★彡[ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ʜᴀꜱ ʙᴇᴇɴ ᴇᴅɪᴛᴇᴅ]彡★

Silent, silent, silent. Think quiet thoughts. If Celine so much as breathed too loudly she would be discovered. Stealing chemicals from ogre rebels was no easy feat.

This was an underground lab. She turned up her sound-enhancing earpiece, trying to catch some of the discussion that she couldn't really hear from her position behind the boiler. It was not so dark that she was totally blind but certainly dark enough that it was difficult to make out the muscled figures lumbering around the place. Her eyes locked on a crate labeled EXPERIMENTAL—HANDLE WITH CARE. It was written in elven runes, which pretty effectively confirmed that this was Neverseen territory, but that was a fact she already knew.

A young woman, slightly taller than average with her head almost completely concealed by a hood, was walking around snapping at the ogres—not with her voice but literally snapping with her fingers. For whatever reason they followed exactly what she directed them to do, although they didn't look particularly happy about it. She walked with a very slight, almost unnoticeable limp, and Celine made a mental note of that weakness in case this girl needed to be incapacitated.

How was she supposed to grab anything when there were people smack in the middle of the lab literally working with the chemicals she was here to collect? She scanned the area for anything she could hide behind or underneath, really wishing that she were a Vanisher or a Polyglot at the very least—she didn't speak much Ogreish and had basically no idea what they were saying. She caught a few words: "gas", "forbidden", "not ready". The rest sounded like gruffly muttered gibberish.

Celine started to move in the shadows when the ogres were all turned away from her. She stepped over boxes and pipes extending from the wall, wondering if maybe she could climb one and... levitate a crate up to the ceiling? That wouldn't do her much good if she was caught before she could get out. She would have to resort to the explosives Aerin had given her before she left, which would be fine as long as she got her timing right and didn't end up having to go hand-to-hand with the hooded girl.

If I were you, I would leave while you still can.

Celine froze, glancing at the girl, but she wasn't even looking in her general direction. Whose voice was in her head?

I know what you're here for. Trust me, this stuff isn't worth your time. It's not even ready to show Vespera yet.

It had to be that girl. It was a girl's voice. Slowly, Celine began to walk across the wall, her back pressed against it. Finally, the hooded girl turned to her, her face mostly concealed by darkness but her eyes undeniably watching her. That was crazy. The ogres couldn't see her. How could the elf?

There was something sickeningly familiar about her eyes. Celine wasn't even near her and she could see that they sparkled like freshly cut diamonds, a galaxy-like indigo sort of color. It reminded her so much of—

Get out or I'll have to make you.

Celine didn't know what to do. She would just have to hold her own against the ogres. She did a quick head count. Four.

She crept up on the first one, sliding a knife from her sleeve. She made eye contact with Galaxy Girl just as she slit his throat from behind. The other ogres quickly realized what was going on, and started shouting, all lunging for her at once. Her mind went into battle mode, making note of targets and their relative locations and just how to kill every one. She kicked, punched, and ducked, choosing not to focus at the moment on the fact that Galaxy Girl was just watching everything unfold with silent, amused interest. She managed to get Ogre Number Three to swerve and accidentally punch Ogre Number Two square in the jaw, sending him flying backwards. She cried out when Ogre Number Four got ahold of her silver braid and yanked. How immature.

She swore, swiveled, and then sliced at him with the knives she'd produced from her belt. Using her ability as a Guster to push him toward the wall with swirling wind, she held him down with the air around her and then jammed a blade into his heart and yanked it back out, turning her attention once more to Ogres Two and Three. That was when she remembered the explosives she had attached to her belt, and she unlatched a small disk, pressed the button in the center of it, and pressed it into Ogre Three's shoulder as she flipped over him and landed in a crouch on the ground. She quickly scrambled back to get out of the way. Before the ogres could come any closer, it detonated.

