“Alloy, stop!” Feet pounding across the roof of the building, Murphy took a literal flying leap, flinging herself into Peyton’s back before the armor-clad girl could finish lifting off on her board. She had just dropped Murphy, Sierra, and Roald off on the building across the street from her own family's apartment, said something about getting those bastards, and started to leave.
Murphy knew from her own experience dealing with someone who had actually murdered her brother that trying to talk calmly to Peyton when her mother was in danger wouldn't get them anywhere. Hence the flying tackle. She crashed into the other girl, taking herself and Peyton down to the ground. Or to the roof, rather.
As they crashed down, Peyton used one of her marbles, turning it into a large hand that pushed Murphy off of her before scrambling backward. “Stop it! Leave me alone, I've gotta save my mom!”
“We will!” That was Roald, moving next to Murphy as she picked herself up. He had both of his hands up. “We're gonna get them out of there. But this is the Scions, we can't just go running in that place. It's kind of way over our heads. This isn't some random mugging or robbery, and we don't have Paintball or Poise. We don’t have--we’re not… We--we’ll all die, Peyton. You’ll die.”
“My mom will die!” Peyton snapped right back at him. Her board was already floating up and off the ground, coming back over to her as she prepared to step on it. “You guys don't have to go in there with me. It’s too dangerous, I know. That's why I dropped you off here. But it's my mom in there, and I have powers. I have to get in there and save her! You know what those psychos are like, you know what they do to the people that they--that they’re playing with!” She was practically hysterical by that point, stepping onto the board before starting to turn. The thought of what every second could be costing her mother drove her into a nearly blind panic.
“Alloy.” That was Sierra, grabbing Peyton by the arm as she stepped in quickly from the other side. “Listen to us. We're gonna help. We’ll get your mom and everyone else we can out of that place. But Calvin’s right. We can't just go rushing in there. If you go in all by yourself, they'll catch you. If they figure out who you went in there to save, they’ll know how to hurt you the most. We need help. Do you think that’s easy for me to say? Because believe me, it's not. One of the last things I wanna do is admit I need anyone else. But if we want to get through this without fucking the whole thing up, and getting your mom and a bunch of other people killed, then we need reinforcements. And we need a plan. We’re working on both of them. Just… just hold on.”
“The Scions won't just start killing people.” Murphy tried to reassure her friend. Her voice shook a bit and she felt a rush of bile right through her throat at her own words. She knew exactly what it was like to lose someone to a vicious murder. Not to one of the Scions, of course. But she still knew all about the feeling of helpless rage and terror. And that had been when it all happened at once right in front of her. How would she have felt if there had been a chance she could run into the path of the bullets to save her brother, and her friends were trying to talk her out of it?
Helmet shifting out of the way so they could see her face, Peyton stared at them with wide, terrified eyes. Her red hair was sweaty and matted, giving her a slightly crazed appearance. “Please, please.” Her voice trembled as she clenched her hands, the marbles floating agitatedly around her head. “Help me save my mom. Please help me save my mom.”
“We will,” Sierra assured her. Then she motioned for them to move away from the edge of the roof and back toward the middle of the building. “Now let's get the hell out of sight and talk about exactly how we're going to do that.
“And what kind of help we can pull in.”
*******
“When your friends said you wanted to hire me to be available for a job, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind.” As she said those words, Cavalcade looked at the assembled quartet who stood a few feet away on the same roof as earlier. The Sell-Touched woman gestured with one hand. “And while we're on the subject, if this is so important, where are they, exactly? Seems to me going up against someone like Pencil and the rest of his Scion freaks would be an all hands on deck sort of situation.”
Style spoke for the rest of them. “They’d be here if they could, trust me. They've got an emergency of their own right now and it's impossible to get away.”
Cavalcade seemed to consider that for a moment, weighing the answer in her mind before giving a soft grunt. Then she held her hand out expectantly. She didn't say anything. There was no need to. The unspoken demand was clear enough in the gesture.
