Chapter 33 #2
Before Crusher even made it halfway across the room, Cipher stiffened, his head cocking slightly to one side. Someone was speaking to him through comms. His fingers tightened around my waist, the pressure just shy of painful.
“We’re leaving,” he said, his voice deceptively casual as he helped me stand.
Cobalt Crusher reached our table just as we rose, his massive frame blocking the path. “Cipher, good to—”
“Change of plans,” Cipher cut him off, not bothering with explanations. “We’ll reschedule.”
Crusher’s fists clenched at his sides, silver mask gleaming under the blue-white lights. “That’s not how this works. You don’t waste my time—“
“And yet here we are,” Cipher snapped, already guiding me past him without a second glance.
Cobalt’s body tensed like he was considering violence, but Cipher simply kept walking and steered us away from the main entrance, deeper into the club instead of toward the exit.
“Where are we going?” I whispered, leaning into him as though I was eager for privacy. “I thought we were leaving.”
His mouth curved into that familiar smirk that never failed to make my pulse skip. “I need you alone,” he said, loud enough for nearby patrons to hear. But his fingers squeezed mine with an unmistakable warning.
I played along, pressing myself against him as he navigated us through the crowd, slipping through a door marked “Staff Only.”
The door closed behind us, cutting off the thrum of music and voices. We’d entered a narrow service corridor lit by harsh fluorescents. Cipher moved faster now, pulling me along until we reached another door that opened onto a different set of tunnels than the ones we’d used to enter.
“Alliance patrol,” he said the moment we were alone, his voice dropping its performative edge. “Number Eight just alerted me that they’ve swarmed the area in the Neon Maze above us. They’re moving to breach the Obsidian.”
“How did they find this place?”
“Doesn’t really matter. They usually manage to find it every couple of years and it gets relocated,” he said simply.
I glanced back at the door we’d come through. “Should we warn the others?”
Cipher scoffed, the sound echoing as he pulled me down the tunnel.
“They’re my competition, Sparks,” he said, his tone dripping with dismissal. “If they aren’t smart enough to keep eyes and ears on the doors, that’s a them problem. I’m not running a charity.”
I nodded, swallowing the urge to argue. I had to stop projecting normal human morality onto a room full of criminals.
Cipher stopped walking and cocked his head, staring back the way we’d come.
He pressed a finger to my lips, silencing the question forming on my tongue.
He listened for another second before he scooped me into his arms. One arm hooked securely under my knees, the other wrapped tight around my back as his feet left the ground.
The air pressure shifted around us, pressing against my eardrums as he flew us quickly down the tunnel in silence.
We rounded a sharp corner and approached a rusted steel door. Cipher touched down without making a single sound and set me on my feet, keeping his body positioned squarely between me and the corridor behind us.
He pressed his hand flat against the metal door, his head tilting again to listen to the outside. A muscle feathered in his jaw and he cursed, a vicious, breathless sound.
Cipher leaned down, catching my chin in his hand as he brought his mouth to my ear. “Listen to me,” he whispered. “I’m going to open this door and step through. You stay here. You count to ten. No matter what you hear happening on the other side, you do not move until you hit ten. Understood?”
My stomach plummeted. The Alliance patrol had this exit covered too, waiting to see who would be flushed out.
“Then what?” I asked, my voice barely a breath.
“Then you walk out, you turn left, and you disappear into the Maze.”
I nodded once. As much as I wanted him to refrain from fighting an Alliance patrol, I knew that wasn’t an option. It wasn’t like we could just walk out and say sorry, we were just leaving the illegal club, no big deal.
Cipher’s hand slid to the back of my neck, as he pulled me in for a hard kiss.
“You’re a civilian,” he said, breaking the kiss. “We both know that legally, the Alliance can’t touch you. But I don’t want you anywhere near the mess I’m about to make.”
I gripped his chest plate, my knuckles losing their color. “Be careful.”
He gave me a dark, arrogant smile. “I’ll find you in the Maze soon, Sparks. Then we’re leaving.”
Cipher slipped out and the steel door clicked shut, sealing him on the other side. I pressed my spine against the damp brick of the tunnel, my pulse hammering.
One.
“Stand down! By order of the Alliance—”
Two.
The Hero’s command ended in a sickening, wet crunch of armor and bone. An impact shook the wall beside me, followed immediately by the high-pitched whine of a weapon discharging and the sharp smell of ozone bleeding through the doorframe.
Three.