"Ugh," Celine said disgustedly, wiping off something slimy that had splattered onto her cheek. "Ogre guts. Nasty stuff."

She heard a laugh behind her and remembered the girl. She spun.

"Well, are you gonna fight me or what?"

She shook her head. I don't get paid enough for this. I'm just an errand runner, and what do I get for my work? She pointed to a jagged scar across one eye that Celine hadn't been close enough to see before. Then she pointed to another scar stretching from her neck down to somewhere unseen beneath her tunic. And lastly she opened her mouth and pointed there, revealing that where there had once been a tongue she had a chopped stump. So yeah. Do whatever you want, just don't kill me. Celine had to admire this girl's survival instincts, and she didn't seem hostile, so she pocketed her weapons and walked over to the crate she'd been eyeing.

Celine tossed off the lid of the crate. It was devastatingly empty. She looked at Galaxy Girl again, and she just shrugged, her expression seeming to say I told you so.

There's another lab, Galaxy Girl transmitted. Hidden in the Forbidden Cities. They have what you need there.

​​*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Sophie slammed her fist on the coffee table. "You have to let me go look for Keefe. I know him best!" Her eyes were rimmed with red but her crying had shifted to anger, and she was glad. It was better to be angry; she could do something with that.

"Look at you, finally admitting it," Ro grumbled from her position against the wall. At present, Sophie's living room was the meeting spot for virtually the entire Black Swan—at least, all the members Sophie had met, plus all her bodyguards and her parents and the Vackers. Arguing with the Collective likely wasn't going to get her anywhere, but she had to do something.

Ro was incredibly bitter that Keefe had taken her out with his new ability, especially since the definition of her job was 'don't lose your charge'. Sophie's bodyguards, especially Bo, were berating her nonstop about it, which probably didn't help. If they ever did find Keefe he was dead meat.

Forkle was being horribly, frustratingly calm. "We're taking care of it. We've already sent a team out to the Forbidden Cities to track him down. It would be unwise to let your emotions get in the way of your judgment, Miss Foster."

"Believe me, the last thing we want right now is for Keefe to end up in Gisela's hands," said Tiergan. "Between the threat Keefe's enhanced ability poses and the importance he has to you, he's a high priority for us. You're going to have to exercise patience like the rest of us."

Blah, blah, blah. Their words were, far from reassuring, meaningless. Sophie wanted to jump off a cliff and rush into the void and search for him herself. But it seemed like the whole room was against her—especially Glimmer, in the corner with Tam, who was giving her a look she very much didn't like. It felt like Glimmer knew something she didn't and was looking at Sophie like she was a child throwing a fit. But then again, Glimmer had always regarded her with that patronizing stare.

She couldn't focus. She felt Biana put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"We're going to get him back, Sophie," she whispered. "I think we should trust the Black Swan on this one. We need to be here, planning and helping the Council." But even Biana looked resigned, like she didn't really believe what she was saying. Biana, Sophie knew, was just as sick and tired as she was of all the confusion and lies and reassuring empty words. Maybe there really was nothing they could do.

Sophie took a deep breath, trying to think of where Keefe could be other than the places she'd already listed for Forkle when Keefe had first run away. Was there anything she had missed?

"Miss Foster, have you tried reaching out to Mr. Sencen telepathically?"

Sophie reached up and tugged on an eyelash. She'd lost so many in the past few days she had no idea how she had any left. "That's not a real question, right? That was a joke? Do you honestly think that wasn't the first thing I did?" Her eyes started to burn and she blinked fast to stop the tears from coming. No, she remembered. Not sadness. Sadness would do nothing for her. Anger. She couldn't use her grief to fix any of this, but anger could make her powerful if she used it.

"I can't hear him at all," she said emotionlessly, forcing herself to look at Mr. Forkle. "It's like he's blocking me somehow. It's like he's gone completely. It's like... he doesn't care anymore."