As Style passed her an envelope with cash, Murphy shook her head in disgust. “You can't just do the right thing and use your power to save those people without getting a bunch of money for it, huh?” If she had that woman's power, if she could do the sort of things Cavalcade was capable of… well, things would be different, that was for sure.
The woman didn't even spare a glance for her, simply replying, “We've all got bills to pay, kid. And you're asking me to go up against a bunch of real psychopaths.”
There was a lot that Murphy wanted to say to that. Instead, she looked at Peyton, who was bouncing anxiously on her feet while staring off into the distance. “Do you see anything?”
That wasn't exactly what she meant. She was actually asking if the girl had gotten any more calls or texts from her mother, but they had agreed not to talk about that openly in front of the mercenary. That could too easily lead to exposing Peyton’s identity.
With a slight hitch to her voice, the other girl shook her head while replying, “Nothing. It’s all quiet and dark down there.”
“I tried calling my friend, but there was no answer.” That was Roald, or Calvin as he was known in costume. Honestly, Murphy thought they should have flipped those names. Roald was totally more of the Hobbes in their friendship. She was the impulsive Calvin. In any case, part of their cover story to make it harder for anyone to work out Peyton’s identity was that they had found out what was going on here through someone in the apartment building who was his friend. It would be more difficult for anyone to connect the group to Peyton’s mother if they were looking for someone who would be a friend of Roald/Calvin. His actual words meant that he’d gotten the signal from Peyton that she had tried to call her mother back and got no response.
Once she was assured that the cash she had demanded was all there, Cavalcade tucked it away and nodded to them. “Right, we're all good. Just tell me what you want from me, exactly. How’re we gonna pull this one off, team?”
“Very carefully.” That answer came from That-A-Way, who had just appeared on the roof a few feet away. “And without getting a bunch of innocent people killed.”
“Oh hey there, Minority chick.” Cavalcade lifted her chin curiously. “They hired you too, huh? And here I didn't even know you were for sale.”
“That’s because you couldn’t afford me,” Way retorted dismissively, her gaze remaining centered on Style. “You guys sure they don’t have a bunch of lookouts staring at us right now? Because I’m feeling pretty exposed right here.”
Alloy was the one who answered. “This building is higher than the one they're in.” She gestured to the edge of the roof. “The apartment’s down that way. They've got someone on top of it, and a couple in the windows, but we don't think they know we're up here. They’re watching the streets and the skies around the place, not this particular roof. At least not constantly. We’ve been… careful.” She left out the fact that she had almost gone charging in there by herself.
“Great, fantastic,” Cavalcade replied. “Good to know we’re not about to be shot immediately. I always like not being shot. And speaking of things I like, are we about to have more help?” She was looking at That-A-Way. “You know, like the rest of your team, or your bosses. It would be really nice to have a whole bunch of your bosses here right now.”
“They’re coming,” the girl replied simply. “They--they’re trying to pull themselves away from another fight right now. The Niners attacked one of the hotels on the edge of town, the one holding people who couldn’t leave before the lockdown happened.”
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“What the fuck?” Murphy found herself blurting. “Yeah, sure, they don't like out-of-towners, whatever. But it's not like those people can leave right now even if they want to. They don't have a choice.” It was probably stupid to even question what people like that were thinking, especially when they had more important problems. But still.
“No one said those assholes were logical,” Way replied. “Anyway, they’re in the middle of that. Raindrop’s coming too. I tried to tell her she should wait, but… but she wants to be here. Other than that, it’s gonna take some time for anyone else to show up.”
