Two weeks later, Ruby had compiled a list of data that would allow her to reliably incise an airtight hole into his coordinated orchestration of a routine. It was almost flawless, and the restrictions she had to limit herself to—it took a while to finally figure out which apartment he lived in.

Ruby put her miniature ladder against the wall and reached up to the camera's wiring with a pair of cutting pliers. They snapped beneath the pressure, and Ruby stepped down, dragging the ladder out of sight and leaving it behind as she reached into her backpack for a tension wrench.

She kneeled in front of the lock to Torchwick's apartment, reassuring herself that he was gone, she watched him walk out of the building. Before she could fill her own head with theories as to why he may have gone back in, she slid the tension wrench into its place at the bottom of the lock and slid the lock pick in above in, scraping along the surface of the keys inside. Ruby could feel their pliant give in her fingertips. It felt strange, knowing that this was the only barrier to entry. The pins slid into place with ease, and Ruby turned the wrench all the way around until the door creaked open at the command of her touch.

Ruby stood, careful not to drag her feet along the floor as she stepped inside. The interior was strangely quiet, which she would have expected, but the silence still startled her. The floorboards, polished to an immaculate gleam, did not creak under the pressure of her weight. Ruby granted herself leave to move with a little more freedom as she took a wholesome look around at the details.

Loose, sheer curtains framed a dining set against the window, a bed through the doorway to her left. Sheets hung in a proper array over the bed, the blanket on the couch folded. The kitchen, strangely clean, had no spots, no evidence of being used. Strangely, his place reminded him of hers.

Once, she read somewhere that attention to detail was important. She did not understand at the time; in fact, she didn't even give a second thought to it until years later when she realized she would have to embark on this mission. The little fragments, the inklings of a path not taken, all of them were important pieces to a puzzle that could not be shifted if she were to succeed. Even after she arrived, Torchwick managed to get the upper hand on her in only four days with the details that she thought left no room for error.

However, details often were the error, and Ruby kept that in mind as she began to survey the closed forum of a space that he lived in.

He had excellent taste—Ruby could conclude at least that—but there were no other indicators that he had spent even one day inside. Ruby inhaled deeply through her nose, hoping to identify any smells that would indicate recent activity. The only smell she detected was a hint of either cologne or a candle, but that would not point her in the direction of anything indicative. Even in the future, details on Torchwick's whereabouts and involvement were for the most part unavailable to the public for lack of interest and investigation, but even in the biographies and essays written on his key position in the takedown of Vale, no one managed to crack into his personal life or clarify the context under which he operated.

She had intended to shed some light on his situation, but the façade that faced her—she wouldn't be able to find much if at all in what was essentially a showroom at a furniture store. Nevertheless, she opened every cabinet, rifled through all documents, looked under every piece of furniture. Under the coffee table, she found a gun holstered in a duct-tape casing. Exercising proper judgement, she removed it and put it in another cabinet, mental note made to put it back before she left. Always have a contingency, she thought.

Ruby closed the cabinet with the gun in it first, frustrated that she couldn't find anything that wasn't legitimate; every single document, usually tax records or lease contracts, was signed by the name "Reese Greenfield." To search his name on the Internet occurred to her, but he had no pictures on social media and the only other results were phone-number lookup sites offering to sell her information.

"No dice," she muttered, putting her scroll back into her pocket.

She walked in circles around the living area, closing every cabinet, replacing every object moved. The clock dictated that she had another thirty minutes before she had to leave, which would leave her a fifteen-minute cushion before his earliest return time. Ruby sighed and prepared herself to give up when she caught a glimpse of her reflection.

Startled by her dark appearance, she almost didn't recognize herself in the mirror, mounted above a dresser. She almost slapped herself.

"Don't fucking tell me," she groaned, reaching over the dresser to lift the frame off the mount.

She carried it to the table and placed in facedown, noticing the edges of a yellow envelope taped to the wooden backing. "Too predictable."

