Brooklyn could hear their clan's captive pacing back and forth hyperactively as he approached the holding cell.
"Brooklyn?" she called in an anxious, hushed voice, as he opened the external gate before walking into view.
"It's just me again," he told her, hoping she would find that fact reassuring, but that didn't seem to be the case.
"Please let me go!" she begged with a clear timber of exhaustion in her tone, "I only want to be free! I won't do your clan any harm! Please!"
"If you don't mean us harm," Brooklyn reasoned in his most nonchalant sounding voice, "Then I see no reason you can't stay a while and talk with me."
"Please!" she begged again, "I have to get back to the river! There is something I must do!"
"Really?" he asked, "Is someone waiting for you there?"
Sorrow's eyes narrowed and she tilted her head in a way that accented all the beautiful designs that adorned her bare shoulders.
"I'm alone," she insisted, "I told you that!"
"Then, why such a hurry?" he asked, calling her bluff and she snarled at him, lunging furiously toward the electrified bars.
"Whoa! Slow down, Sis!" Brooklyn exclaimed, putting out his arms as if to stop her; a gesture that was inches away from the danger of inadvertently electrocuting himself.
"These bars are hot!" he reminded his prisoner urgently, "You may want to tear my face off, but you'd just get fried like a corn dog trying to get to me!"
"I don't want to hurt your face," she told him angrily, "I just want to leave this place! I have to!"
"Why?" he asked, trying to readopt his previous nonchalant attitude, "What's so important?"
Sorrow's eyes narrowed grimly, as if she were fighting back tears of anger. Brooklyn could tell she didn't want to say anymore, but she realized that she was helpless to free herself without him. Finally, she answered him.
"I lost something in the river," she told him reluctantly, "When the boat I was in was struck by that yacht. I fell into the river and I lost something very important. I have to go back and find it."
"What is it?" Brooklyn asked urgently.
"I can't tell you!" she growled, "But I have to get it back!"
Brooklyn gave her what he hoped was his most endearing smile.
"If you tell me what it is, maybe I can help you find it?"
"You can't help me," she replied in dismay.
"But you'll need help finding it if it's at the bottom of the Hudson River," he pointed out.
"I'm sure it's not at the bottom of the river," she argued, raising a brow at him.
"Even if it's washed up somewhere along the shore," he continued, "There's miles of beaches, marshes, not to mention one of the busiest harbors in the world! You're going to need help searching, and me and my clan can help find…whatever it is."
Sorrow tilted her head curiously, looking at him with deep, dark, and very suspicious eyes. Brooklyn hoped that she couldn't hear his excited heart pounding. He had every hope that the 'important thing' she was looking for was two small hatchlings, and she was about to tell him where to find them, if he played his cards right.
"How could you help?" she asked softly.
"Well, we have a guard beast, for one," he explained, "And Bronx loves to hunt! He's been trained to track anything alive! He can-
"What I'm looking for isn't alive," she cut him off, and his heart fell a bit.
"Well, my brother Lexington is a complete tech wiz," he explained further, "He has all kinds of gadgets and gizmos. I'm sure he's got a metal detector and all kinds of cameras that could help us search…"
"Cameras?" she asked, "How could cameras help find something small in a whole city full of docks and shipyards?"
"Well, they're on robots," Brooklyn told her, "Lex could explain better how they work, but they have sensors. They can detect metal…and heat… and can create maps of the places we are searching…"
Brooklyn glanced over at Sorrow as he explained and was pleased to see that she seemed interested in what he had to say. He began to talk faster and more confidently.
"They can even go places we can't go, like under the water and they can sense the currents and predict where some…thing…might have gone."
Sorrow folded her arms under her caped wings and looked at him skeptically.
"Where do gargoyles get such machines?" she demanded almost bitterly.
"He builds them!" Brooklyn assured her, "My brother is a genius! He can build anything! Well, he builds the prototypes anyway, and his best inventions, he sells to Xanatos."
"Xanatos?" Sorrow replied urgently.
"Yes. Xanatos owns a company that specializes in manufacturing robotics. He's a friend of our clan…well, sort of."
"The man, Xanatos," she replied slowly and thoughtfully, "Owns this tower with the castle atop it?"
"Yes," Brooklyn replied, "Xanatos owns the Eyrie Tower and the castle is home to both his family and our clan."
"And this man's company builds these powerful machines and robots?"
"That's right! His robots can do all sorts of things. Really, just about anything!"
"And you are his friend, Brooklyn?" she asked him, "He is a good man? To be trusted with matters of… grave importance?"
The earnestness of her question caught him a bit off guard. Brooklyn was not nearly David Xanatos' greatest fan.
"Goliath, my leader, trusts him with all our lives," Brooklyn told her, but she seemed unsatisfied.
"What do you think of him, Brooklyn?" she asked him, her lovely, deep eyes pleading for honesty and wisdom, "Is he a good and honorable man?"