Biana squeezed her hand. "He does care," she promised. "He just doesn't know how to show it." Sophie glanced at Fitz, whose fists were clenched so hard he was probably drawing blood. Now that was someone who could turn grief straight to anger. He'd been oddly silent all this time, but the fury in his eyes was enough to make everyone, even his parents, stay away from him. Dex was chewing nervously on his nails, looking like... like he was hiding something. Sophie didn't have the energy to worry about that at the moment. Tam was observing everyone else with cool stoicism, but his sister's brow was furrowed in concern. Keefe really thought that all of these people didn't care about him, that it was better if he left.

What an idiot.

"It's late," Forkle said, looking, to his credit, sympathetic. "We should all rest. We'll need it tomorrow. You have a new assignment for Team Valiant, Miss Foster."

Sophie's eyes flashed, her nails digging into her sides. But she said nothing. She would wait. She would watch. And when everyone thought she had calmed down...

She would finally let her anger take over.

*ೃ༄

Avilyn dug her fingers into the soft dirt, focusing her consciousness on finding, finding. Elves left an aura in the air around them, and the trail was faint, but she could feel it if she just—

"I feel like we're just wandering around for no reason," Adalea admitted, putting her hands on her hips and squinting at the trees surrounding them. Avilyn glanced at her, snapping back to reality.

"We aren't," she said vaguely, and brushed her fingers across the soil, rubbing the dirt between her fingers. "Keep scanning."

Adalea hmphed and clicked on her scanning device, searching for anything—signals from elven technology, a heat signature from a person, something useful. Right now it felt like they were in the middle of the woods and hadn't even found the entrance to the Neverseen hideout they'd been hoping to come across. Lyana stood suspiciously close to her, carrying a matching device. She had a bit of an issue with personal space because her unregistered ability, which everyone just called mimicking, allowed her to easily slip on someone else's ability like an article of clothing when she was near them. Sometimes the other girls joked that she was a mutant, and she really was if she thought about it too hard. It had come from some sort of chemical reaction that had happened when she'd been given experimental treatment for medical deficiencies as a child. Her parents weren't exactly too happy about the early ability.

That was how she'd ended up in the Forbidden Cities.

But none of that mattered now. She had a home and a family; just not the one she was born into. She hadn't grown up as privileged as most children in elven society, but almost every girl on the defense team had a similar story. It felt nice, at least, to not be alone.

Sunlight passed through her then as if she weren't there at all, and her entire body blinked. Adalea beside her, who had also momentarily flickered out of visibility range, glanced over and shook her head, an amused smile playing across her face. Lyana's ability didn't drain anyone of their powers, thank the stars. She just copied them and was always slightly less powerful than the person she was mimicking. It made her useful in battle since her other abilities (Beguiler and Polyglot) weren't really all that helpful.

"I dare you to climb that tree," Lyra said to Aerin, pointing to a towering oak a few meters away. Aerin laughed.

"That's so dumb. I can just levitate or conjure myself there."

Lyra waggled her eyebrows. "Watch this." She bounded over to the tree and thrust out a hand, making a sort-of-round pad out of ice, and jumped on it. She did it again and again, hopping from ice step to ice step, and gave Aerin a smug smirk, challenging her to do it.

Aerin laughed. "Okay, Jack Frost, but I can just—" She snapped her fingers, opening the void, and stepped into it, reappearing balanced on a thick branch. "Take that."

"Congrats, you're the Cheshire Cat, which isn't much better."

Avilyn brought a hand to her head. She couldn't concentrate with the other girls fooling around. "Can we just keep walking?" she said flatly.

Lyra dropped back down to the ground, dusting off her hands. "Sure thing, Wannabe Boss. But walking to where? We've found about..." She tapped her chin, pretending to think about it. "Oh yeah! Zero clues or leads!"

Avilyn shot her a glare. "We're supposed to end up at a Neverseen hideout. We'll get there eventually. I think."

"Neverseen hideouts are so ick," Adalea complained. "And he probably isn't there anyway."