The sounds of violence shifted, moving rapidly down the exterior alleyway as Cipher dragged the fight away from my exit route. I gripped the fabric of my dress, my knuckles aching. Every instinct screamed at me to crack the door and peek, to make sure he wasn’t outnumbered, but I held my ground.
Four. Five. Six. Seven.
Cipher’s brain operated on a level of predictive calculus that bordered on precognition.
He had already run the numbers. If he told me to wait exactly ten seconds and turn left, it was because that specific sequence of actions was the only branch of probability that guaranteed my safety.
Deviating meant throwing a wrench into his math, and I wasn’t going to be the variable that got him caught.
Eight. Nine. Ten.
I shoved the door open and bolted.
I took a sharp left and the alley dumped me straight into the sensory assault of the Neon Maze.
Strobing magenta and electric blue lights washed over me in blinding waves.
Holographic advertisements glitched in the thick, artificial fog, casting fractured shadows across the crowded walkways.
I kept my head down, weaving through a group of tourists and a street performer.
I ducked into a narrow, twisting corridor lined with dead neon tubes, putting three more turns between me and the main thoroughfare. The shifting architecture of the Maze was a nightmare to navigate, but right now, its chaotic layout was my best shield.
The ambient noise of the club district finally muffled into a dull thrum and I leaned against a graffitied wall, dragging in a ragged breath. I was safe. The Maze had swallowed me whole.
Then the air pressure shifted.
A pair of boots hit the pavement and the fog parted, illuminated from within by a sickeningly familiar golden glow.
I froze.
“What do we have here?” The smooth, camera-ready voice washed over me, dripping with condescension. “A little bird fleeing the scene?”
Valor stood blocking the exit of the alley, his hands resting on his hips. His emerald eyes scanned me, the golden outer ring flashing.
I squeezed my jaw shut. The chromatic filter in my mask had shifted my eyes from blue to brown, and the black material obscured enough of my face so that I wasn’t recognizable, but my voice was a dead giveaway.
I just had to stand here and let him assume I was exactly what I looked like: a nameless Villain’s toy caught in the wrong part of town.
Valor tutted, stepping closer. “No answer? That’s not very polite.”
He looked me up and down, his gaze lingering on the hem of my dress before snapping up to my face.
“A woman alone at night in the Maze, running from justice,” Valor mused, his golden aura flaring slightly as he tilted his head. He reached out, his finger stopping an inch from the edge of my mask. “Wearing... what is that? A knockoff Villain mask?”
I shook my head, shrinking back against the wall behind me. I needed to look frightened. It wasn’t exactly a stretch. I knew Valor could hear my heart thudding wildly, the adrenaline from Cipher’s escape bleeding straight into this new nightmare.
“You know, it’s dangerous to play dress-up in this part of town,” Valor said. “Especially when you’re pretending to be someone important.”
He reached out and caught my chin, forcing my face upward. I flinched, jerking away from the contact.
I pitched my voice higher, forcing a breathy, pathetic stammer I prayed masked my actual voice. “I’m—I’m no one.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied the mask covering the upper half of my face. I watched the exact second the recognition clicked in his features.
“No one? Maybe so. But that mask.” His voice hardened, shedding the PR-approved warmth he used for the cameras. “I recognize that design. Cipher’s, isn’t it?”
“I’m not—“ I started, wishing I could back up another step.
He lunged. “Let’s see who’s hiding under there, shall we?”
His fingers clamped over the edge of the mask and the defense mechanism triggered. A crack of electricity arced from the mask into his hand, the air filling with the sharp stench of singed flesh.
Valor let out a choked shout. The current threw him off balance, his arm snapping back.
I bolted, sprinting down the alley. The crowded main thoroughfare of the Maze was just ahead. If I could just reach the crowd, I could get lost. Maybe take off my mask and he wouldn’t even know he was looking for me.
I didn’t make it.
A flash of gold streaked overhead. Valor dropped directly in front of me and slammed me against the alley wall.
“That wasn’t very nice,” he growled. The heroic charm was eradicated, leaving behind something ugly and raw.
“Let’s try this again,” he hissed. He brought his forearm up, pressing it against my windpipe. He leaned his weight into it, pinning me to the wall and making it hard to breathe. I clawed at his arm, my heels kicking uselessly against the brick as I dragged in a thin, wheezing breath.
“Who are you to Cipher?”
Valor’s eyes were dead and cold as his power washed over me, trying to force the answer.