Chapter Text
One Week Ago
Her life was over. Everything had gone wrong. She had reached too high, too far, too fast, and now her empire was about to crumble around her. Those were the only thoughts running through Killer Bee’s mind as she raced away from the apartment building where she and Nadine had been living – where the Heroes of Paris had found them. The string of her broken top dangled uselessly from her finger; with a disgusted scoff, she ripped it off and threw it behind her onto the roof, leaping from that building to the next. She stumbled on landing and waved her arms wildly to regain her balance before running pell-mell across the apartment building roof and letting her momentum carry her over the gap between it the next building. Taking a quick glance behind her, she scanned the horizon for any sign of pursuit. Taureau Dechaine, Prequinateur, Multiplice… any one of them might be able to catch up to her since she didn’t have her top. She gritted her teeth, wheezing through the stitch in her side from at least three kilometers of constant running. The rooftops behind her remained clear, and none of those stupid drones were visible anywhere in the area. Her hair comb let out a whining beep as she threw herself across to the next rooftop – she only had a minute to find somewhere safe. Gritting her teeth, she dropped off the roof between the two buildings and pushed off the one wall toward the other, jumping from wall to wall down toward the ground level. A sound reached her from the direction of the street, and she turned toward it, just as her shin smacked against the fire escape with a dull ringing clang. Killer Bee hissed in pain, nearly missed grabbing onto the fire escape, and finally released it and dropped the final floor to land in the alley, her stinging leg buckling as she landed. With a yelp, she stumbled and caught herself against the wall on one side of the alley, just as her transformation faded and Pollen emerged from the miraculous.
Letting out an angry shriek, Lila punched the wall next to her so hard she saw stars from the pain in her hand. Blood burst from the lacerations to her knuckles, leaving traces behind on the brickwork. “Fucking damnit!” She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to hold in the tears that sprang unbidden to her eyes. Pollen watched her impassively, hovering just above her head without saying a word. Lila turned to glare at the Kwami. “Don’t you have anything to say, pest?” she snarled.
Pollen pursed her lips, folding her arms. “You do not have many options left, Lila,” she told her curtly. “You can continue to run and wait for the Heroes of Paris to catch up to you. Or you can return me to my previous holder and beg for mercy. After what you did tonight – after what you attempted to do to your supposed ‘friend’ – those are the only options you have left.”
“I’m sorry I asked,” Lila muttered, shaking her stinging hand and gritting her teeth, staring down at the filth-covered alley.
“You asked what I had to say after tonight,” Pollen pointed out, raising an eyebrow. “This is the situation you have created for yourself.”
“Situation I created?” Lila scoffed. “I didn’t tell Nadine to get caught! She’s the one who got herself surrounded – Multiplice and Prequinateur would never have let her get away!” She shook her head irritably.
“You invited her into you schemes,” Pollen reminded her. “You let her think that you were a hero and manipulated her into helping you.”
“I gave her nothing more than what she wanted,” Lila retorted. “And then when things started getting bad, I kept her out of prison.”
“I suppose that killing her would have kept her out of prison…”
Lila scoffed. “Well what else was I supposed to do?” she shot back. “The stupid heroes had Nadine already! She’s so weak, she’ll tell them everything – that’s not even a question. All I could do was stop her from talking… and I couldn’t even do that.” Lila clenched and unclenched her fists helplessly. Drawing her fist back, she started to punch the wall again, only to think better of it at the last minute
“And still you tried to murder your ‘friend’.”
“Save the condescension,” Lila ordered the Kwami. “I don’t want to hear anything more out of you.” She gritted her teeth, looking up and down the alley, her ears tuned for any sign of pursuit. “There’s no going back there,” she muttered. “And once the stupid Heroes of Paris break Nadine, they’ll go after my mother next.” She sighed heavily. “How did they even find us tonight?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? It should have been impossible to find their apartment! She hadn’t told anyone where they lived – other than Tanja, but she wouldn’t have had any reason to turn them in, not if she ever wanted to see the Deaconess again. And Nadine couldn’t have told anyone where they were – she had been too scared of prison to say or do anything to give them up. She looked down at her phone: no messages. Frowning, she opened the tracking app; the phones were still in place in the decoy apartment – they hadn’t been discovered that way. But then how – “Geber.” Lila’s stomach dropped, and she turned around, leaning back and smacking the back of her head against the wall. She’d only seen his ability in action a handful of times, but it had disrupted her plans too often for her liking. “Fucking Heroes of Paris,” she grumbled. But how could he have pinpointed her apartment?
She sighed heavily, squeezing her eyes shut. Was that really important at the moment? Opening her eyes, she looked around sullenly and shook her head. She was stuck here, in this filthy back alley, with nothing but her purse and miraculous. Her apartment was gone, the decoy apartment wasn’t an option, she couldn’t go to her mother… She needed to get somewhere safe, and fast. Every minute she wasted was another minute that the Heroes of Paris could send out their stupid drones and patrols and try to find her. Getting out of the city now – tonight – would be the best thing to do… but where would she go? What would she do? How would she do it? She couldn’t just go on the run and keep on running for the rest of her life…
Ripping her purse open, she grimaced, pulling out her wallet, a tube of lip gloss, and a compact mirror. This wasn’t enough to do anything. She had a couple credit cards in her wallet… but no actual money. But the moment the Heroes of Paris learned her identity, they would almost certainly trace at least one of her cards – using it would almost be a death sentence. She needed money. But she couldn’t go to an ATM – they would track that if she used her card.