"Then where do you think he is?" Avilyn asked, raising an eyebrow.

Adalea opened her mouth, and then closed it. Avilyn made a face that seemed to say Good idea. Adalea stuck her tongue out at her.

Avilyn started to head down a rocky path, and the other girls followed her, albeit reluctantly. Every so often she stopped and scanned the trees or knelt to the ground and felt the soil. Lyra made a realization.

"You can track, can't you?" she whispered as Adalea kept moving forward, frowning at her scanner and smacking it a couple of times. Avilyn tensed slightly, but her expression remained as stoic as ever. She didn't answer. Tracking was one of the lesser-known elven skills, the ability to sense the aura that elves left in the air and the ground. Hardly anyone could do it, because it was viewed as sort of useless. Who cared about weird air trails? So it was strange that Avilyn apparently knew how to do it.

Lyra stepped in front of Avilyn, facing her, and started walking backwards. "Where did you learn that?"

Avilyn shrugged carelessly. "Exilium." She used that as an excuse for far too many things considering she'd been there only briefly. There were several other defense team girls who had been schooled in Exilium, and none of them could track, so Lyra knew that was complete bull.

Fine. Keep your secrets.

"Hey, Avi!" Adalea called from up ahead. The other girls quickly caught up with her.

"What is it?"

Adalea held up a palm-sized cube with an exposed motherboard. "I found something. You know what this is?" She tossed it in the air and Avilyn caught it.

"Looks like a jacked-up Impassable," Avilyn muttered, turning it over in her hands. "Could it be Keefe's?"

"There's no way to tell. Those just make it harder to find you or something, right?"

Avilyn swallowed, glancing momentarily at Lyra. "Something like that." Great. This meant the tracking trail was gone. Either Keefe had thought of everything or she'd been tracking someone completely different all along. She pocketed it. "Let's just keep moving," she grumbled in annoyance.

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Keefe stumbled into his apartment, bloody and shaking. Exploring abandoned hideouts on his own probably hadn't been his brightest idea. He tossed the files he'd collected onto the floor—he couldn't yet afford any furniture except for the moldy old couch he'd gotten from one of the neighbors—and grabbed a plastic water bottle from the pack of them that rested in the corner. It tasted nothing like Youth and he still hadn't gotten used to it. Wrinkling his nose, he stopped drinking the water and instead poured it onto the gash on his leg. It wasn't particularly cold but it did help a little.

Nightfall was a dark and twisting maze. He could still see the bodies if he closed his eyes. All his mother's experiments were disgusting, but he hadn't known the full scale of them until...

Well. At least he had something to study.

He'd been gone for a grand total of two days. He'd already created for himself a routine: pushups and situps when he first woke up, an hour of reading psychology books to help him understand his ability, and then he was off to explore abandoned hideouts to see what he could find. Now that he was back, it was time for more ability work and studying the files he'd stolen from Gisela's Nightfall. The couple next door was arguing loudly, their voices reverberating off the thin walls of the cheap apartment complex. Keefe wouldn't be able to pay rent for long, but he knew it was only a matter of time before someone found him. He was here to prepare himself.

The neighbors' anger was getting frustrating, building up in his chest, making his head throb even harder than before. Maybe... surely just one teensy command wouldn't hurt. He took a deep breath and forced self-control. His throat was itching, begging him to just—

"Shut the hell up," he said.

The neighbors went quiet.

At least he wasn't shouting commands anymore. Fear suddenly washed over him. What if they were frozen, or emotionless, or—or dead? He pressed an ear to the wall.

"Just be a little quieter, please." It was barely a whisper. The arguing immediately resurfaced, but not as loud as before, and the emotions felt dull as a rusted knife. Good. Perfect. He was learning quickly. According to the book he'd been reading this morning, everything going on in his head was just nerve endings and chemicals. He could control that. He could do this. He had to.

