening. Could he get away with asking what he wanted to ask without asking it?

Robyn was lying on the bed, eyes closed. There were several cuts and bruises visible on her exposed skin, and her right arm was in a sling.

He knocked on the bedside table rather loudly. “Robyn? Are you awake?”

She stirred, stopping midway as she lifted her bandaged arm. It must have hurt because her eyes opened.

Pegasus gave a sympathetic wince. “Hey.”

When her gaze focused, she offered up a meek smile. “Hey yourself.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I fell through a window…” She frowned. “Wait a minute.”

Pegasus laughed at the joke.

Her gaze wandered to the edge of the curtain. “Is Mermaid out of surgery yet?”

Pegasus shook his head. He hoped there hadn’t been any more complications, but in this case no news didn’t equate with good news.

Robyn seemed to gauge the situation from his silence. Her eyes drifted closed and he watched as she struggled to open them again. After a few tries, she won the battle against the weight of her eyelids.

She seemed annoyed when she caught him staring. “I’m really tired.”

Pegasus smiled and nodded, but he didn’t leave.

Her eyes closed again. Pegasus dragged the metal chair from the corner closer to her bed. At the loud noise, Robyn’s eyes fluttered open.

“How’s the shoulder?” he asked.

“Doesn’t hurt much right now. Popped out, popped back in…” She was slurring. “Popped out again, I think.”

“Well, you know what they say, once it’s out, it doesn’t want to go back in.”

“Nobody says that.”

He pushed the chair a little to the side, pretending he wasn’t doing it on purpose. Hopefully, she was out of it enough that she didn’t notice. “What did the doctor give you?”

She frowned a little, then harder, as if she were concentrating on the memory. “Dunno. It’s gonna be a while before it wears off. Doc didn’t want me to escape like Scorpion did. She’s fast… and smart… and fast.”

“Well, she’s also five kinds of crazy,” he whispered, taking advantage of the turn the conversation had taken. “I remember the time she wanted to break down the door to the conference room.”

Robyn shook her head. “That was me. On my first day here. The day we met. Did you bump your head, too?”

He laughed. “No, I didn’t. I guess I put it in her column because that’s such a Scorpion thing to do.”

“Glad you think that.” Her voice lost strength. “Because if you’d said to, I would’ve broken it.”

“Well, it all worked out fine and with a minimum amount of violence,” he added, wondering if it would trip her up and hoping it didn’t at the same time.

Robyn’s eyelids were almost closing before she made visible effort to force her eyes open. “What violence? It was the most peaceful fake takeover scenario I’ve ever seen. Nobody even drew their weapons.” She giggled. “Who knew Zeus had a sense of humor?”

“Sometimes he does.” He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Did his relief show on his face?

Robyn’s eyes closed again and Pegasus dragged the chair back to its corner. He held her gaze until he was sure she was listening to him. “I want you to get some rest and call me as soon as you’re lucid, alright? Before you do anything, even go talk to Sarah, got it?”

She nodded.

“Robyn. Did you understand what I said?”

“Something wrong?”

“Nothing to worry about now. But promise that you’ll call me as soon as you wake up.”

“Promise. As soon as the room stops spinning.”

This time, when her eyes closed, he didn’t try to rouse her. She’d passed the test.

While that eased something in him, there was still something wrong with what Sarah had said. He hadn’t ruled out a misunderstanding, but he’d wait until Robyn was fully conscious before having that conversation.

Just to be safe, it would be good to keep Robyn away until he’d reviewed everything he’d gotten on Sarah.

Blood donors were starting to come in. Seems like they were replenishing their stock. Mermaid was still in surgery. As he was, he couldn’t even help by donating blood.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

He used a console in the corner of the infirmary to check the lock and alarm Michael had placed on Sarah’s room. It was still in place. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to stop by his room to get his com, so he’d have to reroute any warnings somewhere else.

A shadow in dark blue scrubs stopped over his right shoulder. “You’re not really planning on making this into a station, are you?”

“I had something I needed to check.”

Nurse Able gave him a no-nonsense look. “Unless you’re planning to be useful by letting us drain you, which I’m pretty sure Doctor Brown would object to, you really shouldn’t be taking up space.”

Pegasus gave the woman an apologetic smile, but she wasn’t deterred.

“Don’t you people have somewhere else where you can work from?”

“I’m leaving in a moment, promise.”

Expression loaded with disbelief, she moved on.

Pegasus recognized it was probably not the best place to be. He wanted to go help upstairs, but he didn’t want Robyn sneaking off first chance she got and maybe going to talk to Sarah by herself.

As for the use of a com and tablet…

Mermaid’s stuff was abandoned on a nearby tray. He took it, redirecting the alarm on Sarah’s door to Mermaid’s com line.

Twirling the earbud in his hand, he searched around for the nurse who’d called him about Robyn earlier.

One of Cypher’s minions was sitting in a bed that had been previously empty. His first thought was that the man was one of the blood donors, but he seemed a more likely candidate for a transfusion.

Pegasus approached him with a friendly wave. “What’re you doing here?”

November returned a sickly smile. “Food poisoning. I’ve had trouble holding anything down. I’m here for my meds and more fluids.”

“So you’re not getting called in to help?”

“Not unless Cypher wants me puking all over his keyboard.” He winced. “I shouldn’t use that word.”

“Are you going to be staying here for a while?”

“At least a couple of hours, I think.”

Pegasus smiled. “Could you do something for me then?”

“Does it involve moving?” November asked.

Pegasus noticed the IV he’d seen the nurse set up earlier was for November. “Not really.”

“Okay then, I guess. What do you need?”