"Let's not get too carried away!" Brooklyn thought to himself. He could sense that Sorrow had turned the table and HE was now the tree being shaken for juicy, ripe apples of information and Brooklyn didn't quite know what to tell her. First of all, he wasn't completely certain that he really did fully trust the conniving, opportunistic billionaire. At least, not in all things. On the other hand, what did Sorrow need to hear in order to trust Brooklyn enough to tell him what she was looking for?
"I think that David Xanatos is the most powerful man in the world," Brooklyn explained with full genuinity, "He is, quite possibly, the most powerful human that has ever lived. He is richer than everyone, smarter than nearly everyone, and has the most unbelievable collection of powerful friends and allies that you could ever imagine. As such, he is given to certain…temptations. Ambition. Avarice. Pride. Recklessness…All the typical, cartoon-villain stuff."
Sorrow's eyes fell at Brooklyn's honest words, but he continued,
"But I believe that, underneath all that, he really wants to do good. Yes. I believe he is a good and honorable man, deep down inside."
Brooklyn glanced at Sorrow, who was now looking a bit more hopeful.
"Sometimes…deep, deep down inside," he added awkwardly, "But with his help, I know the clan can find whatever it is you are looking for… We just need to know what it is."
Sorrow sighed, and looked at the tile floor beneath them. Brooklyn waited anxiously for her answer. He hadn't completely discarded his suspicion that Sorrow was the murderer that stood accused of slaughtering her mate and kidnapping two of the mountain clan's hatchlings. But based on the conversation between them, he had become confident that whatever it was she sought now was a thing and not a person. He hoped apprehensively that this conclusion was his logical head talking, and not merely his bleeding heart hoping. He was self-aware enough to realize that although he truly did want to help recover the mountain clan's lost children, even more than that, he wanted the culprit to be someone other than Sorrow. Finally, she spoke again.
"I'm not ever going to be released from this cell, am I?" she asked morosely.
"That isn't really up to me," he told her truthfully, "But I'm working on it. It'd be much easier if you trusted me and told me the truth."
Sorrow nodded sadly, but her gaze was still filled with consternation.
"Are you going to turn me over to the Beloved Mother?"
"They still don't know you are here," he told her, "And my leader has agreed to keep you secret…until tomorrow night. So, if you have anything you want to share, now would be the time to do it."
As if in slow motion, Sorrow seemed to melt until she was crouched on the floor.
"Do you have anything you want to share?" he prodded, wondering why she didn't seem to understand that her stubborn silence was what held her captive?
"Nothing that will be believed," she replied with another sigh.
Her otherwise lovely face was now clenched in fear and pain as she stared despairingly at the floor. Her once wild spirit seemed to be defeated at last, and the sight of that depressed Brooklyn more than he expected or understood.
He wondered if he should press her further. If she truly was the mountain clan's fugitive, then asking her to answer to their accusations would break off what little trust he had garnered. He couldn't see finding out the location of the stolen hatchlings that way. On the other hand, if Brooklyn could find her the object she was looking for, he was almost certain that would be the quickest way for him to regain her confidence. If it turned out that she was their fugitive, then she might be willing to tell him her side of the story and possibly reveal the fate of the two stolen hatchlings. If she wasn't (As Brooklyn desperately hoped), she might tell him enough of her story to satisfy Goliath and there would be no reason to hold her any longer. Either way, it all seemed to depend on his ability to find…whatever it was.
"It's a long, thin container," Sorrow declared, suddenly shattering the silence, "That appears to be carved of stone, but is lighter to lift than anyone would guess by looking at it."
Brooklyn's eyes widened.
"What's inside?" he asked.
"You won't be able to open it," she told him confidently, "The seal wasn't meant for you. And it won't be in the water! It hates the water and it will make its way ashore, no matter what."
"It hates the water?" Brooklyn repeated incredulously, "The container, or the thing that's inside it?"
"What's inside it is not for you," she repeated, "It must go into the hands of David Xanatos. No matter what happens to me, he must receive it."
"Why Xanatos?" Brooklyn demanded, "And you're not even going to tell me what's in it? How will I know I've found the right container?"
"Truth is in it," she replied sternly and cryptically. And with that, she crawled to the far corner of the cell and turned her back on him.
"Oh, good!" Brooklyn retorted softly under his breath as he turned and left the cell, "That's exactly what I was hoping for!"
As soon as the external gate had clanged shut, he bounded down the corridor towards the elevators. One opened and Brooklyn almost slammed directly into Broadway's rotund middle.
"Goliath told us everything," Lexington informed him.
"Did you find out anything?" Broadway asked urgently, "Did she tell you where the hatchlings are?"
"Come on," Brooklyn told his brothers hastily as he pushed them backward into the elevator, "We've got a needle to find in a huge, wet, muddy, smelly haystack!"