This was bad. This was really, really bad. Not only for the obvious reasons that we couldn't let all those people die, but also because if Cup really had been infected by this biological attack, did that mean others could be as well? Others who weren't in the quarantined building. Up until this point, we had at least been able to say that it was contained to that spot, and that the only people who were affected were the ones who were right there when the attack happened. But if Cup was sick too, then… wait, was she there at the time and just got out? Had she been affected this whole time, or was this something new?
As if reading my mind, Paige spoke up quietly. “This is new. She wasn't affected before. He would have lashed out earlier if she was. He wouldn't have been this patient for so long. Not with his sister in that condition.”
Right, of course. She had a point. If Cup had already been affected from the start, we would've heard about it before now. But that just made the whole thing even worse. If she wasn't part of the initial group, that meant that it had gotten out somehow. But how?! How the hell had it escaped confinement. Or was this another attack? One we didn't hear about? But if there was, then why would it only affect Cup? Or had she gotten into the sealed off building far enough to become infected despite everyone knowing what she looked like?
There were so many questions, and we didn't have answers for any of them. What I did know was that if we didn't find a cure for this within two days, the Scion candidates were going to kill over three hundred people each per day. And, well, to be fair, I was pretty sure even if we did somehow get the cure that soon, Pencil still wouldn’t call them off.
“Are there really seven of them?” I found myself whispering in horror. Seven candidates, and we had only met one of them. If they were all as amoral and awful as Broadway’s foster sister…fuck.
“We have to go along as though there are,” Paige reminded me with a heavy sigh. “Seven candidates times three hundred and four is two thousand one hundred and twenty eight victims per day.”
It was a staggering number. As though we didn't have enough pressure to find this cure. Now Pencil had to add some gasoline to the fire. And even if we did do all this, again, who was to say he'd actually follow through with the agreement? He’d said that all those people would die if we didn't bring his sister the cure. But knowing him, he was just as likely to take the cure, laugh, and have his people kill everyone anyway. He had absolutely no reputation for keeping his word. Quite the opposite, actually.
And yet, we couldn't just do nothing. We had to get that cure and then go from there. It wasn't like this changed what we had to do, exactly. The plan had to be the same. We would grab Pittman off of Breakwater, shove him in that machine, and get the information out of his subconscious. From there… Well, we’d just have to see what happened.
With that in mind, Paige and I kept getting ready to transport over. We couldn't do anything from out here, and the longer we waited, the better chance there was of being caught. And we already had more than enough complications without throwing something like that onto the pile.
The others wanted to talk about what happened, of course. Especially about some sort of secret they had been keeping. I could tell they were pretty anxious on that front, bursting to tell us… something. But they were waiting until we were there to really get into it. Instead, they kept sending updates about getting the system set up on their end. Wren was being even more of a strict perfectionist than usual. Which I really appreciated considering what was about to happen. I didn't want any slapdash seat of our pants teleportation, no thank you. We couldn't even walk as close as we had been during the first transport, thanks to the machine. None of us wanted to try carrying those big pieces all that way without being seen.
But this was close enough, or it was supposed to be. I had a feeling there were still a lot of crossed fingers on that front. And no, I wasn't a great fan of crossed fingers when it came to being teleported either.
So, Paige and I used that time, once we were both dressed up in our costumes just in case we ended up being transported somewhere other than where we wanted to go, to talk a bit more about what we were going to do about the whole Pencil situation. Honestly, after going back-and-forth on it a dozen times, we still didn't have much of an idea. The only thing I could think of was to get the cure and tell him that he could have it as soon as he let all those people go and surrendered the identities of his Scion applicants. I definitely wasn't going to just hand it to him while he still had all that hanging over everyone’s heads. That would've been stupid in basically any situation, let alone when it involved a guy like him. He seemed to care about basically one thing and one thing only in the entire world besides having his own version of fun and hurting people. And that was his sister. Demonstrating that we had the cure and that he could take it to help her if he restrained his urges, let all those people go, and called off his candidates seemed to be the only solution. Even then I wasn't exactly sold on the chances of it working.
In the end, we were basically hoping that some other group had made progress on identifying who those other candidates were so they could track them down and stop this whole thing before it turned into that level of tragedy. I knew Broadway and Pack were working with Grandstand, so maybe they had something.
But in any case, the only way we could get as far as having a cure to offer that psycho was by getting it out of another one. Thankfully, it wasn't long before we got word that everything was ready on that end. Calling Qwerty over, I had the little guy sit on the dirt a few feet away from me with his teleportation badge proudly displayed. Probably best not to have him on my shoulder, or touching either of us in any way when we went through this teleportation. I didn't really feel like coming out on the other end as a parrot-squirrel-human joint hybrid. Maybe that was impossible, but I wasn't going to take the risk.
