Sister Cities

Part 23: Vi

"If she's unconscious, we won't be able to carry her on the hoverboards," Caitlyn says. "And the enforcers would notice us coming anyway— they're on their highest alert right now. They'd open fire as soon as they heard the propellers. Assuming each boat is full to capacity, there could be thirty of them."

"There will be thirty guards at the prison too," I say.

"Thirty guards who will be caught by complete surprise when we walk in, and won't have Jinx right between them, so she won't get caught up in the fight. Maybe we could even go through the back entrance and avoid almost all of them except whomever we steal keys from. Let's just wait and investigate, okay?"

"Fine." I want to go up and track the boats' progress, but I know I shouldn't waste my hoverboard's charge, so I sit back down with her and we watch the enforcers below us slowly drift away, muttering into their comms.

Eventually only two are left outside the door, and I swoop down on my hoverboard and punch them both in the head as I pass by. I follow the loop back up to the roof, get Caitlyn, and take us both to the ground. Down the street, a Shimmer addict stares. I stare back until she runs.

The inside of the Last Drop is a mess, but the kind of mess enforcers leave when they raid a place, not the kind of mess Powder leaves when she fights. There's orange crystal stuff on the floor and on a stool behind the bar. I go to prod at it.

"That's what the Firelights use to incapacitate people non-violently," Caitlyn says. "Jinx must have taken some of it. I'm not sure who was at the bar that she wanted out of the way, though."

It shocks me a bit that Powder would go for anything non-violent. I nearly trip on a pistol, which brings me back to familiar territory, and then I see something bigger around the other side of the counter: a machine gun.

"Can you use this?" I ask.

Caitlyn comes over, looking doubtful. "I can try."

She heaves it off the ground, points it into a corner, and closes her eyes tight before pulling the trigger. But what comes out isn't bullets— it's the orange stuff.

Caitlyn looks back at me. "We can handle Stillwater," she says.

I nod blankly.

"And what of this?" says Caitlyn, pointing with the toe of her boot at a curved pink line on the floorboards. I pull a flashlight out of my satchel and climb onto the counter, and under the yellow circle, we pick out a message spanning the full length of the room twice:

We're caught. Stand down.

"What?" I whisper.

Caitlyn glares at the letters like she wants to find new words in them. They're done in Powder's handwriting with her pink oil crayon, but it doesn't make sense— Powder would never stop a mission because she was "caught." Everything she does is right under the enforcers' noses. It's probably her favorite way to work.

"She didn't come here to help the rebellion," Caitlyn says. "She came here to stop it."

I look at the message again.

Powder?

I'm sorry.

Where... how did you get it? How are you awake?

I'm sorry. I had to.

My stomach twists. "Oh, Powder."

"Come on," Caitlyn says. "Let's get ready to go. If I carry your bag, will you carry this?" She nods to her new weapon, and I notice how her arms vibrate in spite of the makeshift harness over her shoulder. Even with everything, it's funny— her Piltie posture hanging on by a thread under the weight of my terrorist trencher sister's scribbled-on scrap-heap gun.