Wyvern Pt 16 (Patreon)

Part Sixteen: That Went Places

[A/N: this chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

As satisfying as it would have been to smack Emma around the head with the Decoy, I managed to refrain from doing just that. Neither did I allow myself to wallow in my anger at the three bullies. That way led to the possibility of an involuntary Change, thus outing myself to not only the three people I least wanted to know my deepest secrets, but also a good chunk of Winslow’s students. This would almost certainly lead to potential ‘recruitment’ attempts by one gang or another, with Dad in danger as a result. Precisely the situation I’d been trying to avoid since I first became the wyvern. No thanks.

So instead I kept my face blank of all emotion and turned the Decoy so they could see the stickers emblazoned on it. “Hello, Emma. Hello, Sophia. Madison, you already know this, but the others don’t. You’re currently being recorded.”

Emma, predictably, opened her mouth. “I don’t—”

Normally, I would’ve let her dominate the conversation. This time, I didn’t give a shit, so I raised my voice over hers and kept talking. “Yes, I get it. You don’t consent to being recorded. That doesn’t actually change matters. You’ve been informed. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get to the cafeteria before the mystery meat is all gone.”

Of course, Emma couldn’t let it go. “Seriously, Taylor, you’re breaking the law so badly there. Do you really want to be arrested? My father—”

I couldn’t help but laugh in her face. It was too funny. “Emma, your father has boasted about how he can make or break a divorce case on recordings that were taken without the other partner’s knowledge. So, don’t tell me about breaking the law. Now, as I said, I’m going to the cafeteria. You can follow along if you like, but whatever you say to me will be recorded.”

“Illegal recording is a felony,” Emma stated brightly, and a little too loudly, probably to ensure her voice made it to the microphone. “If Taylor’s committing a felony, we can perform a citizen’s arrest and confiscate it.”

Huh. So that’s their angle. I shook my head. Carol Dallon had briefed me on this one. That didn’t count if the person recording was party to the conversation; then it was only a misdemeanour. Citizen’s arrests couldn’t be performed for a misdemeanour. “No, it’s—”

I didn’t get past two words into the sentence, because Sophia glided in and unloaded a powerful blow into my solar plexus. If I’d been holding the Decoy two inches lower, she would’ve hit that instead, but as it was I felt every molecule of air rush out of my lungs. As if they’d rehearsed it (and who knew? They may have) Emma and Madison stepped in and took my arms. Not to hold me up, but to pry my fingers from the Decoy. I tried to protest, but right then I couldn’t make any noise past a pained, breathless squeak.

“What’s that, Taylor? Can’t think of what to say? Oh, well, you’re a boring conversationalist anyway.” Emma smiled at me as she dug her nails into my wrists to make me let go. I tried to hold on, but with three on one, Sophia wrenching at it as well, it was a losing battle.

Besides, it was taking all my effort not letting the wyvern rise to the top. For the first time I could feel it, just under the surface, bubbling with rage. It was almost like a separate entity or another personality, one that would quite happily burn the school to the ground.

I was more or less in agreement with it at this point in time, but I had another agenda.

My fingers lost their grip on the Decoy and the girls pushed me against the wall and stepped back. Emma waved it tauntingly in front of me. “You deserve to lose this,” she said. “You deserve to lose everything.” Then they ran off down the corridor, laughing.

I stayed where I was, half slumped against the wall, until I could breathe properly again. It was entirely possible that I could’ve recovered a lot more quickly if I’d allowed myself to give in to the Change, but that wasn’t the plan. The deeper I allowed Emma and the others to dig themselves into the hole, the better.

A couple of minutes passed before I was able to push myself to my feet. My stomach still hurt, but that would pass. I looked at my hands, where Emma and Madison had gouged at my sensitive points to force me to let go of the Decoy. The marks were nice and red, which was good. I wasn’t sure if I’d have a bruise from Sophia’s punch, but it was always worth a shot. Briefly, I thought of getting a can of soda from the vending machine to hold against my stomach and ease the soreness, but I decided against it. I could hack it.

As part of the plan, I headed for Principal Blackwell’s office. As another part of it, I pulled out the cell-phone Dad had bought for me and dialled his number.

“Hello?”

He would, I knew, be recording. An ordinary hand-held tape recorder, this time.

“Dad, it’s me. Can you come to the school, please?” I put a quaver in my voice.

“Taylor? What’s up? What happened?” I had to admit, his ‘concerned parent’ voice was spot-on.

“I was attacked. Three girls stole my recorder. It’s the bullies that have been doing it all the time, Dad. They aren’t going to stop. They’re never going to stop.” I didn’t go so far as to pretend to sob—those sound horribly fake to me, even when they’re not—but I let the quaver continue.

“Goddamn it. I’m on the way. Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?”