Pollen opened her mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out. Folding her arms in a huff, the Kwami descended into the purse and snatched one of the honey-coated crackers within, stuffing most of it into her mouth.
Lila furrowed her brows in thought, trying to still her racing heart and focus. This wasn’t a time to act without a plan. “I need resources – money, clothes. And I need people. And I need somewhere to hide.” She drew in a deep breath and released it. Slowly, she nodded to herself. Whatever else had gone wrong tonight, she was still Lila Rossi. She could figure this out. This didn’t have to be the end – she might rebound from this better than ever, if she played her cards right. She had been planning against just this scenario for months, though she had hoped never to need it. Her eyes widened. She still had one trump card left to play – she wouldn’t need the safehouse for long, not if she could find her last trump card in time. But she couldn’t do anything if she just stayed here. Pulling out her phone, she tapped a few buttons. Finally, she transformed and raced out of the alley, sticking to the shadows on the street level and moving roughly north.
When she had first learned about the café with the small apartment on the second floor, she had initially dismissed it without a second thought: who would want to live somewhere like that? So similar to where that bitch lived. It was small and cramped, with narrow stairs and doors, and it would absolutely smell like sugar all the time. All the grease and oil in the air would have to be terrible for the pores.
But…
It wasn’t far from the train station… and beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Lila’s contacts in the city had told her about the abandoned café months ago, when she had called ahead on her way back from Tarascon. As far as anyone knew, the original occupants were gone and the bakery itself was still ostensibly on the market, though the family would refuse to sell. It hadn’t been difficult for her to take it over and set it up as a safehouse, though the real work could only happen under the cover of night. She had left the ground floor as-is, was still a broken-down mess, the same as it had been after the looters and vandals had gotten through with it. But upstairs, Lila had renovated the entire apartment in preparation for just such an occasion, with darkened windows, beds, nonperishable food and clothing… enough to last for at least a couple weeks in an emergency. And the best part of all? The only way into the safehouse was through the roof.
When Killer Bee finally let herself into the safehouse through the roof entrance twenty-five minutes later, after tracing a circuitous route through the city in order to throw off any pursuit, she found two people looking back at her with a mix of annoyance, surprise, and confusion on their faces. Without acknowledging them, Killer Bee dropped a duffel bag on the cot set into one corner of the living room and flopped down next to it, detransforming with a quiet murmur and closing her eyes to sleep.
A throat cleared. “What the hell is going on?” demanded Tanja.
Reluctantly, Lila opened her eyes and glanced up to find Tanja standing on the other side of the room, her arms folded and eyes narrowed. Malorie sat on one of the old wooden chairs at the dining table to one side. Lila’s mouth set in a thin line. “The Heroes of Paris captured Nadine.”
Malorie gasped, her eyes bugging out. “W–what!?”
Tanja’s nostrils flared. “Congratulations. Now you know what it feels like to lose a friend because one of your dumb plans failed!”
Lila glared at her, her lip curling into a snarl. “Don’t blame this on me! Do you not realize what this means?” she demanded sourly. “They’re going to know who I am! They’re going to come after all of us!”
“They’re going to come after you,” Tanja corrected her curtly, poking a finger at Lila’s chest and pushing away from the wall. “You. You made this bed. You get to deal with it. I came out here in the middle of the night because you said it was an emergency, but no more. I’m done.”
Lila surged to her feet, her hand dropping into her purse and feeling for the grip of her energy pistol. “You’re done when I say you’re done. I’ve already had one bitch ditch me tonight; I’m not about to let another!”
“Yeah?” Tanja scoffed derisively. “Are you going to try and stop me?”
Lila clenched her jaw, her eyes narrowing. “Nadine can out you, too! And that would mean the end of Cerna, the end of you living in Paris… the end of ever getting Marta back out of that prison.”
“I. Don’t. Care.” Tanja stalked across the room and grabbed the ladder leading up to the roof, holding out her middle finger to Lila. “That’s your problem, not mine.”
Lila pulled out her pistol and pointed it at Tanja. Malorie gasped, squeezing herself back into her seat. Tanja’s eyes flashed, and she transformed before Lila could pull the trigger, drawing her battleaxe the moment it appeared. Lila let out a low growl. “If you even think about betraying me,” she seethed, her finger tightening on the trigger, “they will never find your body.”
“That’s your problem,” Cerna informed her evenly. “I’m leaving.” With that, she clambered up onto the roof and leapt away.
“Stupid bitch,” Lila growled to herself, spitting after her. Malorie drew in a sharp breath, and Lilia glared over at her. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking about leaving, too,” she growled. “Because Nadine knows who you are, too, and unless you want a second member of your family in jail, you will stay right here.”
Malorie gasped, looking back and forth between Lila and the roof hatch, but she finally held her hands up in a placating gesture. “N–no,” Malorie stuttered. “B–but… what are we going to do?” she whispered. “What’s going to happen now?”
Lila gritted her teeth. “We don’t need her. We’ll figure out our own way out of this. But we’re going to need a big distraction…”