Chapter 14

-Brian-

"Thank you, Cindy. You've been very helpful." Lisa hung up the phone and then started dialing again. Putting it to her ear, she frowned. "Straight to voicemail." She hung up, counted to thirty and then tried again, which from the look on her face also failed. "I guess it makes sense they'd get shitty service down in the basement."

"This isn't going to be a problem, is it?" I asked. At least it wasn't the worst possible part of the plan to go south.

"Nah," she waved me off. "Just gotta do it the long way." Dialing a different number, she tucked the phone against her ear so she could hold the binoculars to her face. "Hello? This is Cindy, calling from Brockton Bay General Hospital. I'm trying to reach a Mr. Markov regarding his daughter, is he available right now?"

Lisa hummed agreement to something, then thanked whatever secretary she was talking to. "Mr. Markov? My name's Cindy, I'm one of the unit managers here at Brockton Bay General Hospital's Emergency Department. I'm afraid your daughter, Danielle, was involved in an automobile accident." She paused, probably to let the poor man panic for a bit. "Her prognosis was good, but they just took her into surgery to repair the broken rib the doctors think is a risk for puncturing her lung." Another pause. "Yes, sir. I'll see you when you get here, sir. Drive safely."

Snapping the burner phone shut, Lisa pulled the battery and dumped it into a static bag for disposal later while Alec laughed. "You really are a bitch, you know that, right?"

"Oh, shut up. We needed him gone." She rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck for a little while as we watched the building. "Now... wait for it… and here we go... " Across the street, a car practically peeled out of the parking garage. "Alright, that's the shift manager gone." Tattletale said, watching the departing car in the binoculars. "Based on traffic, and the fact that I just sent him halfway across the city, we should have a good 20-30 minutes before he realizes he's been had. Once he turns that first corner we should be good to start... and... Go!"

At her signal, I came out from behind the corner and sent a puff of darkness towards one of the two cameras near the building while it was turned in the other direction. The one facing us hadn't moved since I first saw it this morning - the repair technicians weren't supposed to show up until tomorrow, leaving a gap in the coverage. Combined with a few "blackouts" of this camera earlier in the day to make the guards think it's malfunctioning, and…

Well. Lisa swore up and down they were annoyed enough at the false alarms they wouldn't react a few alarms ago. Now that they haven't bothered responding to the last three 'malfunctions' I figured it was time to acknowledge she was right. In my own head, of course. Her ego really doesn't need any encouragement. The girl in question turned her head my way and smirked.

Go time.

Pulling our masks on, Tattletale, Regent and I walked up to the door. Lisa pressed our stolen ID to the scanner, then typed in a code on the keypad. Between the laxatives and… whatever that unpronounceable crap was that Lisa swore would cause "a little vomiting" "safely," the card's owner was probably still parked on the toilet at home, none the wiser about his ID having gone missing. The door opened, and we headed straight to the nearest stairwell.

And ran right into a guard.

Regent clamped his jaw shut, muffling his surprised shout and I quickly wrapped his head in darkness before he could recover. One hit from Regent's taser and a quick look around to make sure there were no cameras aimed at the area later, we gagged and zip tied him to the railing.

"Overeager rookie," Tattletale said, sighing faux-mournfully as she bent down and relieved the man of his radio and nightstick. "Probably got sent down because he annoyed the others." She patted the man's cheek as he came back to his senses.

"Riiight." Regent drawled.

"Oh, shut up." Tattletale rolled her eyes as she stood up. "No plan is perfect."

"Let's just keep moving. We're on the clock now before they notice he's missing." Letting out some more darkness to wreathe him in, I made sure he couldn't raise an alarm if Lisa somehow missed a panic button. It wouldn't help if someone else passed through, but there wasn't much we could do about that. We continued to the server room, only running into one other guard on the way.

"Alright, everyone off your computers!" Lisa shouted, waving her gun in their general direction as soon as the door opened. "We're not here to hurt you, we just have a job to do, same as you lot. No heroics, nobody gets hurt, am I clear?" she said, looking at the technicians. They stared at her for a few seconds, then slowly stepped away from the computers with their hands raised. She motioned them over to one corner of the room and left me and Alec to watch them while she picked one of the computers, twirling a flash drive around her finger by the string. Tattletale paused once she saw the screen, and scoffed.

"Really? This is insulting," she said, flipped the keyboard over and ripped a post-it note off the bottom, then typed in the password, reading it off the note. I could see the other techs glaring at the guy that had been sitting there back when we came in. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here.

As she sat in the swivel chair, watching the virus do its work, I kept an eye on the techs and an ear on the hallway. This is going too well. Where's the catch..?

"Would you relax? Your worrying is distracting." Tattletale ribbed me without looking up from whatever she was doing while the supposedly fully automated program ran. " Besides, it's halfway done and they haven't even raised an alarm yet. We'll be out long before anyone can respond."

"You wouldn't live long in a horror movie," Regent cracked. I just glared at him, though he couldn't see it through my helmet. I gave up after a moment, choosing to just be thankful he wasn't amusing himself by making the techs slap each other or something equally asinine.

It only took a couple of minutes for Tattletale to declare the job done, and we left quickly. It was fairly obvious that the techs we left behind would sound an alarm, but the building wouldn't go on lockdown. I led the other two down the still-dark stairwell past the zip-tied guards and out of the building. Tattletale whistled, and Bitch met us with her dogs on the way out.

"Well, that was easy," Tattletale said, climbing behind me on Judas' back. Rachel was riding Angelica, while Regent was left with Brutus, and we set off towards the loft.

"What I can't figure out," Tattletale spoke up some time later, "is why the boss wanted us to do this job. The records we stole are important, but I'm thinking that deleting the data afterwards was what he really wanted. But why… ugh. I'll see what I can figure out tomorrow, if our new friend doesn't end up on PHO again."

I didn't comment on that, mostly because we reached a tangle of back alleys where traveling on rooftops was much easier than along the ground - which, of course, meant that the giant dogs had to climb up first. We weren't too worried about being spotted by a flying hero - the buildings were already hiding the setting sun, and the rooftops were dark.

That was the reason even Tattletale didn't notice movement on a nearby rooftop until it was too late, and I felt the bolt sink into my side, even if the leather jacket absorbed a bit of the impact.

"Shit!" I cried out, while Tattletale rather redundantly shouted "Shadow Stalker!"

The psycho was already being left behind by the dogs, and her parting shot went wide. I groaned, trying to decide between taking out the bolt and risking the wound bleeding now and leaving it in during a bumpy ride. Tattletale, her face going worryingly pale, advised choosing the former.

I was feeling seriously lightheaded by the time we made it back to the loft, and collapsed onto the couch. For some reason, the couch was covered by the shower curtain which smelled like... alcohol? The rest of the evening got even hazier after that, with a lot of bandages, disinfectants, and cursing from Lisa as she tried to stem the bleeding.

It had been a few days since I got shot by Psycho Stalker. I'd gotten out of bed to get something to drink, but had a lot of trouble making the coffee. Things just… kept being in places I was sure I didn't put them. One cup even got shattered somehow. I wondered briefly if it's an aftereffect of blood loss, but I hadn't had the problem the last time I tried to get up… I wobbled on my feet a bit. Shit, that's bad, I should—

"—ing ignoring me!" Aisha screamed in my face, shaking me with one hand. I nearly shoved her in surprise, but she managed to step back. I could see her favoring one arm, and a massive bruise covered almost the entire left side of her face.

"Aisha…" I started, with a slow uncertainty that quickly turned frantic as I spotted more and more signs she'd been in some kind of fight, "what the hell happened to you?"