Shaking her head then, she carefully asked, “Do we have any time? What are they doing in there? Are we sure the people are… you know, still alive?” She hesitated through that, her voice catching a bit. It was pretty obvious that she didn't want to even bring up the possibility, but felt it had to be asked. After all, it wouldn't exactly be unheard of for the Scions to simply go into a building and kill everyone before the authorities could react. Murphy could think of at least three different times when something like that had happened over the years. Sometimes Pencil and his freaks wanted a drawn-out confrontation, and other times they just wanted to make a statement that no one was safe by killing a bunch of people before anyone even knew they were in danger. If this was one of those times…
“They’re alive,” Style put in sharply, cutting off Murphy’s intrusive thoughts. “I can see heat signatures from their bodies. I've been able to peek over the roof enough to see what's going on in there. Some of it, at least. They’ve got most of the people down in the basement, all clustered together. Probably tied up and under guard. There’s just a few lookouts in the rest of the building. And a couple different hostages with them, probably to stop anyone outside from taking shots at them. And… and the searchers.”
“Searchers?” Raindrop had arrived, floating up from the far side of the building to land on the roof near them. Her soaked costume dried itself immediately as she pulled the water off it and created a floating ball that hovered next to her. “What searchers?”
Style answered. “I've been watching their heat signatures, like I said. They've got four different groups of three going through every apartment in that place. It's like they're searching for something. But I don't think they've found it yet, whatever it is, because they’re still looking.”
“Maybe they’re just checking for stragglers?” That-A-Way pointed out. She sounded uncertain, glancing toward Murphy and the others. “Just in case they missed anyone. Hell, maybe they’re looking for someone in particular and that’s why they went there in the first place.”
That made Murphy flinch a little inwardly. It was stupid to think that the Scions could have gone inside specifically to find Peyton’s mother, of course. It was impossible. There was no way they could have known about her and gone to take the woman just to hurt Paintball’s team, right? No matter how much they hated Cassidy (And they really hated her. Or ‘him’ rather), they didn’t know about that connection. They couldn’t have known. Hell, if they did, things would’ve been a lot worse.
From the way she reacted, Alloy had the same series of thoughts. It took her a moment to speak up, probably because she had to stop her voice from sounding completely panicked. “If they are looking for someone in particular, they aren't in there, right? All the people other than the Scions who were in that place are already in the basement being guarded by the others. And it’s not like they separated any of them, so they haven’t found any of their family members.”
Right, that was a big thing. Not only had Peyton’s mother apparently not been their target, but Peyton herself probably wasn’t either. Not if the heat signature that belonged to her mother wasn’t separated out from the rest of them. If they were there for her, they’d definitely pull her mother aside and try to find out where Peyton was, right? Murphy felt a tiny bit of the anxious weight lift off her then. It wasn’t much, but still. There was a big difference between Peyton’s mother being in danger because she happened to be in the same building they were taking over, and being in danger because the Scions were literally there to find and use her to hurt everyone in Avant-Guard.
Cavalcade, who had taken all that in and stood there thinking for a moment, spoke up. “Right, well it sounds to me like our best move is to take the one on the roof, then make our way down, dealing with those searchers as we go. But do you have any idea where Pencil himself is? He'll be the real threat. I don't think any of us have anything that can deal with him. I'd grab him and just carry the fucker away, but the slippery bitch can just teleport away from me. Believe me, I’ve seen him do it.”
“Yeah, we’ve seen him teleport too,” That-A-Way murmured. “He’s got a bunch of Touched-Tech toys on top of being basically invincible. Picking him up and carrying him away isn’t gonna work. Neither is punching him, or shooting him, or… fuck. Basically anything. If there was a way to hurt that piece of shit, someone would’ve done it by now. Whatever we do, we have to work around him, not through him.”
Style cleared her throat. “I think I know where he is. There’s a separate room in the basement, probably a custodian’s office or something. Anyway, two of the heat signatures are in there and some of the ones guarding the prisoners keep going over there now and then, like they’re reporting in. I think that’s Pencil and Cup in the office.”
“That costume of yours has some pretty neat tricks,” Cavalcade noted, giving her a curious glance. “Did you buy it or get your friend the Tech-Touched to put it together for you? Either way, maybe I should look into an upgrade, because my infrared doesn’t reach that far.”