Ruby reached into the envelope and pulled out its contents. A list of information pooled before her, but all of it was about only two people, and both were her.

The word "terminate" drew her attention to the foremost page in the stack.

At the top, he had written "BRUNETTE" with two arrows diverging to opposite sides of the paper. One side was scribbled out, under which she could see "terminate?" scrawled in his horrible, looping penmanship. The option opposing it, circled in red, "Hire for surveillance."

Underneath it, two more options, "terminate" and "continue tertiary operations."

Thankfully, "terminate" was scribbled out again, but underneath it, "terminate" appeared again.

"If you've considered it so much, why haven't you done it already?" she wondered aloud.

Ruby's eyes skimmed to the bottom of the page, which read, "You're too curious for your own good."

"What?" Ruby asked.

Suddenly, Ruby seized, trembling on her feet as bolts of pain shot through her neck into her chest and all the way to her feet. When the electricity finally stopped, she tumbled to the ground in a heap, unable to stumble or put her hands out in front of herself in protection of her face. She landed on her chin, shoulder, and elbow, pain shuddering through her muscles in the places where she hoped for even a phantom of movement.

Her eyes flitted through sheets of the black gloss coating her vision, glancing finally at the distorted face that curdled her stomach. Torchwick loomed over her as he pulled up the hem of his trousers to kneel in front of her immovable body.

"Great minds think alike, huh?" He smiled, but in her perception, the shape of his mouth formed a deceptive, malformed pattern. "I'll sum up the histrionics for you. I knew this would happen, you were easy to deceive, and I always saw you coming."

He reached for the papers that spilled across the floor when she fell, isolating the one she was reading before he incapacitated her. Holding it in front of her watering eyes, he asked, "Well, what do you think I should do?"

Torchwick, smile fading, let the paper slip from his fingers and dance along the floor in a peaceful grace. He stood, looking upon her with a focused gaze, heavier than iron.

He disappeared into the other room in silence. Ruby focused on moving her fingers, hoping that she would be able to stand up before he came back, but he reappeared with a rolling chair and plastic zip ties.

Ruby only managed a whimper as he grabbed her arms, pulling her off the ground, and dropping her on the chair cushion. He began with her arms, extracting each zip tie from a neat pile on the hardwood floor. He pushed her sleeves further up her arm and zip-tied her on both sides of the armrest.

He moved to her feet as she was finally able to lift her head. By the time that she attempted to kick him in her own defense, he had bound her feet together with a rope that restrained the movement of her feet.

Her body shuddered with the realization that she had been left completely at his mercy, breath coming in short gasps as she watched Torchwick pull a chair away from the dining set and sat himself down, splaying his legs out and kicking her feet like he had in the diner three weeks ago, thumbs hanging from his belt loops.

"I should have laid down a sheet, but that would have tipped you off, so I guess I'll just have to clean up the blood myself," he sighed, letting his head fall back.

"How did you know?" Ruby asked, voice trembling. The zipties on her arms were too tight to allow her to turn her arms over, so she clenched her fists, skin grating against the plastic.

"Motion sensor." His head flipped up. "By the way, where's my gun?"

Ruby turned her head away in defiance.

Roman scoffed. "That's okay, I'll find it eventually. I still have my taser," he said, electricity crackling for demonstrative effect. Ruby flinched.

"Now, I gotta be honest. You've been a pain in my ass since day one, and I'm trying really hard for a reason not to kill you."

Ruby pinched her eyes shut, trying to think of a way out.

"Now, while you'd be robbing me of the experience I'm looking forward to, it'd be a lot easier if you just answer the questions I ask."

Ruby scraped for a hold in her psychological autonomy. Her home address, given name, birthdate, and other familiar details panged out, reaching back for her despite her distress. She would have to measure her success in the strength she displays, especially if these are going to be her final moments. She had no contingency for this scenario.