First, it was time to send the machine over. We were going to start with that part, since that wasn’t actually alive. Yes, losing it would be a big deal, but not as big as one of us getting turned inside out. Not that I thought that had any chance of happening. After all, I had already been teleported by Wren’s transportation doohickey before having any idea how potentially dangerous it was. The fact that she’d gone through extra calculations after that and determined that me making it without any issues was practically a minor miracle did give me a bit of pause, but still. I had faith in her.
As the three of us watched, the machine flickered a bit, turning mostly translucent briefly before coming back as if nothing had happened. Just as I opened my mouth to ask if there was a problem, it vanished completely without any further warning. All the separate pieces of it were gone. Immediately, I held my breath. I didn't want to jinx anything by speaking up. The seconds ticked by while I moved my eyes to look at Paige. Our gazes met, and I could see the uncertainty there. Why was it taking so long for them to confirm the--
“Got it!” That was Murphy, sounding as relieved as I suddenly felt. “Sorry, we had to make sure it looked just like the pictures you sent and that nothing got turned inside out or melted or whatever. But it’s here! We’re good, it’s good.”
Most--okay some of the tension left me. At least the big thing was in the city. I’d been afraid, somewhere in the back of my mind, that Wren’s own teleportation tech would prove to be incompatible with Pittman’s and that trying to move it that way would make the whole thing explode or something. But no, it was there, they had it.
Now we just had to get ourselves into the city. Then this trip would be over and we could move on to the next step. Even if it had suddenly become even more complicated thanks to the Scions. And really, wasn’t making things more complicated and worse basically the entire reason they existed?
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Wren got on the phone and gave us a countdown, and I could hear the mix of excitement and nervousness in her voice as she instructed us to stand as still as possible. Even Qwerty took that seriously, suppressing his obvious urge to bounce up and down wildy and instead simply clutched his badge as it was pinned to his fur and grinned excitedly. He was over the moon about going to Detroit. He’d been asking questions about the whole city the entire time we've been driving there, and now he wanted to explore the place. He had so many spots he insisted on checking out. Some of which were big tourist spots and others were just like… my school. Honestly, it was too bad we were coming back to the city in such a bad situation, because I would've loved to play tour guide for the little guy for the next few days. He deserved it.
Strangely, I didn't even feel anything odd once the transport happened. Maybe it was because my body was accustomed to this by now, or because Wren had been working on perfecting it over the past few days. But either way, there was absolutely no physical reaction to the transport at all. The only indication I had that anything had happened, other than Wren reaching zero in her countdown, was the sudden change in scenery. It was like I blinked and suddenly we were standing in a completely different place. Which, honestly, was about as disorienting as if there really had been a physical reaction. It made my brain twist in on itself trying to figure out what had just happened.
Turning in a circle inside which turned out to be the inside of that closed print shop, with all the copy machines, computers, and such shoved out of the way to create this open space in the middle of the carpeted room, I saw the pieces of Pittman’s machine first. Then I saw the others, including Wren, who immediately bounded over to hug me tightly. “You made it!”
She wasn’t only talking about the fact that the teleportation had been successful, I knew. It was all of it, the whole trip. She had probably been about as worried as I was that something would go wrong.
Of course, something had gone wrong. Bobby was shot, and even at that very moment, still recovering. All of us had nearly died multiple times. But a lot of things had gone right too, including me getting all of my memories back. Sure, a lot of those memories were painful, especially the end of them. But I was still counting it as a positive. I would rather have all my memories, no matter how much they hurt, rather than let them be erased.
Returning Wren’s hug, as well as all the others as they came in for their own, I thanked them for holding down the fort. When it came to Peyton, I held her arms and met her gaze. “We’re gonna get your mom out of there, and all the others too. I promise, we’ll do whatever it takes.”
She hesitated, then stepped in for another hug, squeezing even tighter than she had the first time. Her voice was soft. “I can’t lose her, PB. I just--she’s my mom and all I did was complain about how much she worries about me.” I could hear the crack in her voice, she was on the edge of tears. “I have to save her. I don’t care what--I don’t care what happens to me. I just have to save her.”
“We will,” I promised again, feeling the hoarseness in my own voice. What was with our parents being endangered lately? Mine had been hurt by Pittman’s stupid attack and still weren’t exactly out of the woods, Paige’s adopted parents, shitty though they might’ve been, were turned into bio-bombs and killed, plus her adopted sister was in the same situation as my parents. Hell, Murphy had lost her own ‘parental’/guardian figure with her brother’s death not so long ago. It was… yeah, it was bad.
Swallowing back those thoughts and reminding myself that we still had a chance to save most of those people, I turned and gestured toward the spot where the small, brightly-colored figure sat seemingly frozen. “Okay guys, I’d like you to meet Qwerty.”
