To Lyger 0: Not quite Robin Hood; he didn't wear full plate!
The hairs on the back of Bri's neck curled as she walked with Anne down the Strand from the library back toward campus, trying not to let her nervousness and discomfort show on her face. The… bombing? Explosion? Attack? She still wasn't sure what to call it. It had only happened a little over twelve hours ago. None of them had felt like going back to sleep afterward. Since Julie's call had woken her up, Bri had spent almost as long in her suit as out of it, scanning the apartment house and informing Anne of weak spots in the structure so she could bind them with vines – a temporary fix, but all they could manage under the circumstances. Amelie had tapped into the hospital's records for as much information as she could find about the injuries. Jen had been in surgery for two hours while they set her broken leg and affixed the cast. Two of the other girls had spent the night under observation for concussions; one was still there. Another girl had been in the hallway when it hit; the fireball had burned her severely, all across her arms and face.
And that was just the physical injuries; the damage to the building had been too badly shrouded in darkness to register last night.
Looking up at the building in the light of day, Bri swallowed anxiously. All the damage stood out plainly for everyone to see. The hole in the wall where the rocket had entered and through which most of the explosive energy had escaped still spat out small wisps of smoke, even though the fire itself had been extinguished hours ago. Every single piece of furniture in the flat had been incinerated – their old beds, the couch in the living room, the television, all their kitchenware… all of it was gone. Overnight, Iron Maiden had recovered a few of the pictures that had been hanging on the wall, but nothing else had remained of their flat. And that explosion had been in their flat! What if they had been there when it happened? Her breathing hitched.
Beside her, Anne shifted nervously, looking up toward the gaping hole in what had been their wall. She shivered. "I'm really glad I decided not to stay there last night…" she muttered. "I almost did, you know. Kevin had me stay late to disinfect the bar, and it was well past closing time by the time I left. When I got back to the flat, I almost just kicked off my shoes and collapsed on the bed there, but…"
"Someone was watching out for you," Bri observed, frowning. Turning to Anne with a worried look, she murmured, "If you'd been there…" She sighed heavily, her stomach turning over. "I don't know what I would have done if you'd been killed – and because of me."
"Because of your oul fella," Anne corrected her, raising an eyebrow meaningfully. "Because he decided to turn onto the straight and narrow."
"If that is why it happened," Bri interjected, looking down at the ground and frowning.
"You don't think he was telling the truth?"
Bri shrugged. "I hope he was… but I really don't want to get my hopes up only to find out he was lying."
"He did help Jen," Anne noted. "He seemed genuinely concerned about your wellbeing."
"True…" Bri hummed. "Although Papa has never given me any reason to believe he didn't love me. It might have just been that."
"Then why would someone have tried to kill us?"
Bri's shoulders slumped. "I don't know," she admitted. She could feel her hands trembling; quickly she pressed them against her legs to still the tremors, forcing herself to breathe slowly. Whatever they had intended yesterday, they had missed. She and Anne were okay – they hadn't even been hurt. They would figure out who was responsible for this, and they would stop them – before anyone else could get hurt because of her.
Anne frowned pensively, letting out a heavy breath. "Yeah, I suppose, if it did happen because your oul fella did the right thing…"
"What?" Bri demanded, her eyes widening in shock.
"I could think of worse reasons to go," Anne finished, shrugging one shoulder.
"No!" Bri insisted hotly. A cold emptiness settled into her stomach. "There's no reason that's good enough for that!"
Anne chuckled humorlessly. "We're not exactly in a profession that's conducive to long life," she pointed out. "Paris was ample proof of that fact. You saw what happened to Águila Altíssimo, what almost happened to Pegasus." She shook her head with a helpless shrug. "It could just as easily have happened to either of us there. It almost did happen to Felix on Hy-Brasil."
Bri shuddered. "Don't remind me."
"I'm just saying, it's something I've made peace with," Anne continued. She hummed thoughtfully. "Have I told you about my Uncle Paddy?"
"Was he the one who joined the IRA?"
Anne nodded. "When the Troubles started, he couldn't just sit by and watch. He went up to Belfast to join the fight. Gran said she never saw him again after that – they never found out if he'd been killed or arrested or injured or…" Her voice trailed off and she let out a sigh. "Gran always hoped he had maybe settled down and started a family… but I think she knew the truth. But the danger didn't matter to him: he had found something worth fighting for, something worth dying for." Giving Bri a look, she smiled. "I didn't actually have that before the fall. But now I do, thanks to you and Felix and the Heroes of Paris."
"Don't talk like that," Bri told her firmly, her eyes narrowed. "I don't want that to happen – not now, not ever!"
"And you think I do?" Anne quirked an eyebrow at her in amusement.
"But you said–"
"It's crossed my mind," Anne interrupted. "But that doesn't mean it's something I want to happen."
Bri folded her arms, clicking her bracelets together. "What's brought this on? Last night? The Tarasque?"
