Chest heaving from his adrenaline-fueled catapult into the kitchen, Atticus relaxed his defensive posture as he took in our current situation. "It sounded like someone was getting murdered."
Well, I thought to myself, he would know better than anyone what that sounds like.
And then I was immediately grateful that Shade was not known, out of his numerous, ever-changing catalog of powers, to read minds.
"You could at least knock next time," Leigh rebuked her brother, still recklessly twining the hammer between her fingers like a baton.
Over the initial shock of his intrusion, I remembered my pain and continued cursing Leigh out viciously.
"Is it properly broken?" Nicole asked, glancing up from a procured laptop into which she'd been inputting all our data points. Abruptly, her head cocked towards Atticus and she blinked once, as though she hadn't registered his loud entrance. "Oh. Hello there. I don't believe we've met. I know who you are, of course. I'm Nicole, a friend of your sister."
Stepping languidly out of the doorway, Atticus surveyed us uncertainly. "A pleasure."
"Yes, it's properly broken!" I gritted out.
"Okay... timer is set. I'll just add around ten seconds to the count afterwards to make up for the late start."
"I'm afraid to ask.' Atticus's usual unaffected expression settled into stone on his face, pleasantly neutral. His mask that I yearned to dig my nails into and rip away, regardless of how much skin came with it.
Our eyes met, and, too late, I forced myself to school my own expression into something less vengeful. Less probing. As though I wanted to see down to his smallest cell and pick him apart until I uncovered the answers I sought.
"You're happier not knowing," I told him, looking away first.
And then he was right there, moving on impossibly swift feet, the smooth steps of someone with an extreme awareness of their own body's orientation in relation to the world. Softly, two fingers grazed over the slight misalignment in my flesh where the break happened, sending a slight shock through my nervous system. When the sensation made me jump a little, he balled his hand into a fist and stuffed it into his pocket, as though warding against further temptation.
"Did you at least set the bone, so that it heals properly?" he asked, pulling away.
"We don't need to," Nicole said over the sound of her own typing. "The fingers we snapped," I flinched at that particular choice of word, "all healed up perfectly without being righted first."
A far off look clouded over his blue and gold eyes, but he didn't share the direction of his thoughts with the rest of us. "I see." He turned towards the living area, presumably to follow that path towards the staircase leading up to his room. "Leigh, our mother should be along shortly. I recommend wrapping this up before she gets here. You know how she gets. A dirty hammer in her kitchen she will find especially offensive to her sensibilities."
Leigh needed no further convincing and sprang into action cleaning up, tossing the hammer at random into a cabinet consisting of cupcake tins and wiping a damp cloth over the counters, while Atticus disappeared out of sight.
"Did you hear," I called after him, rounding the corner into the dimly lit living room, "that Shade hasn't appeared since we both escaped? It's his longest absence yet. People are beginning to wonder what happened to him, if he's moved on, or become incapacitated in some way."
The force of my gaze burned holes into the back of his head, and he trailed to a stop at the foot of the stairs without turning around. "Has he, now? Can't say I've been paying attention."
It's you it's you it's you it's you it's you it's you it's you it's you it's you It's you it's you it's you it's you it's you It's you it's you it's you it's you it's you it's you it's you it's you I know it's you, my subconscious screamed, as strong and sure as my heartbeat.
Somehow, I managed to keep my voice level when I said, "I figured you would want to know. We were in the same boat, after all. Captives."
"Thanks for your concern. It's quite... enlightening." He continued his easy glide up the marbled stairs, adding, so muted that I thought he must have been talking to himself, "How will the Guild ever survive without him around?"
I didn't miss the note of sarcasm in his voice, but his words still puzzled me as I returned to Leigh and Nicole in the kitchen.
"What was that all about?" Leigh asked.
*+*+*+*+*
Maybe, just maybe, I was a bit forward in my suspicions about him, but anyone who was truly innocent wouldn't think twice about my words of 'concern'. If he was actually Shade, however, now we were both sweating, worrying about how much the other knew. Around now, was he regretting letting me live?
