Chapter 4
Only Monsters and Girls Go Bump in the Night
TIA
I can’t believe we’re about to have our elaborate plan foiled by a man with a complaint, but I suppose it isn’t historically unprecedented.
‘To be honest, I’ve been friends with Niko and Kiran for years and give large contributions of funds to Lain Co.,’ Kevin is saying, all self-righteous and matter-of-fact, ‘so I was expecting much better protection from you.’
You’re a shit Sentinel. Usually when I hear it between the lines, it’s just my anxiety making things up, but I know Kevin means it.
Thankfully, I’m more preoccupied with the shimmering spell hovering above us.
‘If you’ll excuse me,’ I say quietly, and shuffle back like I’ve been chastised. Easy to play the victim he wants me to be.
It looks all-natural, a berated fighter too embarrassed to stay at a party after a crushing defeat. Truth is, I see the yaoguais closing in.
Raven is close.
I slip out of the function room just as the lights go out like we planned. The lifts have all been programmed to only go to the lab floor. Raven will be smart enough to run from the yaoguais if they corner her to the lobby, but hopefully no civilians will wander up.
Niko and Kiran will be handling the probably panicked crowd in the room, so I take the lift journey up myself.
In the darkness of the labs, I wait.
My mother taught me not to fear the dark. We are daughters of the moon – we understood that we are embraced by shadow and solitude, that we’d be too quickly eclipsed by anything brighter.
So when I crouch in the darkness, my blasters ready to catch Raven, I think of her.
We used to play hide-and-seek all the time. She smothered me with attention until the sin of growing up befell me, and I learned that a mother’s love kept threat out like it boxed a daughter in, that a shelter against the world was incarceration branded differently.
It was always just us at home, two Chang’e descendants stashed away like dolls on a shelf while my human father went out to work at his billion-dollar company. It was days of my mother trying to suppress my powers, giving me medicine and—
Anyway, hide-and-seek meant scampering around the house, tucking my chubby limbs into the gap of my father’s work desk. I hadn’t grown tall yet, and the whole world was my secret nook.
‘Si nakal di mana?’ Where’s the naughty one?
My mother’s voice would tease its way into where I had hunkered in a darkness not unlike the one now, and it feels the same, I’m right back there – the trembling boundary between knowing something would happen, but not knowing when: any second now, maybe in the next second, maybe the one after that.
Now I ready my blasters, straining to see amidst the threadbare light of my hideout by the lobby. I set my trap like my mother set hers, my arms extended to the lift the same way her hands would reach for me through the dark.
And when the lift doors open, I take aim with my blasters and shoot.
A loud curse and a crash. A figure tumbles out of the lift in a black dress and a swinging arm that clips my cheek.
Pain explodes over my vision, the darkness obscured momentarily by dizzying fireworks. Before I can properly make out the figure, the lift doors slide closed and throw us back into darkness.
I channel my lunar energy into my blaster, charging a new shot in my wrists. My hands glow, throwing the figure’s face into illumination.
‘Wait, Harper?’ I power down my blaster.
‘God, yeah? Why are you shooting at me?’
My eyes adjust to the dark, barely enough to make out Harper’s outline. She’s squinting and leaning against the wall for support.
‘I . . .’ Oh crap, I was shooting at a civilian. If the government catches hold of this, I’m done. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought you were someone else. Are you okay? Why did you come up here?’
‘I don’t know, I was just trying to get out of the chaos.’ Harper’s voice floats through the darkness. ‘We should find some light.’
Right. We’re on the lab floor, which is where we’ve spent our internship hours over the last couple of years. Still, we’ve never really needed to locate the emergency torch, and my mind draws a blank.
My silence seems to convey my embarrassment, because Harper says, ‘Look, I have night vision. It’s like one of the only Fox perks I have. I’ll lead you, loser.’
I glance back at the lift. What if Raven comes through? But clearly something has gone wrong. We need light, and I need to locate my helmet to contact Niko.
I let Harper take my hand, and she leads me into the spilling darkness of the labs’ bowels.
Her touch is uncharacteristically gentle, though calloused.
A grasp firm with assurance, a skin-to-skin promise that she’ll lead me through the swallowing chasm.
Without the flashing light of publicity, without the searingly bright attention of the gala-goers, her guidance is a speck of a star in the sky.
Foreign, frightfully unfamiliar, but a little less lonely.
When Harper finds the emergency torch, the light shoves through the black, illuminating walls of plexiglass that grant us clear visibility through each lab, all boasting rows upon rows of rectangular tables with test-tube holders and storage boxes, floor-to-ceiling cubbies of nuts and bolts.
