Everyone was hungry right after that, so we ordered some pizza and were in the middle of eating it. “Okay,” I announced while perched on the edge of the glass counter, “since Paige wants to be a total spoilsport and actually plan out what we’re gonna do about the Irelyn thing…” I gave the girl in question a quick look, just to make sure I wasn’t going too far with the teasing her bit. I was trying to keep things light so she wouldn’t obsess too much about Irelyn, but it would’ve been easy to go too far.
Thankfully, she seemed okay, simply raising an eyebrow at me before replying, “I would like us all to not die or get sent to prison ourselves, yes. And I definitely don’t want to underestimate my father.” After a glance toward Sierra, she amended, “Our father.”
Before Sierra could respond to that, Peyton put in, “There’s no chance he’ll even be involved in this, right? If the plan to blackmail the Breakwater people works, you’ll never even see your dad. Wren’s machine will track where the island is, then we just tell them to get those three off the island if they want to continue keeping its location a secret. And, you know, hopefully they do that. Why overcomplicate it?”
“And what if they don’t?” Sierra asked pointedly. “What if they call our bluff? Because if you guys don’t want to kill a murdering, betraying piece of shit like our dad, something tells me you don’t actually want to give away the location of a prison full of murdering pieces of shit to the public and have a bunch of Fell-Touched raising armies to go free their old buddies.”
I grimaced at that. She was right, of course. If they called our bluff, we weren’t about to actually expose the location of the prison to everyone. What else could we do, though? The only people who would be interested in taking that information from us were bad guys, and if these people realized that there was no way we’d actually give that information to that sort of person, then we would have no actual leverage. Sure, they’d probably be unhappy that we had the info ourselves, but still. We wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. And they’d just be able to keep trying to track us down. To say nothing of what they might do with Flea and Trivial. We had to have a plan B, if they didn’t go for that. Hopefully a plan B that was good enough to be upgraded to plan A, because I still wasn’t sure that blackmailing the leadership of the world’s biggest and most inescapable supervillain prison should have been anything above plan Q, for Quite Stupid. Or possibly T, for Totally Moronic.
Seeing the look on Wren’s face, I quickly shook my head. “Whatever we do with it, having the information is good. Trust me, we’ll totally use the tracker. Besides, something tells me having the ability to track someone via phone no matter how they try to hide it would be a good thing anyway. It seems like something that will come up again later.”
We all considered that for a moment, before Roald spoke up. “What if you give them an out, so they don’t have to look bad?” When we all looked that way, he continued. “I mean, what if you let them play it off like those girls are there on some sort of special assignment? You know, as a favor to the Breakwater people. Like, they found out something bad was going on over there, a potential escape, and sent a couple Star-Touched in to deal with it. Or maybe that Irelyn lady shipwrecked or crashed there and they went in to find and save her.”
My fingers snapped. “Hang on, that last bit isn’t bad. Yeah, none of it’s bad. But that last bit, that one might actually be the best. Look, what if we find out where the island is, and then we fake some sort of nearby shipwreck or balloon evidence and claim that Irelyn washed up there and that those two went to save her? All we need is boat or hot air balloon wreckage, and images of the island. We don’t have to actually show people where the island is, we can strip all that information out of it. Just make a public thing about some innocent woman getting lost on the island by a freak accident, and that two Star-Touched went to save her.”
Paige looked like she was considering that for a moment before giving a slow nod. “Maybe if you play it more like congratulating Breakwater for being on top of the situation and helping out. So they could see it as a PR win on their side. But it would have to come off like more of a leak. Something no one was going to find out about, but still doesn’t make them look that bad.”
While I was thinking about that, Peyton put in, “I thought we were afraid that if the public found out about that, the Breakwater people would just deny everything and make the girls disappear. Isn’t that why we weren’t just telling the authorities where they are?”
“If it was something that made them look bad, they probably would,” I agreed. “Admitting that someone was able to teleport on or off of the island would compromise every claim they make about how safe the place is. But if Irelyn just ended up there by a complete freak accident, and then the Breakwater people made a deal to send a couple local Star-Touched in quietly to get her out of there safely… that could maybe work. Especially if we make it seem like she’s already been rescued and they’re on their way back.”
Sierra gave a short laugh at that. “Right, that way they can’t turn around and claim the three were lost. Make it seem like it’s a done deal and they’re just being checked over before being released. Then they’ll have no choice but to pull them off there ASAP. Well, maybe they will have some other choices. But not very good ones.”
We all considered that for a few moments before Paige offered a shrug. “It’s probably a better plan than blackmailing those guys, and we don’t have a lot of extra options.”
“Uh, hello?” Murphy waved a hand. “You guys do realize that you’re talking about faking something like that as though it’s no big deal, right? You just said all we have to do is fake ship or balloon wreckage and put it up against an image of the island. How exactly are we supposed to fake a shipwreck? I mean, I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t exactly have an intact yacht to mess around with, let alone a broken one that–oh it’s Cassidy Evans.” In mid-sentence, she amended herself while staring at me. Which made me self-conscious again about the fact that I wasn’t wearing my mask and helmet. I still wasn’t accustomed to that, to say the least. “You probably have a full-sized yacht in your bathtub.”