“Uh huh. I’m okay, but they punched me in the stomach and scratched up my hands trying to make me let go of the recorder. Dad, can you come here quick please?”

“I’ll be there soon. You just hang tight.”

“Okay, Dad.”

We ended the call, and I found an out of the way place near the main entrance to sit and wait. In scripting this scenario, we’d considered having me go to Principal Blackwell so I could have a rejection under my belt before Dad arrived, but Carol had rejected the idea on the grounds that it added too many random factors. Besides, Dad wanted a recording of the second meeting. Every little bit of supporting evidence helped.

When he arrived, I got up and showed him my hands. He frowned as he looked them over, and carefully took photos, front and back, with his phone. This wouldn’t mean much on its own—after all, I could’ve done it myself—but it would add up with the rest.

We agreed that my potentially bruised stomach could be left for a medical professional to examine. Then I pulled out the other electronic item that Carol Dallon had given me, and checked it. It was getting a nice strong signal, which was good. We wouldn’t have been able to pull this off in Arcadia, with the Faraday cages around the buildings.

Of course, in Arcadia, we wouldn’t have had to pull this off at all.

Blackwell’s secretary looked up with surprise as Dad stomped into the front office, jaw set and head down like a bull. “Where is she?” he demanded. “This is the last goddamn straw!” He was doing all but snorting steam and pawing at the ground. I wasn’t entirely sure it was an act.

“Oh, ah,” she said. “You’re back. Why are you back?”

“Because my daughter was attacked in your goddamn school, and three of your students stole the device she was carrying to make it harder to bully her!” he yelled. “You’re really, really not improving my view of your school here. Just saying.” He held up his hand-held tape recorder, showing that the reels were winding slowly over. “I’m recording this, by the way. It seems to be the only way to get things done around here.”

“They, uh, said they were confiscating it because I was committing a crime with it,” I ventured. “Has it been handed in?” I knew it hadn’t, but this was yet more evidence.

The secretary stood up. “I’ll just go and—”

Principal Blackwell opened her door and stared at us. “You, again,” she snapped. “What is the meaning of this? Why are you creating a disturbance in my front office?”

I took a deep breath. “I was cornered after World Affairs class by Emma Barnes, Madison Clements and Sophia Hess. Sophia punched me in the stomach, then the other two ripped the recording device from my hands, after I informed them that they were being recorded. Then Emma said something very hurtful and they ran off laughing. They also said something about a citizen’s arrest and confiscating it for committing a felony, but they haven’t handed it in yet, have they?”

“Well, I’d have to check—” Blackwell made a motion toward her office.

“Don’t bother,” Dad said briskly. “I’ve already called the police. They should be here in about five minutes.”

Blackwell stared at him. “The police? Why?”

He put the tape recorder on the desk and ticked off points on his fingers. “Because one, my daughter was assaulted and robbed and neither one of you has yet to show even the slightest sign of concern for her well-being or the property that was stolen. Two, I want the people who did this to actually pay for their crimes, not take a gentle slap on the wrist as a suggestion not to do it again. Three, I don’t trust you one inch where it comes to doing anything for Taylor that you aren’t being forced at gunpoint to do.” He raised his eyebrows in Blackwell’s general direction. “Have you even looked at the list of their crimes so far? It’s pretty extensive. You might want to get to it.”

“I was going to do it tonight,” she gritted. “As you may have noticed, it’s not a small document.”

“I know,” I replied flatly. “I compiled it. Remember?”

As a verbal gut-punch, it went across pretty well. Blackwell deflated somewhat and retreated into her office, mumbling something about writing up an incident report. Dad and I waited in the outer office, much to the secretary’s discomfort.

About seven minutes later, the police showed up. Far from the single officer I’d expected, there were four of them, all in body armour. Winslow, I realised belatedly, had something of a reputation. I sat meekly in the background as they spoke to Dad, then the sergeant—it was only when she spoke that I realised she was a woman, so bulky was her armour—asked to see my hands. She examined them and took more photos, then wrote down my statement.

“And you’d be willing to testify in court to all this?” the sergeant—her name was Gainsford—asked for about the third time.

I nodded. “Absolutely. These three and their hangers-on have been making my life hell for the last year. If you think I’m worried about repercussions, that’s not a thing. They already blew up my locker. What are they going to do, blow it up again with me inside it?”

“Oh, it was your locker that blew up?” She raised her eyebrows. “I heard about that. I also heard …” She stopped talking. “Sorry. Never mind. I just wanted to make sure you were okay with testifying. We have enough hoops to jump through with minors giving evidence that I wanted to make sure from the start.”

“Oh, that’s totally okay,” I assured her. “So, can we go and find my stolen property now? I mean, if one of them has it on them, that will really make this thing open and shut, right?”