“Dragon is in there. She’s sedated because they had to pop her shoulder back in. I need to go do something and I also need to be sure she’s not going to wander around while I’m gone. Got it?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Just sit here and keep an eye out. If you see her stumbling her way out of the infirmary before the doctor releases her, call me.”

November nodded. “I can do that.”

Satisfied with having someone watch Robyn, Pegasus left. He took Mermaid’s tablet with him and popped her com into his ear, activating it.

There was an annoying—but not unexpected—loud beep.

“Cypher?” he called into the ensuing silence.

“Pegasus? What the hell are you doing on that thing? Did you steal Mermaid’s earpiece?”

“I borrowed it.”

“Are you kidding me right now?”

Pegasus continued on his way, confident that there would be no more loud noises being transmitted straight into his brain. “Are you spying on me?”

“No, but you activate a com that has an unconscious owner, I get a blip on my screen. Are you gonna tell me what you’re up to now?”

“Sorry about that. I’m on my way up, I’ll talk to you in person.”

Pegasus walked off the elevator and found exactly what he expected: mayhem. Strange that it felt so natural even when he was removed from it all.

He spotted Unicorn across the floor, amidst a group dressed as police officers. They were probably headed out.

Up on the monitors, the familiar security feed from the half-empty hallways had been replaced by more urgent scenes. A news channel showed a fire down by the docks, another replayed the aftermath of the explosion near the mall. Several other monitors had their external feeds up, focusing on the university, their suspected target for the next New Nation attack. The regular stream of updates scrolled by at the bottom of the screen.

There was no sign of Griffon or Zeus, but Scorpion was going into the conference room. Cypher was, predictably, at his station.

“Griffon and Zeus are in a meeting with every higher-up they could find,” Cypher said as Pegasus approached him.

“I didn’t ask.”

“I thought you were here to let them know what you’re up to with whatever extracurriculars have you being a pain in my behind.”

“I figured Zeus would be busy, but I guess I was hoping to run something by Griffon real quick.”

“You’re gonna have to wait a while, they went in a few minutes ago.”

Pegasus sighed. “Anything I can help with in the meantime?”

Cypher got up, dragging Pegasus over to an empty station and pulling up some call logs. “Here, filter emergency calls since you’re gonna be loitering for a bit.”

Pegasus sifted through almost fifteen minutes of calls before getting restless. It didn’t help that so far there was nothing relevant to the investigation in any of them. Only cries for help from bystanders and people inside the mall who were having a normal day until the bomb went off.

He divided up the screens between tasks as the mission logs came to mind again. Readjusting the headphones to not press too much against Mermaid’s earpiece, he pressed play on another emergency call.

On the other screen, he opened the prompt to access the mission logs and typed in his access code. This time, when the little angry cartoon face popped up, he turned to glare at Cypher. But Cypher was nowhere in sight.

He caught the attention of India, who was using the station next to his. “Where’s Cypher?”

She pointed towards Zeus’ office.

Pegasus skipped to another recording. He hated having irrational limits imposed on him. Needless to say, that had been a certain amount of headache for all involved when he was growing up.

He returned his glare to the cartoon face, closing the pop-up to stare blankly at the prompt asking him for his access code… or a code.

His fingers tapped the side of the keyboard. Robyn liked to pick random numbers from things she’d seen each week, like the time she got up or went to bed. Scorpion was even worse, changing hers at random hours of the day to things that followed no specific pattern. It would be easier to win the lottery—and he didn’t even play.

He’d long figured out that Griffon usually changed his at the start of every week, or after each new mission was assigned. The passwords themselves were usually variations of the mission IDs.

Pegasus looked up what the last one had been and tried the number in full, then backwards. He was in. A smile came naturally as he shook his head. He really should have a talk with Griffon about that.

He reviewed the logs for the missions Robyn had been on since her parents’ death. Nothing had been flagged, so he’d have to skim through them and see if anything popped up as unusual.

Ironically, he was well on his way to getting flagged, what with walking around with Mermaid’s com and tablet while looking over mission logs using Griffon’s access code.

No sooner had the thought formed in his mind, suspicion followed suit. The outside world became background noise.

He searched for any computer access that had been flagged, for instance, when the person logging in was not supposed to be inside the compound. Nothing.

Next, he pulled up all of Griffon’s recent computer activity and searches. As he expected, there were too many to go through. He removed from the list all those made from Griffon’s personal computer or tablet.

Isolating the more suspicious-looking access times, he pulled up the security footage for each one. Time after time, it was Griffon he saw at whatever computer.

Pegasus scrolled down the list, watching the dates and times roll by until one of them caught his eye. It was the day he inhaled a lungful of poison gas. Griffon was in the infirmary with him the entire time he was retching and struggling for breath. But the computer access had happened three levels down.

He searched the system for the internal security feed for that location. There was no file to be found.

He wanted to be wrong. Hoped for it.

The log for which files had been accessed remained. It was only one file, an internal security file dated several years ago and classified as low priority.

The date was unfamiliar to him, so he pulled up the recording. He didn’t need more than five seconds to know what it was, and what it meant.

He bolted to his feet, knocking his chair over with a loud bang. Cypher was nowhere to be found amidst the surprised faces that turned his way.

His first call was to the infirmary. “Is Dragon still there?”

There was a moment of silence on the other end. “Looks like she skipped out, as usual. It’s been a while since I checked.”

“Where’s November?”

“Might be throwing up in the bathroom again. Want me to page him?”

Pegasus barely uttered an impatient ‘no’ before ending the call. He turned to the monitors out of reflex.

Damn it!

They were still showing nothing but the outside world.

He needed help… and he needed a gun, in no specific order.

He cursed himself as he ran.

How could he have been so blind?