Anne shrugged. "All of it," she admitted. "The Ripper, the Tarasque, the bombing… though the fact that it actually could have happened last night is more than enough to make one think."
Bri hummed, pausing to look up at the apartment house as they stepped off the sidewalk into the street to get around the police tape barricading it off. "I can't exactly say I haven't thought about it once or twice today…" she admitted, gulping.
The building still stood, but their hall mother had sent out a message just before lunch, and the news was… not promising. According to the building inspector, the apartment house would need extensive repairs – months' worth, at least – before anyone would be able to live there again. The college had found a contractor to begin the work, but it would take some time to determine the full extent of the damage. And until the work was completed, everyone would have to move. The other girls living on their floor hadn't even been able to return to the building to salvage what they could from their flats – not until the building inspector could go through room by room and determine the structural integrity. But the structural integrity of the rooms hardly mattered: for the summer everyone was being moved into temporary housing in King's College's other dorms.
The only saving grace to the whole situation was that it had happened over the summer. The girl in the flat directly below theirs was in Scotland on holiday, and she wasn't the only one gone. While several of the other girls in the building had stayed for the summer, most of the flats were empty, and that held true for the university's other buildings, as well. If the building wasn't repaired by the time classes started up again in the fall, then the college would have to deal with a housing shortage; as long as they finished the repairs before then, everyone would have somewhere to live.
Of course, from her conversations with the other girls on their floor, many of them had decided not to move into the university's temporary housing. Julie planned to stay with Rob in his flat, at least for the rest of the summer – his flatmate was back home in Kent. Jen would be in hospital for several weeks, but Allie thought she was going to return home once she was released. For herself, Allie was going to move in with friends at Stamford Street.
Bri shook her head. The hall mother had offered her and Anne a room at Angel Lane, but they had turned her down, saying they had friends to stay with. That might be the only blessing to this whole ordeal: everything important had already been moved out of their flat and into the Manor; all they had left in the flat had been the furniture they didn't really need, along with Anne's books from last year's classes. And since they had already been living at the Manor, all that really had to change was how they would commute back and forth between the campus and the Manor: instead of the portal in their flat, they would have to return to the workshop every day. While the portal ring in their flat was still intact, it was entirely non-functional. Max had popped into the flat to collect it, but he had sounded somewhat pessimistic about the chances of repairing it.
Bri shivered, glancing over her shoulder anxiously, scanning the sky above them for signs of Mecha-Man – or of the assassins that he said he had saved them from. Doubtless, Mecha-Man was there, watching from within one of the clouds drifting overhead – or else her father was watching with his drones. Searching the rooftops quickly, she gritted her teeth. Still no sign of the Lynchpin-ions.
"You realize you look like someone with something hide when you do that, right?" Anne pointed out, raising an eyebrow. "Better to just be calm and pretend everything's okay."
"That's rich, after the way you were just talking a few minutes ago," Bri muttered under her breath.
Anne hummed in a question, cocking her head and giving Bri a curious look.
"I said, it's not exactly easy to pretend everything's okay when someone blew up your flat last night," Bri told her, frowning.
Anne hummed.
Bri let out a heavy breath, groaning in frustration. "I'm sorry. I know it was your flat, too," Bri apologized. "… and that it was only blown up because of me – because of my father."
"And that's not something you can control, so as far as I'm concerned, there's no blame on you for it." Anne shrugged. "Besides, we're both alive at least – and ironically, it's thanks in part to your partner-slash-boyfriend and your future mother-in-law," she pointed out. Bri felt heat rising in her cheeks. Anne smirked knowingly. "I suppose it all works out in the end."
"Um, yeah…" Bri nodded hesitantly. "Still, I feel really bad about it all. Especially since I didn't tell you about Papa sooner – I was so ashamed when I first found out, and then it just never seemed that important, even after we were all in Angola together and we were running into him – or at least his partner in the suit – all the time. Not until we got back, until Felix said he might know…" Her voice trailed off, and she coughed against the lump in her throat.
Anne patted her on the shoulder sympathetically. "Hey, I get it. If I'd been in your shoes last year, I don't know if I would've wanted to share it, either. Especially not with a new roommate."
"Especially when I didn't know you that well last year," Bri continued, smiling wanly and leaning over to bump Anne's shoulder with her own. "But I'm glad you know now. I'm glad we ended up rooming together – I really can't imagine my life without you in it."
"As much as Felix?" asked Anne, raising an eyebrow in amusement.
Bri nodded. "Almost."
Anne smiled back at her. "Remember: even if Felix isn't around, you've always got me, sis."
Bri nodded gratefully before taking another surreptitious glance over her shoulder as they turned down the alleyway that led toward her workshop. Nervously, she turned around to scan the Strand behind them, the shadows along their alleyway, alert for any sign of someone watching them.
Anne raised an eyebrow. "You know," she mused, "I would think you were being paranoid, if our apartment hadn't gotten blown up last night…"