One of the other officers must have overheard me, because he cleared his throat. “Uh, kid, this isn’t the movies. We’re not gonna be able to find it in half an hour. I mean—”

Sergeant Gainsford waved him away. “Ignore him. The trouble here, Miss Hebert, is that Winslow is a really big school and something like your recorder isn’t that big. We’d need to get warrants to search anywhere that’s not a trash receptacle or a public area.”

“What about Emma, Sophia and Madison?” I asked. “What if one of them’s got it in her bag?”

“Well, if it’s the size you say it is, we can do a feel check on the outside of the bag and if we have a reasonable suspicion that it’s in there we can then have them empty the bag,” she said carefully. “I doubt they could conceal it on their persons, which dodges a huge bullet about searching minors.” She mimed wiping sweat off her brow for my benefit, and I smiled slightly.

“I can have them called to the office,” Principal Blackwell said hopefully. “This should clear the whole thing up.”

“Not a good idea,” said Dad. “It would be the easiest thing in the world for them to dump it on the way. We want to catch them red-handed.” He smirked at that, as did I.

Sergeant Gainsford looked at me, then at him. “I’m missing something. What am I missing?”

I pulled the remote out of my back pocket. “Well, for one thing, what they took is a decoy, a remote microphone. The real recorder's right here. Also, it's got a tracking beacon which works like so.” Pressing the appropriate button, I brought up the status light (still glowing green for ‘operational’) and a compass-like needle. “Shall we?”

“Oh, definitely,” Gainsford said with a smirk of her own. "Lead on."

<><>

Class had gone back in by the time we set out. Principal Blackwell came with us, while one of the officers remained with the secretary. In the meantime, the secretary had been tasked with calling the parents of each of the three girls and asking them to come to the school as soon as possible. I personally was not a fan of giving them a chance to give their kids a parental heads-up, but I wasn’t in charge of that detail.

As we headed down the corridor, I still had the remote, but I was flanked on one side by Sergeant Gainsford and on the other by a guy called Callan. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist.

Gainsford, however, was. “So this whole thing’s a sting operation? Where’d you get all this tech from?”

“Carol Dallon,” Dad supplied. “Taylor knows her kids.”

“You mean Brandish.” Gainsford looked at me with raised eyebrows. “You’re besties with Glory Girl and Panacea?”

“Vicky and Amy,” I corrected her. “I’m hardly the type to put on a cape and go flying off to stop a bank robbery. And Mrs Dallon is a lawyer too, remember. She uses this sort of thing to make people entrap themselves. According to her, it’s amazing what people will admit to if they think it’ll never get back to them.”

“Ah.” Sergeant Gainsford nodded sagely. “Legally obtained recordings are hell to get hold of, but so worth it. And juries love video evidence.”

 “Tell me about it.” I rolled my eyes. “The number of people who’ve told me just today that they don’t consent to being recorded was amazing.” I glanced at the remote. “And it looks like we’re here.”

‘Here’ was a locker, one among dozens of others. I waved the remote back and forth several times, and it stubbornly pointed to the metal door. “It’s in there.”

“Whose locker is that?” asked Gainsford, looking at Principal Blackwell.

“Uh … I’m not sure.” There were beads of sweat on her forehead, and her eyes were flickering everywhere as if seeking an escape route. She knew damn well whose locker it was.

Gainsford keyed her epaulette microphone. “Gainsford to Henderson, come in?”

A moment later, the officer who had been left to watch the office replied. “This is Henderson, any problems?”

“Not yet, but I need you to find out who’s using locker number two six five seven. That's two six five seven.”

There was a long pause. Blackwell sweated some more. Henderson came back on the line. “Two six five seven, please confirm.”

Gainsford rechecked the number stamped into the metal. “Yes, that's right.”

“Okay, it's owned by one Sophia Hess.” He paused. “Wait, is that …”

I barely refrained from performing a high-five with Dad but if the look in his eye was anything like mine, we didn’t need to.

We had her.

Callan stepped forward and rattled the handle on the locker, then he tugged on the padlock. “Locked,” he reported unnecessarily. “We have direct indication that there is stolen property in that locker.” He reached into his belt—he had everything on that belt; I wanted one for my costume—and produced what looked like a short metal bar. “I figure I can get the padlock off with this.”

Gainsford shook her head. “Let’s do this by the book.” She keyed her radio again. “Henderson. Instruct the secretary to call Sophia Hess to her locker immediately.”

“Ten-four. Sophia Hess to report to her locker.”

A moment later, the aged PA system crackled to life. The secretary’s voice came across with the precise instructions that Gainsford had given, then lapsed into silence once more. We looked at each other.

“Think she’ll run?” ventured the fourth officer, a man called Peterson. He sounded supremely uninterested, as if watching an uninspiring crime drama on TV.

Callan shook his head. “Doubt it. That sort of person, been getting away with this for so long? Chances are, she thinks she’s untouchable. I’ve seen it a dozen times before.”