He returned to the files and papers spread haphazardly across the floor, willing himself to focus on anything but his headache or the bruises and cuts he'd gotten from wandering around Nightfall in the dark. He really wished he could take a break from this constant movement and get some food. But he felt like he was sitting in an hourglass, the sand pouring onto him quicker and quicker, and soon he would run out of air. He could feel every time Sophie tried to reach him. He woke sweating from dreams in which his mother found him. This wasn't a game. It was very, very real and he didn't want to be the key to everything that everyone seemed to think he was.

One thing at a time. For now he picked up papers smeared with dried blood.

"Now what have you been doing to humans?" Keefe murmured softly.

*ೃ༄

Avilyn, Adalea, Lyra, Aerin, and Lyana had wandered around for hours without so much as a clue.

No evidence of Keefe seemed to be anywhere. The girls didn't see so much as an eye spray-painted onto a wall in an alley, even though this was supposed to be Neverseen-claimed territory. The hideout, Valkonian, was nowhere to be found, possibly destroyed or just very well hidden. Then, as it was starting to get dark and Avilyn was about to suggest finding a place to stay the night, Adalea pointed to a bush and said, "Are my eyes malfunctioning from all this mindless searching or is that an Obscurer?"

Lyra reached in and snatched it up. "Your eyes are fine."

"Now, why would there be an Obscurer here," Avilyn mused, looking around, "unless someone had something to hide...?" Rejuvenated by the idea of actually finding something substantial, the girls started to run down the path that the bush was on.

"Another one," Aerin called, holding one up.

They all froze just as a man walked by, fiddling with some sort of gadget in his hands. He was dressed all in black, and he was wearing gloves, but his arms were bare and an incredibly obvious eye symbol was imprinted on his shoulder. He adjusted his multi-lens glasses, which reminded Adalea of the ones Tinker wore when she worked with small parts, and his gaze flicked upward, making him freeze in place when he noticed the girls.

Everyone just stood there, unsure what to do.

"You—" he pointed at them, and his hand started to shake. "You—you're not supposed to be here. No one—" He looked behind himself and shook his head. He cursed loudly, stumbling back. "I'm so dead."

"Are we just gonna stand here, or...?" said Adalea.

Lyana shrugged. "I mean, wouldn't it be inconsiderate if we just showed up while he was minding his own business and started fighting him for no reason?"

Everyone gave her funny looks. "He's... with the Neverseen," Lyra said with her best are you dumb? look.

Lyana threw up her hands. "Okay. I get that! I'm just pointing out that it's a little rude. We can be courteous to our enemies, can't we? I mean—"

The Neverseen member bolted, effectively shutting her up.

The girls all chased after him, hoping he would lead them to a hideout. But he didn't. He took a sharp turn off the dirt path, probably veering them away from wherever he had come from.

"Split up," Avilyn ordered. "Adalea, take Lya and Aerin. Lyra, you're with me."

Adalea's group darted after the man, so Avilyn directed Lyra along the dirt path, down the other end of a fork. I hope these paths are connected, Lyra thought as she and Avilyn sprinted down the street. We might crash right into each other, but that'll be fun.

"It sure will," Avilyn agreed, not sounding tired at all from all the running, and making Lyra realize she'd voiced her thoughts out loud. "But if they're not connected, he'll end up on the main road and we can just climb a few buildings and catch him anyways." They leaped over a wooden crate. The fact that there was an overturned crate in the woods made them suspect there was more than just trees down this path.

"Zip, Sparks, quit wandering around when we have work to do," a voice called. Avilyn and Lyra shot each other wary looks and ran towards the sound. They ended up face-to-face with a dark-skinned woman who was very likely to also be a part of the Neverseen—unless random hermits in the woods had decided to take up the eye tattoo trend, of course.

