But still, nothing happened. The day went on being sunny and peaceful. The broken-down buildings left over from Aftershock's rampage were the only hint that something was amiss.

Nobody had noticed Ladybug's absence yet. I wondered vaguely if anyone had noticed Marinette's. Would her parents be worried? Would Alya be waiting for her outside the school, leaving impatient voice-mails? Would Nino be waiting for me? Would the two of them be cooking up stories about how we'd probably skipped school together for a romantic tryst?

I wished they were right. I wished Alya and Nino were in charge of the narrative of the world.

I met Rena Rouge, Carapace and Queen Bee on the roof of an office-block overlooking the Pont Neuf. It was bright, glaring noon by then. There were fluffy white clouds in the sky. There was even birdsong. It felt like such an insult—such a grotesque parody of normality—like a chicken that keeps on running around after its head's been cut off.

"Ladybug is missing," I told them.

This didn't create the stir I'd been expecting. Rena Rouge even smiled.

"Well, isn't she always missing until we need her? No-one knows where she goes in between the emergencies, do they?"

"Missing in action," I corrected myself. "Possibly captured. By Hawkmoth."

I went on, trying to get the worst over and done with—although there was so much 'worst', I didn't see how we'd ever be done with it. "And a girl who was trying to help her," I said. "Marinette Dupain-Cheng."

There was the stir I'd been expecting earlier—a prickle of unease, not even loud enough to be a mutter. It was like a soft, collective drawing of breath. I wondered if any of them knew. No, they couldn't know. But if Ladybug had chosen them, perhaps they were people she knew in real life. I tried my hardest to ignore that thought. I didn't want to recognize them. I didn't want to stumble across something that might make this whole, hellish situation worse.

"Ladybug will protect her," said Rena.

I forced myself to go on talking. Saying these things was like grinding my teeth against granite, but there was nothing else to be done.

"She might be—they might both be—very injured. Marinette had a broken leg when I left her."

"You left her?" said Carapace.

I took half a step forwards, forgetting my determined calm, but Chloe was saying something. Chloe saved me in a weird way, because she took all of my anger and disgust, and re-focused it on someone else.

"Ugh," she said, examining her nails. "Marinette was probably just faking a broken leg to get attention."

I tried to run this remark through my Chloe-filter--I tried to imagine that she was really concerned, deep down, and it was just coming out as thoughtlessness--but I didn't have the energy.

"Go home," I said. "I don't need you."

The dismay that shot across her face might have made me laugh, in happier times.

"What? Yes, you do." She got a hold of herself, and went on, in a sniffy voice, "Everyone knows that Ladybug is the brains of your operation. If you're trying to come up with a plan on your own, you're going to need all the help you can get."

"I already have a plan," I said. "There's no place in it for a superhero who doesn't want to rescue the akuma-victim."

"I didn't say I didn't want to rescue her," Chloe retorted.

"What are you saying? It's not clear."

She made a sound of deep disgust. "Ladybug would understand me."

I wanted to laugh, but I didn't have the energy for that either. It all made sense to me now, in that toppling-dominoes kind of way--why Ladybug had always seemed less-than-thrilled with Chloe's adulation, why it had been such a struggle to listen to her, trust her, give her any credit.

But she had done it anyway. She had promoted her childhood tormentor for no other reason than because she showed promise, and she hadn't said a word about it. Not to me, anyway. There was a whole story I hadn't seen, full of tiny-but-heroic sacrifices that nobody had given her credit for.

I hated it. I'm normally a pretty laid-back guy. I'm normally happy to let other people keep their own secrets. But this--when I could have been helping her, making it bearable, making her happy--this pissed me off like nothing has before or since.

"Fine," I said, turning my back abruptly so that Chloe couldn't see my face. "If you can take orders and contain your resentment for Marinette, you can tag along. But I know where you live, Chloe Bourgeois, and if you let us down, I'm going to shred every item in your wardrobe with my claws, starting with that Gucci cardigan you love so much."

Behind me, I heard Chloe gasp at the enormity of this threat. "You're worse than Hawkmoth," she said.

For no reason I could fathom, Master Fu's words suddenly flashed through my head: 'Your emotional signatures are almost indistinguishable now.'

Had I become just like Hawkmoth? I couldn't seem to see the good side of Chloe anymore, but that felt like abandoning my stupidity rather than abandoning my principles. I wouldn't--I knew I wouldn't--sacrifice other people to get Ladybug back.

But I had to get her back.

"So what do we do now?" said Rena.

I took a deep breath and shut my eyes. More grinding out granite. I thought to myself, half-hysterically, that it would be a relief when the action finally came. But I had no idea.

"Hawkmoth will akumatize Marinette or Ladybug," I said, "and use them against us."

"But..." Rena said this very slowly, as if she was dreading my response. "You said they were injured..."

I shut my eyes again. "He can still manipulate them. He just needs them to be alive. He doesn't even need them to be conscious."

"That's sick!"

"Yes," I said, in a hollow voice. I wanted to tell her that it was always sick, every time—turning people into supervillainous allegories of their own worst feelings, getting inside their heads and bribing them, twitching their nerves like puppet strings. It had never not been sick. It had just never been someone I loved so much before.

"We have Ladybug's Miraculous," I went on, "but her Kwami was injured when she was. She's not well enough to transform. That means we can't capture the akuma to free Marinette. Or Ladybug."

"So what then?" said Carapace. "How are we going to stop them?"

"We need time. Ladybug's Kwami might be ready to transform in a few hours—maybe a few days. We need to keep the akuma-victim busy and minimize civilian casualties."

"For a few days?" said Rena.

I forced a smile. Cat Noir's sunshine smile. "Trust me, it won't really be days. I just have to tell you the worst-case scenarios, so that we're all prepared. But it wouldn't be a bad idea for us to pace ourselves. Try not to use your power if you can avoid it. If you can't avoid it, find someone else to cover for you while your Kwami recharges, and get back to work as soon as possible."

Rena held up a hand for silence--and suddenly, that was all there was. A thousand little background sounds that I hadn't even noticed while they'd been going on were suddenly absent. There was no birdsong, no traffic, no distant laughter. I looked out over the edge of the building and, where there should have been a busy city street, there was just cloud. It was as though our rooftop had risen to a height of several thousand feet without any of us noticing.

"This is it, right?" said Rena. "This has to be him. Or--" her mouth twisted, as though she was in pain "--her?"

"I'll go down and check," said Chloe, but I caught her shoulder, looking at the carpet of cloud beneath us. It was dark, and tendrils of it were snaking upwards like smoke. I thought of the solid mass of dark-winged butterflies I had seen on my first day as Cat Noir--and how brazenly Ladybug had leapt right into them.

"It will be like the akumas," I said. "You have to stay positive, don't give in to negative thoughts. Always remember that there's a way out."

If Plagg had been there, he would have told me to heed my own advice. As it was, I felt that curious shiver pass across my skin, as though he was squirming.

"Leave the akuma-victim to me," I said. "If it's Ladybug, I know her best. And if it's Marinette--well, maybe she'll talk to me. I've saved her life eight times by now."

Rena made a small, sceptical noise in the back of her throat. I noticed that she was fidgeting, twisting her fingers anxiously, but I looked away and tried to think about something else, because I'd had enough sudden realizations to last me a lifetime.

"You guys take care of the civilians," I said. "The akuma-victim will have done something to them, I don't know what. They'll probably try to attack you. Or each other."

"And all this is just playing for time?" Rena demanded. "Until Ladybug's kwami recovers? There's no way we can--"

"Rena, you're in charge if I die," I said, giving her my sunshine smile. "Until I die, do as I say."