Instead of answering, Style just replied, “You can certainly afford to get some better toys with all the cash we’re paying you. Something tells me you’re not shipping it all off to sick relatives at a hospital slash orphanage.”
“You never know,” the mercenary retorted with a small smirk. “I’m full of surprises. Now are you honestly going to tell me that we’re about to go charging into an apartment full of Scions to save some helpless little civilians and possibly their innocent puppies, and two of your members are just complete no-shows? I’m supposed to believe that Paintball would leave you hanging?”
“We told you,” Murphy quickly put in, “they’re busy with something else they can’t walk away from. If they could, they’d be here.”
“Uh huh.” Cavalcade was looking at her in a way that made the girl squirm just a bit, before she turned back to look at the two Minority members. “Well, at least we’ve got a couple other Touched to make up for it. From what I hear, the little one packs a pretty big punch.”
That-A-Way put a hand on her teammate’s shoulder. “Yeah, especially when she’s pissed off.” She didn’t say the mercenary should keep that in mind. But then, she didn’t have to. There was more than enough implication. “And yeah, if you guys can pinpoint exactly where the civilians are for me, I can get to a spot to teleport to them and then get them out. But I’ll need a distraction. If that’s Pencil and Cup in the adjoining office, they’ll react before I can teleport around. It’ll take more than one trip to get all of them, and as soon as I get out with one group, I’ll have to run all the way around to get in the right position for another jump inside.” She shrugged then. “The joy of only being able to teleport one cardinal direction.”
“Don’t worry,” Alloy put in, “we’ll cause a distraction. We’re pretty good at those. Even without Paintball. I think--”
Whatever the girl thought, she didn’t get to explain. Because in that moment, an almost deafeningly loud boom filled the air, like thunder from a bolt of lightning that had struck incredibly closely. And like lightning, the boom was accompanied by a bright light. Only that particular light stayed where it was.
Murphy, along with everyone else, spun that way to stare. They all had to run to the edge of the roof to look down. A bright, glowing wall of light had formed in front of the apartment building they had been waiting to go into, the apartment building full of the Scions, as well as all those innocent people including Peyton’s mom.
There was a sudden flash of motion from Cavalcade, as the Sell-Touched woman took off in a blindingly fast sprint. Or rather, created duplicates blindingly quickly, each one slightly further ahead of the last. Each incarnation of herself besides the latest one disappeared within a couple seconds of the creation of the next, creating what amounted to a rapidly vanishing trail of clones. Like a living speed blur. It went down the side of the building they were standing on, along the street below in a circle around the apartment in question, then back up again before she skidded to a stop on the opposite side of the roof from where she had started. “It’s all around the building, on every side and over the roof.”
“Like a big glowing cube,” Raindrop noted. “But… what is it?”
Style was the one who answered. “A forcefield. I just threw a rock at it and it bounced off. And my… infrared can’t see through it anymore. Neither can anything else. It’s just one big white blob.”
“I can’t teleport through it either,” That-A-Way put in. “It’s like it’s not there. That whole building is just completely off limits. There’s no way in.”
Alloy made a noise deep in her throat, taking a step that way. All three of her loose marbles transformed into sledgehammers, flying off to slam into the shield repeatedly. But it was to no avail. The shield gave no reaction to her attacks. And if they couldn’t break or teleport through it, that meant they couldn’t get to those people.
“So whatever the Scions are doing with everyone in there,” That-A-Way snarled, staring at the glowing white box, “we can’t even see them anymore, let alone help.”
“Could we have helped even if the forcefield wasn’t there?” Murphy found herself retorting. “I mean, Pencil’s basically invulnerable to everything. There’s no way to hurt the motherfucker.”
“Yes, there is.”
The voice came from the nearby roof access door, and everyone spun that way, taken aback by the new arrival. And Murphy was even more taken aback when she saw who was talking. Beside her, Roald made a noise of disbelief, audibly choking.
“And I know how,” Rubi Nilsen announced.