I caught Gainsford’s eye and gestured with the remote. “Uh, there's one more thing I forgot to mention.”

“I’m listening.” I got the impression she really was.

“The other end of this has a UV lamp.” I switched ends and showed her how to turn it on. “We sprayed the Decoy with a non-toxic UV-reactant dye before I came to school.” Pointing it at my own hand, I showed her how my fingers glowed.

She caught on fast. “So it’ll be all over the lock and her hands, if she handled it. You really wanted to catch her at it, didn’t you?”

I shrugged and handed the remote over. “Well, wouldn’t you?”

“True.” She took the remote and pressed the button to activate the lamp. Bright fingermarks clearly showed up on the padlock and hasp, and on the edge of the door. “Well, well. That’s interesting. Callan?”

“Getting photos now,” Callan reported, carefully aiming his phone. “Pretty tricky, kid.”

“I’d love to say it was my idea, but it really wasn’t.” I shrugged. “Mrs Dallon’s been doing this for awhile, I guess.”

“That she has.” Gainsford looked around and shut off the UV light. “Hello. You’d be Sophia Hess?”

Sophia approached, eyeing the police with extreme suspicion. “Who wants to know?” She shot a side-glance at me, which I returned innocently.

“Sergeant Gainsford,” the police officer replied, holding out a card with her name on it. I already had an identical one. “Are you Sophia Hess, and is this your locker? The school says it is. We’d just like confirmation.”

Reluctantly, Sophia nodded. “I’m Sophia Hess. That’s my locker. What sort of bullshit story has Hebert been telling you? Because she’s been trying to make trouble for me for the last year, all because her best friend likes me better now.” She snorted in derision.

“This best friend would be Emma Barnes?” I had to hand it to Sergeant Gainsford, she could make a leading question sound utterly harmless. Just the facts, ma’am.

Sophia shot me another suspicious look. “Yeah, that’s her. Her dad’s a lawyer. What do you want with my locker, anyway?”

“Well, we have reason to believe there might be stolen goods in there. Also, may I see your hands, Miss Hess?”

Now she looked downright paranoid. “My hands? What for?”

Gainsford closed for the kill. “The stolen item had been coated with a UV-sensitive dye. Whoever stole it opened this locker. This is your locker. May I see your hands, please?” Her voice became harder, more commanding as she spoke.

Sophia put her hands behind her back. “I don’t have to show you—”

Dad pulled me back out of the way as both Callan and Peterson pulled their sidearms and aimed them at Sophia from a distance of five feet.

“Show us your hands!” shouted Callan. “Now-now-now!”

“Slowly!” warned Peterson.

Blackwell let out a little shriek and I nearly screamed myself as my heart rate suddenly tripled, or so it felt. Would they actually shoot Sophia over something like this? I didn’t like her, but I didn’t want to see her dead either.

“Hands,” repeated Sergeant Gainsford. “Slowly.”

With exaggerated care, Sophia brought her hands around in front of her again. They were empty but, as Gainsford shone the UV light on them, they glowed brightly.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s proof she handled it.”

“It is indeed.” Gainsford nodded at the locker. “Miss Hess, open that, right now.”

Even looking a little shaken, as I was willing to admit she had a right to be, Sophia was still a hardass. “You got a warrant for that?” she asked.

Callan put his pistol away. Peterson didn’t, but he lowered it to point at the floor when Gainsford gestured to him. She turned to Sophia. “The stolen item has an electronic tracker in it. Miss Hebert?”

I held up the remote, activated the tracker, and waved it around. The needle remained pointing steadfastly at the locker. “It’s in there,” I said.

“Which is all the reason you need to open your locker right now, Miss Hess,” Gainsford said. Her tone hardened. “Or you can refuse, we can put you under arrest, and we break the lock. Your choice.”

“Fine,” she muttered. “But when you see there’s nothing in there, I’m gonna laugh my head off when Emma’s dad sues your department and Hebert’s dad, for pulling this shit on me.” Leaning over the lock, she fiddled it for a moment, then opened it. Swinging the door wide open, she stepped back. “Read it and weep, assholes.”

I looked into the locker, along with everyone else. The hanging space, with a few sports shirts. Shoes and other paraphernalia in the bottom. On the other side, shelves, but nothing stuffed so deeply that the contents could hide the Decoy.

It wasn’t there. I began to have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. The locator had brought me directly to this location. How could this be? It was Sophia’s locker.

Callan leaned in, a small but powerful flashlight illuminating all the way to the back of each shelf. “I can’t see it.” He knelt down, bringing his face up close to each one, nudging items aside with the metal bar from before. “How big was it again?”

“Six inches by four by two,” Dad recited automatically. “Bright yellow. Reflective stickers all over it. It should be lighting up the inside of that locker like a disco ball.”