The words made me flush, head shaking quickly. “Come on, it’s not that bad. My boat is on the lake, just like everyone else’s.”
“Just like everyone else’s, she says,” Peyton retorted with a snort.
Blushing a bit more, I waved that off. “You know what I mean. Everyone around here who has a boat. I mean–never mind. Anyway, we can’t use that boat anyway. Trust me, my parents will see this footage, and they’d recognize anything of mine out there.”
“I have a boat we can use,” Paige noted. “We can break it up into pieces and partially sink it. Make it look real good.”
“Right, I’m hanging out with more than one obscenely rich teenager,” Murphy muttered while shaking her head. “Seriously, if Tyson ever–” She stopped then, her face twisting with realization. For just a second, the girl had forgotten that her brother was dead. I saw the way it hit her again, the full impact making her physically recoil just for a moment before she recovered. “He would’ve been jealous.” Visibly swallowing, the girl pushed on. “Anyway, even if you’ve got a boat we can destroy, how are we supposed to get it out to the ocean like that? I don’t know about you guys, but my parents would notice if I was gone for that long. Even if we could take one of those guys’ private planes.” She added that with a gesture toward Paige and me.
“One, I do not have a private plane,” I pointed out. “And two, we don’t have to take it all the way out to the ocean. We’ll just shoot some footage on the lake and make it look like the ocean. You know, superimpose images of the boat wreckage with images of the island.”
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It was Roald’s turn to speak up, asking, “So uhh, how are we supposed to get images of the island to mix with images of the boat? They don’t exactly allow photo tours of the place.”
I grinned. “That’s where Wren’s thing comes in.”
The girl in question perked up, head tilting. “It is?”
Nodding, I explained, “Sure, obviously it’d be impossible for us to actually get an image of the island. So we just have to make it look like we did. We put an image of any island in there, cover it in fog so it’s hard to make out details, and claim it’s Breakwater. Then in the file we add the latitude and longitude of the place Wren finds out with the tracker thing.”
“But we don’t want to actually give the location away,” Murphy pointed out.
“That’s why we block that information out in anything the public sees,” Paige realized with a look my way. “But the part the Breakwater people get–”
“And the authorities,” I confirmed. “They get the version that has the location in it, so they take us seriously. That way, they’ll know we know where it is, but we aren’t telling anybody.”
Peyton’s eyes widened. “The Conservators. They’ll know you’re telling the truth about where those three are, because it’s the only way we could have the location. And they’ll all be able to save face so no one looks bad, as long as Irelyn and the others show up here safe and sound.”
“Pretty much.” With that, I looked toward Paige and Sierra. “What do you guys think? We mock up and then leak a file about how Flea and Trivial were sent to save your sister and how they succeeded and all. So now they’re about to get medals or something. Include some pictures of the crash site and all that, block out the parts that have the location of Breakwater for the public release but leave it in the part that gets sent to the Conservators and whoever else, and let those people get the three of them off the island in time for their welcome home party.”
The other girls seemed to be turning the idea over in their heads a bit before nodding. Sierra spoke first. “I mean, I don’t have a better plan. Maybe we can work out some more details before we actually go for it, but other than that… yeah, it’s a start. Honestly, probably better than the straight up blackmail thing. Giving them a way to save face is a good idea.”
“Well, we went from that to this,” I agreed. “Maybe by the time it becomes relevant, we’ll have an even better plan. But yeah, we should get started on setting up that boat footage, and getting someone who can do the Photoshop stuff to make it look like it’s in front of the island.”
“I can do that part,” Paige informed me. “I’ve got plenty of experience and… uh, training with making fake pictures.” She cleared her throat, looking a little uncomfortable before pushing on. “But none of that is relevant until we track the location so they take the whole thing seriously and don’t just write us off as conspiracy theorists.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “The only way to make sure they take us seriously is if we have the location, and the only way to make sure they don’t just make Irelyn and the others disappear and pretend they were never actually there is if the public knows about it. We’ve gotta hit them with both at the same time, and do it in a way where those three disappearing is the worst thing that could happen. Come on, we play this up right and we can make everyone see Flea and Trivial as total heroes. Err, they’re already heroes, but you get it. Yeah, we’ll have to hammer out the details or whatever, but I think we can work with it.”
“I… I think I can finish the tracker by tomorrow,” Wren vowed. “Like I said before, it’s almost done. I just have to double-check some things and… umm, make sure it works the first time. Uncle Fred helped me get the last of the stuff I needed last night. I mean, he had a friend who–uh, it’s almost done.” She rubbed the back of her neck while floating in midair with pizza stains over her face, looking self-conscious (but not about the pizza stains). “Anyway, the stuff we got is important and expensive, and I have to make sure it works right before plugging it into my thing. But I think I can finish it. Err.. I can. I can get it done, I promise.”