Part of me hoped he was.
I tried not to ruminate over whatever grand scheme of his required me to return to civilization with a properly beating heart. I tried not to bring myself back to that moment in the forest where he squeezed the breath from my throat, and then wonder how he could in one moment bring me to the brink of death and in the next ensure my survival.
They were the thoughts that threatened to drive me mad.
My arm healed in around forty minutes, which wasn't bad, but still dreadfully slow. Regardless, it thankfully allowed for me to return to the Guild that night without a sling, something that would likely have inspired unfortunate questions.
Nicole dropped me off on her way back to her own place. I flashed my resident pass at the two Supers working security at the Guildhall entrance, and meandered my way up the stairs to my room on the third floor without fuss. By half past ten, Guild operations were winding down for the day, leaving only the muffled echo of permanent inhabitants bouncing down the corridors.
The accelerated thrum of my pulse refused to calm when, instead of taking a right to the living quarters, I sharply veered left into the hallway leading to the conference rooms. My time snooping through the Archive made it abundantly clear no juicy gossip was to be found anywhere they let underpaid interns infest. They knew all too well that we'd sell out their nefarious deeds for the price of half a potato chip... presuming there were nefarious deeds to speak of.
Soft gold light cast long shadows along the walls as I crept through the corridor, keeping my steps light and quick. Should I be discovered, I already had a lie ready and prepared: "Sorry, I just moved in and lost my way. Do you know where I can find Residential Room 329?"
Whether they believed me would be another matter altogether, but at least I had a degree of plausible deniability. I needed to go through with this now because the longer I lived in the Guildhall the less believable the excuse would be. It was a lie with an expiration date.
At the end of the path ahead, I jiggled the doorknob to the single room in that section of the building. Locked, as expected. My excitement grew, because people generally didn't lock empty rooms. There had to be something in there worth protecting. I reached into my pocket for the ring of keys I "borrowed" from Tempest a day earlier, unbeknownst to him. Following some trial and error as I attempted no fewer than five keys, the door opened.
Not wanting to waste anymore time in the corridor where I could be seen, I pushed myself into the darkened room and clicked the door shut behind me, before taking in my surroundings.
At the center of the room laid a massive rectangular table seating at least twenty on each side, plus five chairs at the ends. A large screen stretching across one wall at the far end of the room. Several maps detailing different parts of the city. A roster of current heroes. Half-blurry images of different villains and their government bounty, ranging from pathetically small to uncomprehendingly large, with Nightshade coming in first at a whopping ten million. I ran my fingers over the image containing a zoomed in look at his face, the paper curling at the edges from age.
The photograph wasn't like the others, and it took me a moment to place how. It was... posed, almost, like a school photo, or one taken for a driver's license. Shade stared straight down the camera for a headshot, black mask drawn snuggly over his nose and the cowl to his cloak, for once, pulled over his head to obscure most of his now shaggy hair from view, save for a few strands that curled over his high cheekbones. The largest differences, of course, were visible in the few inches of available skin; unclouded eyes, low-lidded and seemingly bored, and a smooth space between his eyebrows, unpinched from worry, or whatever mania I sensed from him in the past.
"Where did they get this picture?" I murmured to myself, and forced myself to move on, or else I would have stayed for hours, searching out answers in his eyes, ones I was increasingly sure belonged to Atticus and Leigh.
One set of cabinets climbed the wall near a window that looked over the vacant outdoor training ground. Briskly, I made my way to them across the padded gray and gold embroidered rug. The cushion swallowed the sound of my foot steps, allowing me to move with greater haste without a worry for being heard.
At random, I jerked open the first drawer, wincing at the noise, made so much louder by the relative quiet elsewhere, and grabbed the first file I saw, fanning through it. It was for a villainess named Elektra, who'd been dealt with two years ago. Tempest's first big capture, and definitely not his last.
Real name: Meera Chamarthi.
Power: Electromagnetism.
Height: Five foot, four inches.
Weight: 130 lbs
Eyes: brown.