“Wait a second.” Gainsford looked at the remote, showing a steady bearing toward the locker. “Turn that thing sideways.”

“What, like this?” I brought it around ninety degrees, to point at her. The needle still pointed at the locker.

“No, no, give it to me.” She snapped her fingers and gestured.

I handed it over willingly enough. “What have you thought of?”

“This.” She pointed it at the locker then rotated her wrist so the remote was on its side. The needle angled upward slightly, so she lifted it until it was level with the top, largest, shelf space. Also, mainly empty. A few small items, deodorant and other toiletries. Certainly nothing big enough to conceal the Decoy.

“I still can’t see it,” I said doubtfully. Is it invisible somehow?

“Me neither.” She turned the remote around. “Let’s see if this gets anything.” The light clicked on, and a faint glowing rectangle sprang into existence on the back wall.

I stared at it. Six inches by four. “Do you see that?”

“I do.” She swapped ends on the remote once more. “Signal’s definitely coming from there.” A frown creased her brow. With her gloved fingers, she prodded the glowing area. Metal flexed slightly, but held strong when she pushed harder. “What’s going on here?”

“Wait, wait, what if it’s behind the locker?” I asked. “Some kind of secret hatch? She rested it against the back wall for a second which made the imprint, opened the hatch, and put it back there?” It sounded thin to me, but it was the best explanation I could think of that fit the facts.

“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I heard about something like that.” Gainsford turned to Sophia. “How about it, Hess? Want to get yourself some leniency by coming clean and opening the hatch? Because there’s no way on God’s green Earth that you set this up just for that one thing. We’re getting behind there and accessing your stash one way or another, and whatever it is, you’re going down for it. So, make it easy on yourself. Cooperate now and I’ll have my captain put in a good word with the juvey court. Reduce your sentence.”

Right then we were lucky that Sophia wasn’t some sort of laser-vision cape because if she was, we would’ve been dead on the instant. She gave me and Dad a searing glare, then turned to Gainsford. “Need to talk to you, privately,” she said. “You and me. Nobody else.”

“What about?” Gainsford raised her eyebrows.

“What’s behind that locker. Trust me, you want to hear what I have to say before you open this can of fucking worms.” Sophia tilted her head, indicating a spot a ways down the corridor.

Gainsford looked at her, then at the locker. “Figure out how to get it off the wall, but don’t actually do it. I’ll be back in a moment.”

She handed me the remote back, and I watched as she headed off down the corridor with Sophia. Peterson also kept an eye on her. I noticed his firearm was still in his hand, aimed at the ground rather than holstered or pointing downrange. His finger was outside the trigger guard, but that could change in an instant.

“What do you think that’s about?” asked Dad quietly.

“Not a clue,” I responded just as softly. “Some sort of bullshit story about how I’m always bullying Emma or something, I bet.”

“From what I’ve seen so far, I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised.” I looked around to keep from staring at Sophia and Sergeant Gainsford—now would be a great time to know how to read lips—and spotted movement at the other end of the corridor. Very familiar looking red hair, even. Emma. “Shit.”

“What?” Dad looked up the corridor as well, but Emma had ducked back around the corner. “I don’t see anything.”

“I’m pretty sure I just saw Emma,” I said. “I’m going to go see what she’s up to.”

“We’re going to see,” he corrected me. “There’s no way I’m letting you wander off on your own.”

I didn’t argue with him, and we headed up the corridor. As we got close to the corner, I heard Emma’s voice in an intense whisper. “Dad, shut up and listen! There are cops at Winslow, and it looks like someone’s trying to frame Sophia for something! You need to call the PRT and—”

PRT? What the fuck? This was getting weirder by the second.

Just then, Emma stuck her head around the corner, more or less right in front of us. She let out a little shriek and nearly dropped the phone; in the smoothest move I ever saw, Dad reached out and plucked it out of her hand.

“Alan?” he said conversationally. “Yeah, hi, it’s Danny. Yeah, I’m at Winslow with Taylor. Yeah, we called the cops on Sophia because she helped Emma and that friend of hers? Madison? Yeah, her. Well, they ganged up on Taylor and beat her up because she had the absolute gall to bring a recording device to school because people were bullying her. I mean, how unfair is that? It’s like she doesn’t actually want them to bully her or something.”

Emma made a grab for the phone at this point, but his arms were about a mile longer than hers and he fended her off easily.

“So hey, I couldn’t help but overhear Emma telling you to call the PRT about Sophia. What I’m curious about is why. What possible interest could the PRT have in an ordinary high school student? Actually, I’ll tell you what. I’m just going to go back down the corridor to where the nice officers are investigating Sophia’s locker, and I’ll give the phone to one of them, so you can explain to them why Emma was trying to use you and the PRT to circumvent their investigation. That okay with you? Excellent.”

