Chapter 37: Back and There Again

It’d been three days since I’d last spoken with Rel, and getting the Mirror Nest set up was the only thing that had gone well in that time.

“Were we followed?”

Electra glanced away from the window. Rain trickled through the narrow gap in the shutters, wetting her cheek. “Doesn’t look like it, but…”

I grimaced. “We don’t have any detection methods.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Electra turned back to the narrow gap. “Not like we have anywhere else to go.”

I knelt, floor creaking beneath my power armor. “We’re being hunted. Systematically.” Our only saving grace was my second class. had leveled steadily from parsing the motives of the people around us. I’d caught more than one tail with newly-unlocked skills, and pumped quite a few stat points into my summoning.

It might not be enough.

“That’s why we’re in this rats’ nest?” Electra kicked a broken brick away from the wall. “We hit this place more than a week ago.”

I let out a huff of laughter. “The villain always returns to the scene of the crime.”

Electra grumbled. “That’s advice for law enforcement, Em.”

“Let’s just hope they don’t have gritty private investigators in Silverwall.” I looked up. “We’ll have to move again soon, though.”

“Where?” Electra pulled the battered shutters all the way closed. “Back to drown in a graveyard?”

“I don’t know.” I wormed my gauntleted fingers beneath a shattered floorboard. “I just hope the rain is good for something.”

Electra snorted. “Yeah, those poisonous flowers better be sprouting like weeds.”

The board came loose in my grip. “That’s what they do, I’ve been told.” Beneath it, I didn’t see waterlogged mud like I expected. Instead there’s more wood, sealed with rough plaster. “Hello there.”

“What’s up?” Electra glanced over.

“I think we might just be about to figure out how this bathhouse was so profitable,” I said.

“Thought it was the gambling.”

“Yeah.” I reared my fist back. “I did too.”

It took two blows to break through the second layer of wood. A flare of magic announced the feeble defenses of the structure fracturing, and proved my first instinct right. People in this part of town didn’t have money to waste on structural stability.

“Here, help me with this.” I yanked at the wood, quickly widening the hole as Electra shoveled broken planks out of the way. More excavation revealed the hidden floor to be a ceiling. No doubt there was a surreptitiously hidden trap door somewhere else in the bathhouse, but sometimes brute force was a skeleton key.

Electra peered down into the hole. “You take me to the nicest places.” We could make out the barest hint of a floor in the dim light, but nothing else. “Think it’s a smex dungeon?”

“Child.” I rolled my eyes. “Why don’t you go find out?”

“Nuh uh.” Electra shook her head. “You’re in armor, I just have a few scraps of metal over normal clothes.”

“You have a reactive skill,” I replied.

“True!” She raised a finger. “But,

when we were hummingbird hunting, you promised that you’d let me toss you into danger instead.”

I frowned. “You really are a child.”

“My PR agent said I was one at heart.” She shrugged. “And in brain. Now, am I gonna have to throw you down the hole?”

“And people say I’m the villain.” I shot her a glare, but flicked on my shoulder-mounted flashlight. “Geronimo.”

I landed against the packed dirt floor a moment later. Standing up, I turned to cast the flashlight beam across the narrow room. I saw shovels and piles of stone, but other than that, it was empty. The sound of the rain faded to a distant patter outside.

“Anyone down there?”

“Just me!” I took a step to the side, following a trail of moisture in the dirt. It didn’t come from the rain, though; instead, it led me to the mouth of a narrow tunnel leading off into the distance. My flashlight disappeared into darkness framed by rough-cut supporting beams. “Interesting.”

“Oof!” I glanced over my shoulder at Electra dusting herself off. “Find anything interesting?” With a flick, she threw a caged mote of electricity into the air. Actinic light bounced off unadorned walls. In the opposite corner of the tunnel, I saw a rickety wooden staircase leading back up to the bathhouse.

“It was a front,” I said.

Electra tilted her head. “I mean, yeah? Isn’t that the whole point? The bathhouse was just a front for a gambling den.”

“I’m sure that’s what everyone was supposed to think.” I pointed towards the tunnel. “Seems like Arlo decided to get a little more clever than that.”

Electra leaned over my head. “Secret passage. Neat!”

I shoved her off.

“Where do you think it goes, Em?”

“Good question.” I turned back towards the tunnel, arm raised as I tried to picture the layout of the city above. “Say, when you were looking out the window, could you see the inner wall?”

“Would be kinda hard to miss.” Electra threw another crackling bulb of light down the tunnel. It lit up rows and rows of supports before sputtering out. “We’re pretty close.”

“Close enough to dig a tunnel under it, even.”

Electra blinked. “This is going under the wall?”

“Unless it takes a right angle just out of sight, there’s nowhere else it could be going.” I scratched my chin. “We’re, what, a hundred, two hundred meters from the inner city? It would take some doing, especially if you had to hide all of the dirt, but it looks like our boy Arlo was already planning to take over Silverwall.”

“Maybe that’s why he blew you off.”

“Oh please, I’m much better at pissing people off than that,” I replied.“Besides, this whole kind of double bluff never works.” I waved a hand. “Hawkwright would have sniffed out this operation sooner or later.”

“Might have been a lot later, if we’d kept distracting him instead of the Tarnished.” Electra smirked. “Or even if we’d just packed up and went home.”

“Rub it in, why don’t you.” I turned to face her. “In any case, I think I’ve found out where we’re going to hide the next couple of days.”

She blinked. “What, in the tunnel?”

I rubbed my face. “No, dummy. We finish the tunnel. Then we pay a little visit to Hawkwright.”

“Finish the tunnel?” She peered into the darkness. “Is this a ‘just the two of us, we can make it if we try’ kind of deal? Cause—”

“Oh, shut up.” I rolled my eyes. “I can summon the heckbadgers. If we’re quick about it, we might even be able to swing back to where I stashed the power drill.”