Hair: brown.
Apprehender: Tempest
Current Location: Thaumaturgic Supermax Facility (The Underground).
It went on like that, eventually on page three expanding to disclose the finer details of her crimes and the exact scenario of her capture in Tempest's own words, with added notes by someone I understood to be a Guild Elder explaining what could have been done better and what strategies could be pulled from that situation to aid in future captures.
Shoving that file back in place, I went for another, and another. Not all the villains I came across had been sent to prison yet. Some were still active, while others were dead. Most annoyingly, a few files were empty, save for a single paper stating the contents were strictly Top Secret, and to file a request with the Guild Elders for access.
I guess some secrets were too closely guarded to trust to even their own Supers.
Struck with a sudden thought, I drew open a lower drawer, the one containing the M-S, and searched out two names, only a few dividers apart from one another.
Nightshade.
Shadow.
Before I touched them, I already knew what I would find, based on their thin width, both only a single paper thick.
Then, I heard it, steps growing louder in the corridor outside, and I froze down to the rise and fall of my chest, not daring to breathe, but the steps kept coming. Closer.
Closer.
Shit!
Hurriedly, I slammed the drawer closed and spun wildly in place for somewhere - anywhere - to hide, casting my gaze fruitlessly across the room. Lacking in better options, I took one step towards the table, intending to hopefully camouflage myself beneath the chairs, when the hooked doorknob turned, and something pulled me back into the shadows, an ungloved hand closing tightly over my mouth, smothering my yelp of surprise.
Not a second later, a woman in Elder robes strode in, muttering something about incompetent Super's forgetting to lock the door. She flicked the light switch several times in quick succession, growing more irritable when the room did not flood with bright, warm light, as it was wont to do.
Resigned to darkness, she made her way towards me - us? - and my heart climbed up my throat with the certainty that I'd been seen and that I'd just made a very powerful enemy in an Elder, because I could not talk my way out of being caught here, in what was supposed to be a locked space, with keys that did not belong to me.
But she kept on going, brushing right past us, close enough that I could smell her lavender scented perfume.
And in line with the million little contradictions complicating my life, I feared being caught by her far more than I feared being cast into shadows with the one man I ought to fear more than any other, held almost entirely at his mercy.
Briefly, I considered, raising my hand to the panic button necklace tucked beneath my shirt and pressing it. Every Super in the building would be upon us in under a minute. One villain dealt with. Another file where they could mark the subject "Apprehended".
But they would catch me, too, red-handed.
Instead of going for my panic button, I brought my hand higher, wrapping it around Shade's wrist, and tugged his hand away from my mouth, surprised when he allowed it.
After what felt like an eternity, the Elder grabbed a file from the top drawer in the filing cabinet and exited the room, locking the door behind her.
We were barely alone a moment before I twisted in place and hissed out, "You!"
Immediately, I zeroed in on his cloak, unmistakably the same one from our time spent in the woods, the one that should have been tucked away in my room down the hall. I had memorized the frayed edges, the burns and tears begotten by a life on the wrong side of the law, so unless he commissioned an exact replica with the exact same flaws, he stole it back.
"Are you trying to prove a point?" I hissed. "Stay out of my room! Both of them!"
Sly understandings dawned across his few visible features, cast into harsh relief in the low light. He held a finger to the place on his mask where his lips would be, a silent bid to keep quiet.
"You can't tell me what to do—" I started to say, when the shadows extended around us, temporarily extinguishing the world of light and sound. Against all wisdom, I was more annoyed than alarmed. When at last I could see again, there stood Shade. That bored, unfevered, light from the picture in the conference room showed in his eyes, simultaneously both weary and playful at the same time.
"The Guild is warded against powers like yours pushing through the walls. How did you even get in here?" I demanded.
"Very carefully," he said in a low, slow, almost imperceptible whisper.
"I hate you," I bit out, sounding far more breathless than I would have liked.
"Not nearly enough."
And he stepped back into the same shadows he used to hide us both in that darkened room, leaving me alone inside the Archive, of all places.