He held the phone up over his head where Emma had zero chance of reaching it, and started back down toward the police officers. Faintly, I could hear the tinny sounds of Alan Barnes babbling questions, but Dad wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. Farther down, I saw Sergeant Gainsford returning with Sophia, her brow furrowed with some kind of problem. From what I’d just heard, I thought I could make an educated guess, but I had another fish to fry first. Emma was still making futile jumps to grab her phone, and I stepped up alongside her. As she held her hands up, I shone the UV light on them. They glowed brightly, of course.

“What was that?” she yelped. “What did you do?”

“UV light,” I explained cheerfully. “That thing you stole from me? Coated in UV dye. It’s gonna take a couple of days to wear off. The inside of my bag’s gonna be glowing like that forever. Proves you helped steal it. I bet Madison’s hands are the same as yours.”

She stared at me, then at her hands, then shoved them under her armpits. “You can’t shine that at me without my permission!” she declared. “That’s illegal search and seizure!”

“No, actually, it isn’t,” Sergeant Gainsford corrected her as we got back to the group. She nodded at Emma’s hands. “Got the dye on them?”

“She could help planes land at the airport,” I confirmed.

“So, introductions,” Dad observed. “This phone belongs to Emma Barnes, this young lady. Looks like she sneaked out of class to come see what was happening. Then she called her father, Alan Barnes, and told him to contact the PRT about something. Does anyone want to talk to him about that?”

“Absolutely.” Gainsford took the phone and held it to her ear. “Good afternoon. Sergeant Gainsford, Brockton Bay Police Department. Am I talking to Alan Barnes? Oh, good. If you could just help me clear some things up …” She wandered away, still talking.

I had to admit, this was getting to be a lot more exciting than I’d expected. Sophia was glaring at me—well, that part was quite familiar, to the point that I could look back at her without much in the way of worry. It gave me time to think.

Sophia was athletic as hell. The star of the Winslow track team, she was a minor celebrity within Winslow. It didn’t hurt that she was also friends with Emma and Madison, the most popular girls in my class (and who held a certain amount of influence with the freshmen as well). She was also a sadistic bully who enjoyed inflicting pain, and looked at me with a level of disdain that I had trouble understanding. It wasn’t like I’d ever done anything to her.

So was the situation what I thought it was, or was I totally on the wrong path? If I was right …

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be right.

“What are you looking at, twerp?” she snapped. “Take a photo, it’ll last longer.”

“Huh,” said Callan. “That’s how.”

“What’s how?” asked Peterson.

“The bolts holding the locker to the wall. Someone unscrewed the nuts then screwed them back on. The paint on them’s all scuffed. I figure I can get this off pretty easy with the right socket set.”

“I got a multitool with a crescent wrench on it,” Peterson offered.

“You really don’t want to do that,” Sophia warned. She nodded toward where Sergeant Gainsford was still talking on Emma’s phone. “You watch. She’ll come back and tell you to leave it all alone.”

“It’s really not on you to make that call, miss,” Callan said bluntly. He held out his hand and Peterson slapped a frankly impressive multitool into it. “Yeah, this’ll definitely do the job.”

“Whatever this is about,” Emma said, “Taylor’s lying. She always lies about stuff, trying to get me or Sophia or Madison into trouble.”

“Well, so far, miss, everything she’s said has panned out.” Callan loomed over Emma and she shrank back. “I’ve got to ask, why are you out of class right now?”

Emma’s mouth worked as she tried to generate what was likely to be a phenomenal lie, but some level of self-preservation kicked in, possibly because she didn’t know for a fact what I’d told the police. Or, likely more important, what Sophia had told them. Truly, it was an unfair world when she had no idea what lies she should tell next. I almost felt sorry for her.

Well, almost.

Just as I was about to say something, Dad nudged me and shook his head. A moment later I got it; Officer Callan knew damn well what was going on but was trying to get her to admit it herself. Belatedly, Emma seemed to realise this, and shook her head. “My Dad says I shouldn’t talk to police when he’s not there.”

“It’s a simple question, Miss Barnes.” Callan had a fairly good fatherly tone of voice. “You’re supposed to be in class. Why aren’t you?” He raised his eyebrows. “You do know that interfering in a police investigation is a crime, right?”

“I-I needed to go to the bathroom,” she blurted. “Then I heard voices, so I came to see what was happening.”

“Hmm.” He looked at her and then at the locker. “Do you know Miss Hess, here?”

The two girls glanced at each other, then at Callan. Finally, Emma looked at Officer Peterson. “Can you make him put his gun away? He’s making me feel nervous, holding it like that.”

Callan’s mouth twitched. We could both see the obvious power play for what it was, but he nodded to Peterson anyway. The pistol went back into its holster. “Answer the question, please. Do you two girls know each other? Are you friends?”

Cautiously, Emma nodded. If she’d tried any other tack, I would’ve called her a liar to her face. More to the point, Sophia was right there. “We’re friends, yes.”