I rush into our assigned internship lab after entering my code and go straight for our lab table.
My helmet’s still lying where I’d laid it to charge earlier.
I engage the faceplate and activate communications. ‘Niko? Kiran? Do you have eyes on the situation?’
‘Teacup!’ It’s Niko. ‘Are you okay? Someone took out our signal and the power. Back-up generators should be up in ten minutes. I’ve got the crowd in the hall handled. Kiran’s sweeping the building. Is Raven with you? The yaoguais were honing in.’
‘No.’ Damn it. Part of me hoped Niko and Kiran would have caught Raven, at least. ‘Harper is with me. She came up for shelter when the lights went out. I can help with the sweep.’
‘No, stay there. Raven could be anywhere.’
‘Nik—’
‘Teacup, I know how much you want to help.’ They pause, and it aches.
‘If Raven still uses the lift to the labs, you can intercept her? Otherwise, it looks like the yaoguais lost her, and we can’t figure out where she’s gone.
Stay at your post, and keep Harper safe.
I’ll put the building in lockdown so Raven can’t escape. ’
‘Niko, I—’ The line beeps. I yank off my helmet, tossing it onto the table harder than I should. First Kiran taking over the chase after Raven’s blueprint heist, and now this. I know I’m only being sidelined because they’re both more experienced, but my chest tightens suddenly.
Around us, meshed metal shutters rattle over the windows as lockdown procedure activates, straining the light from outside into slivers.
I lower myself into my lab chair and steeple my hands, pressing my fingertips against my forehead.
A throat clears. ‘So that whole thing was just a failed scheme to catch Raven?’
I sigh. It was meant to be top secret, but it doesn’t matter now that it’s fallen through. ‘If I say yes, will you leave me alone?’
Harper hums. ‘To be fair, she’s been evading you for years. Why are you suddenly trying so hard now?’ I feel her shift beside me, her dress rustling.
‘There’ve been important developments way above your classification level.’ The final few nerves holding my fluttering heart and sweaty palms together begin to fray. ‘Anyway, why do you care? Doesn’t it make you happy to see me fail? Isn’t that why you’re always picking fights with me?’
Harper rolls her eyes, leans an elbow on a tabletop as she toys with a loose bolt. ‘I pick fights with everyone – you know that. Don’t think you’re special.’
Under the stream of torchlight, I pin Harper with a glare. It’s only then I realize there’s a welt on her cheek, a trademark injury whenever my lunar energy glances skin. Shit. I straighten and lean over. ‘Wait, I hit you with my blasters. Are you okay?’
Harper jerks away the moment I reach out. ‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Doesn’t it hurt?’
Harper touches the welt with a scowl. ‘Who cares?’
Weird reaction. ‘Let me help you put on ointment, or something. I burn myself on my blasters all the time. The cream helps—’
‘I said no. I don’t like owing people favours, bunny. Leave it.’
I open my mouth to push, then shut it. For the first time, I’m offering something to Harper instead of arguing with her, and although she seems to have a curious aversion to help, it doesn’t remove the fact that this is different. ‘Did you seriously call me bunny?’
The scowl turns to a side-eye. ‘Not the smartest. Asking to be preyed on.’
I narrow my eyes. ‘Fine, kit.’ At Harper’s suspicious squint, I say, ‘Tiny, and acts like a child.’
Harper scoffs, but seems to acknowledge the comeback with a near-respectful silence.
Until, of course, her eyes drop to my thigh. ‘Hey, what the hell is that?’
‘My leg,’ I say dryly. My skirts have parted to reveal the pitiful bandage on my thigh that’s now soaked with blood.
‘You’re hurt.’ Harper says it like an accusation. She probably doesn’t mean it that way, but after the day I’ve had, it reminds me of being benched on missions, discarded the moment I’m weak or injured.
‘I’m fine,’ I snap before I can stop myself.
Then I react the only way I know how: I walk away.
HARPER
I thought I’d blown my identity when I punched Tia in the head.
Escaping the trap had been easier than I thought. A swift hunt for the fuse box, a buttons game with the circuit breakers, and voila. A building in darkness, an audacious plan foiled. Poor Sentinels, or something.
But I didn’t expect the lift to be powered straight to the labs, nor did I expect to be ambushed the second I reached the labs. It shows in the little nick I suffered on my cheek, though I’d got my bearings fast enough that my punch had been deliberate.
Mostly, I thought it was funny that I could throw a punch at Tia and blame it on fear.