She started to apologize for taking so long and being uncertain about the parts Fred had helped procure, but Paige cut her off. “It’s okay. Sure, yeah, I’m worried about Irelyn. But we just have to roll with it. We’ve got something resembling a plan now, and I know she can take care of herself. Especially with a couple Star-Touched to help out. They’ll be okay. We just have to make sure they have a way off the island so they’re not stuck there forever. As soon as you get the tracker done, we’ll work on the next part of that, now that we have an actual–err, something resembling a plan. And we should probably make the image of the boat wreckage be at night or… maybe around dawn, so there’s a reason for all the fog we need to put over the island. Which means we can’t do it right now anyway. We’ll work on that part later.”
Sierra coughed. “What my dear sorta-fraternal-twin is saying is that we don’t have anything we can do right now that’s actually useful as far as saving Irelyn goes. So we’d really like it if the rest of you let us distract ourselves by starting this whole training thing.”
“That’s not the only reason I want to get into this,” Paige pointed out with a look that way.
“Well, of course not,” Sierra retorted. “There’s also the fact that these guys are going to get slaughtered like cream puffs if they ever have to actually get into a real hand-to-hand fight without extra help, but I was trying to be nice and not say it like that.”
Shaking her head slowly, Paige let out a long sigh before focusing on us. “I would’ve put it a little more gently than that, but yeah, you all need the extra training. Or any training, really.”
“Right.” Nodding, I looked at the others. “So, do uhh… do we have space to do this somewhere?”
“Actually,” Paige informed me, “Sierra and I had another idea.
“How do you all feel about going into that virtual reality machine again?”
*******
A few minutes later, we were all standing upstairs around the MRI-like machine in question. It had been moved over to a corner of the lab, and now had a couple extra chairs sitting around it. Peyton, Murphy, Roald, and I were staring intently at the thing, while Paige and Sierra gestured like they were prize girls on the Price Is Right. Wren, meanwhile, was hovering over the thing with her legs folded under herself. She looked quite proud (maybe partly because she’d washed off the pizza stains), and cheerfully announced, “See? You can totally use this thing to train as much as you want to and not even get hurt!”
“She’s right,” Paige informed us. “With both of our orbs linked into the machine, we can create any landscape we want. Any scenario, any enemies. If you take too much damage, you’ll just wake up out here, no problem. Much safer than trying to do the amount of actual real-world training you all need if we’re gonna keep up with the sort of problems Cassidy keeps finding.”
My mouth opened to object to that, before realizing I didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. Or a torso, or arms, really. As far as objecting to Paige claiming I tended to get in trouble a lot went, I was basically just a head. A head that got in a lot of trouble.
Instead, I asked, “You’re sure this thing is stable after we went in there before and, you know… ran into that copy of your dad? Cuz, I’m just saying, that wasn’t a heap of fun.”
“He’s gone. We erased him,” Sierra reminded me flatly, a dark scowl crossing her face. Which, given it was also my face, still threw me. That whole situation threw me. It was like staring into a mirror that did things you weren’t doing. Or something. Every time I thought I was over being surprised by seeing her, it hit me all over again.
Murphy, meanwhile, spoke up. “Like, gone for good and ever? He’s not sitting in a recycle bin waiting for someone to click ‘restore,’ right?” When Roald nudged her, she gave a dramatic shrug. “What? I don’t know how it works. I’m just saying, that would be bad.”
Paige gave a short nod, arms folded tight against her stomach. I could tell the discussion made her uncomfortable too, given her much longer history with that asshole. “It would be bad. But no, he’s gone. It’s just too bad we can’t do the same thing to the real deal that easily.”
“I dunno,” Sierra pointed out, “you point and click to delete something on a computer. You point a gun and click the trigger to delete Dad in real life. Seems pretty similar to me.”
“Hang on, hang on,” I piped up quickly, even as Wren gave a double-take. “No one’s killing anyone. Yeah, he’s a piece of shit who deserves to be on Breakwater forever, but this whole thing is about getting Flea and the others out of that place, not killing your dad.”
Wren’s head was bobbing rapidly. “Yeah! I’m not gonna help kill anybody, you’ve just gotta save your sister and the heroes!” She pointed at Sierra while adding, “No killing, not even bad guys.”
“Don’t worry,” my doppelganger replied smoothly, “like the chick over there said, if all goes to plan, we’ll never even see him.”
Paige audibly coughed before putting a hand on Sierra’s shoulder as she spoke up. “Whatever ends up happening, we need training for it. And this is still the best way to do it. Sure, it won’t actually build your muscles or anything. You’ll need to do other exercises for that. Exercises in the real world. But it can help muscle memory and just, you know, actual knowledge of how to fight and defend yourselves.”
“Dude, you wanna train us in the Matrix, I am all up for it.” Murphy punched her fist into her palm. “Let’s get on that shit.”
“Okay,” Paige agreed. “But let’s get one rule straight right off the bat.
“The first person to say ‘I know Kung Fu’ is getting kicked off a virtual skyscraper.”