“Good, good.” He made a note in the pad he was holding. “So, do you have any idea why she might have hollowed out a space behind her locker, and how to get into it?”

“She hasn’t got any space hollowed out behind her locker!” Emma’s tone was strong and confident, and if I hadn’t seen the locator signal myself, I would’ve believed her. “Why do you think that? Did Taylor tell you? She’s always lying about us, trying to get us in trouble.”

Once again, I wanted to speak, to rebut her, but Dad nudged me and I stayed silent. Emma hadn’t dug her own grave yet, but she was definitely playing with the shovel.

“Ah, whose phone was this again?” asked Sergeant Gainsford, rejoining the group. “Mr Hebert, didn’t you say it belonged to Miss Barnes?”

Dad nodded. “I did, yes.”

“He stole it!” Emma exclaimed, finally spotting a way to get us in trouble. “I was talking to my dad and he stole it!”

“And promptly handed it over to me,” Sergeant Gainsford reminded her.

“But theft is still a crime!” Emma was on a roll now. “I want you to arrest him for that!”

Sergeant Gainsford clearly restrained herself from sighing. “Miss Barnes, theft is the act of taking something with the express intent of permanently depriving the owner of its use. He handed it straight to me, identifying it as yours. It is now back in your possession. You can have him charged with theft, but it wouldn’t even make it to court. Now, you’re absolutely certain you have no knowledge of any empty space behind your friend Sophia’s locker?”

“If Taylor says there’s an empty space behind Sophia’s locker, then Taylor’s lying,” Emma said boldly, but avoided Dad’s eye as she spoke. I was reluctantly impressed; faced with authority figures as well as my father, she was setting her course and sticking to it. It was a given that she would no longer be able to pretend to her parents that she was still friends with me, and she was owning that.

For Dad’s part, the look on his face showed that he was finally starting to assimilate the new truth in his life, that Emma had chosen to reject me altogether in favour of Sophia. From the tic in his jaw, I could see that he was doing his best to hold his anger in now that he was incontrovertibly faced with it, but it can’t have been easy. Emma and I had been best friends for a good twelve years, and then she’d chosen to throw it all away for no reason either of us could see.

Sergeant Gainsford made a note on her own pad, then turned to Sophia. “Principal Blackwell knows?” She didn’t say what it was that Blackwell was supposed to know.

“Yeah, she knows.” Sophia didn’t ask.

“I see. Well, we’re still going to look.” Gainsford turned to Callan. “Undo the nuts and help me move the locker.”

“But you can’t!” For the first time, I saw actual alarm on Sophia’s face. “At least wait for the—”  She paused and leaned in close. We all heard her whisper anyway. “For the PRT.”

“The PRT has no jurisdiction over a simple case of theft, and I’m sure Principal Blackwell is interested in finding out exactly what is being stashed behind one of her lockers,” Sergeant Gainsford said firmly. She raised her eyebrows. “Unless you’re trying to tell me a cape’s involved? A supervillain?”

By now, I was definitely sure a cape was involved. Unless I was totally barking up the wrong tree, in the wrong forest even, Sophia was a cape, and there was something behind her locker that would out her. Which cape she was, that was more of a puzzler. I couldn’t see her as a hero, and the largest villain gang in Brockton Bay consisted of white supremacist neo-Nazis, so she wasn’t Rune or Purity.

(Though it would’ve been hilarious for them to find out after all this time that Purity was actually black, I’m not gonna lie).

I knew she couldn’t be a member of the Merchants, mainly because she was a good athlete. That sort of thing doesn’t mix well with recreational drug use.

(Maybe she should’ve started. It might have mellowed her out).

The only other gang I could think of was the ABB. I was about to nix them too, given that all of the gang’s cape members were male, but then I had a second thought. Inago was Inago. She couldn’t pass for him without Hollywood levels of makeup (also, she had both arms). But Oni Lee … nobody had ever seen his face, had they? What if he wasn’t Asian behind that mask? What if he wasn’t even male behind it? She was athletic, he was athletic. She was a vindictive bitch, he was a teleporting serial suicide bomber.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Though what didn’t make sense was why Sophia was insisting that the PRT be present. Maybe she wanted to surrender to them? I didn’t get it.

While Sophia tried to argue with Gainsford and Blackwell looked on with what seemed to be paralysed apathy, Officer Callan worked away on the nuts holding the locker to the wall. Eventually, he finished the last one and stood up, dusting himself off.

That was about the time Alan Barnes came striding in, accompanied by a contingent of PRT troopers and none other than Miss Militia. Her weapon of the moment happened to be an elaborate compound bow, which she held with competent ease.

(Her action figures sold more weapon accessories than any Tinker in the Protectorate. Just saying).