“I’m out of charge, remember?” Electra asked.

I shrugged. “It’s raining; maybe you’ll get lucky and be struck by lightning.”

“Of course! If we just rely on luck, I’m sure it will go great.” Electra nodded. “And how do we get out after, exactly?”

“Cut off the head of the snake and the body dies?” I offered.

Electra gave me a look. “I thought you always planned for the worst, Em.”

“I’m kinda running out of plans here.” I sighed.

She continued staring.

“I’ll work on it, okay?” I shook my head. “It would be a lot easier if I could get a look inside, but with this cloud cover…”

“Don’t tell me your plan is actually to wait for a lightning strike.” Electra winced. “You know how much I hate the water.”

“So that’s why you never followed me to Hawaii.” I tapped my chin.

“Well, yeah.” She gave an awkward laugh. “You and Riptide.”

“Playing it safe.” I nodded. “But we don’t have the time to be careful. We’re gonna have to take a gamble sooner or later, Electra.” I pointed towards the tunnel. “You really think we can wait for better odds than this?”

“Starting to sound like sunk cost fallacy to me.” Electra crossed her arms.

“You would know, little miss hero.”

“Okay, first.” She raised a finger. “It was my job to go after you every time you popped up. Second, you do not get to compare me protecting innocent people from your rampages to charging headfirst into danger without even the start of a plan.”

“I do my best thinking on my feet.”

She scoffed. “Oh sure, try to sell me that after you’ve spent the last half a year telling me that it’s all about the prep work, all about the pieces getting into place, all about knowing everything that you and your enemy can do.” She fixed me with a dead-eyed stare. “Go ahead, try to convince me you were lying the whole time.”

I huffed, looking away. “I liked you better when you just went along with anything I said.”

“Is that all it took to get on your good side?” she asked.

“I never claimed to be complicated,” I said. “Look, we have two options here. We can go forward, or we can go back.”

“Reductive as always, Em.”

I slammed my fist against the nearest support. “Carajo, will you shut up for one fucking second?”

Electra leaned back against the wall of the tunnel, making a zipping motion with her lips.

I took a deep breath before pointing down the tunnel. “Forwards. We try to take out the man in charge, and hope to get out afterwards in the confusion.” I pointed towards the staircase leading out of the basement. “Backwards. We give up, and hope to hell that we can get out now while everyone is looking for us. Point is, we don’t just get to take our chips to cages and book a loss.

“Sometimes, the only way to get out of the game is to go all-in on one last hand.”

Electra didn’t say anything for several seconds. Finally, she took a deep breath. “Is that another one of those little things you’ve practiced, waiting for a moment like this?” she asked.

“Yeah, every night in front of a mirror, thanks so much for the chance to pull it out of my back pocket.” I threw my hands up in the air. “What do you want from me?”

Electra chewed her lip for a second. Then she asked, “If I decide I’d be more useful back in Lady’s Port, what would you do? Would you walk away with me?”

I drew myself up to my full height, such as it was. “No.”

Electra covered her face with one hand. “Well, crap.”

“And here I thought you couldn’t swear,” I said.

She pushed herself off the wall. “You know what I want, actually? I want you to stop deflecting.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What, is this an appeal to—”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, no, no. Now it’s your time to shut up. I gave you your thirty seconds, now it’s my turn.”

I opened my mouth.

Electra glared daggers at me.

“Fine.” I took a step back. “You have the conch.”

“The conch?” She shook her head again. “You know what? No, again. I’m not even going to touch that.” She groaned, rubbing her face. “The way I see it, you were right when you said we only had two choices, but this is what I think those choices are.”

She pointed to the tunnel. “We make the wrong choice, say damn the torpedoes, and if we’re even the slightest bit unlucky, a lot of people die.” She pointed towards the stairs. “I make the right choice, and put myself in the best place to protect the most people.” She swallowed. “And one person I care about a lot, lot more than I should…almost definitely dies.”

I said nothing.

“So tell me, Empress.” Electra spread her hands. “What should I choose?”

Before I could muster up a response, though, the door at the top of the stairs flew off its hinges. It hit the far wall with a bang, and Electra and I spun just in time to see a man with a familiar silver armband walk down the stairs.

He wasn’t alone.

“Well, well.” Arlo gave both of us a grin as the rest of his gang filed in behind him. I counted at least two dozen. “Almost thought you weren’t here, if not for the shouting.”

I took a step back towards the tunnel. “Guess we figured out what our choice is.”

“Guess so.” Electra shifted to cover my side. “Fun talk.”

“The best,” I replied.

Arlo scratched his beard. “What’s that, not gonna try to talk me around? Spin some yarn about how now that we’re all here, we can finish this here tunnel that I’ve already been working on and take the fight to the real villain, or some such rot?”

I let out a wan laugh. “Seems like you’ve laid out all the relevant points, old man.”

“Ah, but see, I wanna hear it from you.” Arlo leaned forward, grin growing wider. “So go on, girly, convince me. I’m listening.”

“Oh, Arlo.” I shook my head. “Give me a little bit of credit? We both know your mind was made up the moment you walked in here.”

“And what makes you say a thing like that?” he asked.

“Because your mind was made up the moment you tried to ambush me the first time around.” With a wave of my hand, an army of my own stepped into being. “All the rest was window dressing.”

He chuckled. “Kill the blonde one, but bring me the girl alive.”

I settled into a ready stance as the Tarnished pulled out their swords and clubs. “Hey, Electra.”

“Yeah?” She tilted her head.

“It was a good run, wasn’t it?”

Lightning danced over her knuckles. “The best.”

Then three people crashed through the hole in the ceiling.