Considering how excited and animated he had been before, now the little guy seemed almost paralyzed by nervousness. Which, to be fair, this was kind of a lot. His wings spread out a little as he slowly lifted his head to find everyone staring at him. Visibly gulping, he raised one tiny paw and waved, voice cracking. “Um, hiya.”
Wren was the first to move, taking a step that way before going down onto her stomach in front of him. The rest of us simply watched as she laid right down like that, her nose only a foot or so away from the small TONI. “Hi!” she chirped, waving with two fingers. “I’m Wren. Or Trevithick, I guess. It’s nice to meet you! I like your wings. I have them too, see?” With that, she picked herself up and let her glowing wings extend from the flight pack she was, of course, wearing. They lifted her off the floor and let her hover there.
Qwerty immediately seemed to forget all about his nervousness. Jumping up to my shoulder, he pointed with a gasp. “You can fly! Can you teach me how to fly?! I just glide. I haven’t figured out the rest of it yet.”
Wren held her hands out and he jumped over to land in her palms as she laughed. The two of them started talking excitedly, before the others gradually made their own introductions now that he didn’t seem so skittish.
Letting out a long, heavy breath, I turned to where Sierra was. “How's my brother doing?”
She offered a small shrug. “Well, he didn’t guess that I wasn’t you, as far as we can tell. Probably helps that he's been pretty distracted. He hasn’t really been spending a lot of time at home. I think they're all still trying to tear apart the whole state looking for where dear old Daddy had his bioweapon made, so it’ll give them some clues about fixing it.”
“Well good luck to them,” I replied sincerely. Whatever happened, all that really mattered was fixing this situation. Which reminded me of the card in my pocket, the one Bobby had given me. He’d said I should call the number on it if we needed anything. It had to connect to the Ministry, right? Between that and Paige’s own connections to them, would it be a good idea to tell them what we were planning? They could help make sure nothing went wrong once we transported that piece of shit over here, and probably send him back when we were done.
Or, well, not send him back. Some part of me recognized the probability that they would just kill him. Which… I had conflicting feelings about. But the fact that they were conflicting feelings and not a complete dismissal of the very idea probably said a lot about my state of mind when it came to Benjamin Pittman.
Either way, the Ministry might be able to help with this. After all, they were as motivated as we were to get that cure. If they were going to play nice with us in any situation, now was it.
On the other hand, it would've meant telling them way too much, and letting them get too close to everything. Hell, we’d have them inside Wren’s shop when we transported that bastard over and did the thing with him. I couldn't risk that. We couldn’t risk it. Yes, they had motivation to play nice right now, but if they saw something they shouldn’t, or heard something… it was too risky. Besides, they had their own things to do. If somehow our plan didn't work and we couldn’t get the cure out of Pittman this way, it was better that they had their own things to try rather than throwing their eggs into our basket.
But if Wren’s modified device couldn’t pry the answer out of that piece of shit, I was absolutely going to call in the Ministry and hand him over to them. Something told me they had ways of getting those answers.
Before I could focus too much on that, however, the others all exchanged looks. Then Murphy spoke up. “Uh, we should probably talk about the other thing.”
“Other thing?” I echoed. “What’s going on?”
It was Roald who responded, calling out, “It’s okay, you can come in now!” To me, he added, “It’s okay, she doesn’t know who you are. Just Murphy and me.”
That made me blink over toward the nearby door, as an older blonde girl who looked somewhat familiar hesitantly stepped inside. “Um, hi,” she started, sounding nervous. “My name’s Rubi. I… guess my brother and his friend work for you? Or… they’re--sort of like your… minions?” She grimaced. “Sorry, I’m still wrapping my head around all this. I can’t believe they’re really--” Visibly choking herself off, she focused. “Please, I’ve got a lot of questions about all that, but this is more important. I need your help. Pencil has a weakness. I know… I know how to hurt him.”
That made me do a double-take. Well, okay, the entire situation made me want to do about an octuple-take, at least. This was Roald’s sister?! She knew about them? She was here?! What--how--
Yeah, she wasn’t the only one trying to wrap her head around this. But if she was right about knowing Pencil’s weakness…
Clearly interpreting my body language, Rubi’s head jerked up and down quickly. “Exactly. I want to get the information out there, but I don’t know who to trust. If he’s got like, seven candidates for more Scions out there, who do we talk to who can actually do something with it before it’s too late and won’t think we’re just screwing with them? And who definitely isn’t working for them?”
I was still reeling from her sudden arrival, and the issues it raised. But her question made me reach for my pocket. Pulling out the card Bobby had given me with the Ministry’s number, I held it up.
“You know, I think I’ve got just the answer for that.”