I wondered where Armsmaster was. His absence suggested to me that whatever plan he’d cooked up, he hadn’t cleared it with his superiors, so he wasn’t automatically assigned to the case. And a call regarding Sophia Hess might not have pinged his radar, where a call about an enraged wyvern destroying the school would have.

“Okay, what’s going on here?” asked Miss Militia, singling out Sergeant Gainsford by way of some kind of officer radar.

“She—” began Sophia.

Miss Militia waved her away. “Miss, you will have to wait until I have spoken to the police officer on site.” Leaving Sophia fuming, she walked a few steps away and they had a quiet conversation. In the meantime, the four PRT troopers (two holding foam sprayers) merely stood there and loomed at us. They were fairly effective at it. Callan and Peterson tried to look professional in return, in a kind of silent dick-measuring contest. They were outclassed, but they did their best anyway.

I glanced at Dad and he shrugged. Neither of us had any idea how this would turn out, but it was getting more and more complicated by the second. And I still had no idea who Sophia was as a cape, unless she really was Oni Lee. Baggy clothes were easy to hide a gender identity under, after all.

“Danny.” Alan Barnes didn’t look happy.

“Alan.” Dad looked even less so.

“What’s going on? Why is Taylor accusing Emma of bullying her?”

Dad gave him a level stare. “Maybe because she is.”

Mr Barnes shook his head. “I have trouble believing that.”

“Believe what you want.” Dad turned his back on his old friend.

“Well, then.” Miss Militia had returned. “We have a case of theft, and the stolen item traced to this locker. Specifically, a space in the wall behind this locker.” She looked at Sophia. “I understand this locker belongs to you, miss?”

Sophia nodded. It wasn’t like she could deny it now. “Yeah, but I need to talk to you.”

Miss Militia exhaled through her nose, as if to say, ‘You’re not doing your secret identity any favours,’ but she nodded. “We can talk.”

So then they went and had a quiet chat. Or rather, Miss Militia was quiet, while Sophia became more and more animated. She kept her voice down, though I heard the occasional word. Nothing that made sense, unfortunately.

Finally, I’d had enough. All this dancing around was getting up my nose. “Seriously?” I asked out loud. “Is everyone going to just keep ignoring the elephant in the room? Is that what we’re going to do?”

Everyone looked at me. Dad nudged me again, but I ignored him. The wyvern was getting more and more pissed off, and I got the impression that if I didn’t do something, it would. Miss Militia’s expression was hard to read from just her eyes, but Sophia’s was outright rage. The wyvern had her beat, though.

“Taylor, I think—” began Mr Barnes.

“No!” I snapped. “It’s past time for thinking! Thinking got us into this. Me thinking that Emma might still be my friend again someday. Emma thinking that she can get away with anything. Sophia thinking that she can hide whatever’s behind that damn locker. Everyone thinking that they’re the only one who knows Sophia’s a cape. We all know it. Just admit it. Now can someone move the locker so we can prove that Sophia stole my property? That way, we can arrest her and Emma and Madison, and I can get on with my goddamn day.”

Silence fell after my little outburst. Everyone looked uncomfortably at each other. Then Sergeant Gainsford pointed at the locker. “Callan, Peterson. Move the damn locker.”

“Sergeant, there’s still—” began Miss Militia.

“We’ll all sign NDAs,” Gainsford interrupted. “We’ve wasted far too much time catering to the wishes and desires of a teenage delinquent who may or may not be a member of the Wards for me to give a shit anymore. Move the damn locker.”

“Sergeant,” responded Callan, and he and Peterson took hold of the shelves. A bit at a time, they edged the metal box out from between the lockers on either side.

At the same time, I was re-evaluating my entire thought process. Sophia wasn’t Oni Lee. She was a Ward. Holy shit, it all made sense now. This was why she wanted the PRT in on it, to cover up for her. How long had she been a hero? Which one was she? Frantically, I tried to go through the roster in my mind, but I kept hitting blanks. Vista? No, she was too young, and too white. Maybe Clockblocker? Nobody could see his face, after all. No, Sophia was too, uh, feminine to fit into that costume. Dammit, who else is in the Wards?

Finally, the locker scraped free and was pulled to one side, and I leaned over to look. Sophia tried to dart into the space just revealed, but Miss Militia snagged her shoulder. And then I saw it. Them, rather. There was indeed a set of crude shelves hacked out of the wall. On the top one sat the Decoy. It had suffered some damage; there were chips in the industrial plastic, and someone had tried to scrape the stickers off, but enough of them remained to be still readable.

But it was the lower shelves that caught my attention. A bundled piece of dark cloth, with a black-painted metal hockey mask. And a pair of hand-crossbows, with a bunch of very sharp-looking arrows.

“Well, fuck,” I said, as the name finally popped into my head.

Shadow Stalker. Sophia Hess is goddamn Shadow Stalker.

It explained so very much.

Part 17