The woman swore and hastily pulled out an Imparter. Thinking quickly, Lyra thrust her hand forward, shooting an icy blast at her hand. She cried out and jumped back, the Imparter frozen to her hand. If the ice took too long to melt, she might lose that hand, Lyra realized with a sick feeling in her stomach. She forced herself to ignore it.

Determination crossing her face, the woman used her other hand to grab something from a pocket in her tunic and threw it to the ground. It immediately set off smoke, making the two girls cough and choke while she escaped.

Lyra spread out her hands and the smoke condensed into ice, which Avilyn conjured away with a snap of her fingers. They took off running again, but the Neverseen woman was gone. Lyra tripped over something on the ground and almost fell. She looked back. It was another Obscurer.

"There's another one," Avilyn murmured.

Lyra pointed to a tree a few feet away. "There's a hell of a lot of Obscurers around here."

They followed the rough path that the Obscurers made and arrived at a building so camouflaged into the trees they might not have noticed it if they weren't looking for it.

They crept around the hideout, trying to find a door. There were no windows, so there was no way they could be prepared for whatever they would meet if they went inside. But of course they were going to anyway, because no defense team girl backed down from a challenge.

There was some scrap metal littered across the ground among the leaves, and Lyra bent down to pick up a funny-looking screw.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she said, chewing on her bottom lip.

"Yeah," Avilyn said, glancing around. "This must be where the Neverseen's Technopaths are. At least, some of them."

"We've never seen any of them before."

Avilyn nodded—she actually hadn't, which unsettled her...

Lyra grinned at Avilyn, giddy about the whole situation. After a boring day of wandering around streets and forests, this was new and exciting. She slipped on a Sucker Punch and Avilyn pulled out her twin silver swords. They tested the back door. Locked, of course. Needed a DNA test to open.

Lyra backed up a few feet and took a running leap, kicking the door in. All that martial arts training had paid off.

Avilyn's eyes widened. She shot Lyra a smile. "Impressive."

Lyra smirked, her chest puffing out a bit with pride. "Bet you can't do that."

"I have other strategies," Avilyn replied with an eye roll. "Ones that don't include giving us away by kicking a metal door in."

They silently slipped inside (which was probably pointless since a door breaking was pretty loud).

"Wait, Crypto, what do you mean, 'the Black Swan is here'? How?"

Somebody turned, making eye contact with Lyra. His mouth formed an O. He frantically smacked the shoulder of the girl on an Imparter call, who was wearing a metal mask that covered her face from the bridge of her nose down and had exposed wires that climbed all the way up her ear.

There was a lot of swearing and gathering of weapons. They had really caught these Technopaths off guard; it was clear they weren't used to being bothered. That was a nice feeling after so many recent losses to the Neverseen. Avilyn and Lyra ran forward, kicking and swinging.

Other Technopaths entered the room, and a beeping disc flew at Lyra's head while she was distracted. Avilyn leaped over her, slicing the disk into quarters.

Lyra drop-kicked a woman, sending her skidding across the floor. Someone picked up some sort of electric gun and blasted her with it, hitting her in the shoulder. She sucked in a sharp breath and glanced at it. It was red and raw and burned like the sun. She gritted her teeth and thrust out her hands, shooting ice at pretty much anything that moved.

Avilyn crouched down, stabbing a Neverseen member in a small spot on the torso where she knew the military vests did not cover, and he screamed, pointing his weapon at her. She ducked and rolled out of the way, slamming into another Technopath who aimed a blaster at her forehead. She thrust a few goblin throwing stars at her head, and leaped to her feet.

The girls stood back to back, surrounded by enemies.

"Wanna do the thing?"

Lyra wrinkled her nose. "Oh, please no. I know what you're talking about and it's the worst."

Avilyn grinned, then swiveled around, locked her arms around Lyra's waist, lifted her up, and used her as a wrecking ball in the field of Technopaths. Several people toppled over and Lyra landed roughly on her feet, stumbling forward a bit and swinging her fists around aimlessly. "I did not consent to that!" she yelled to Avilyn, kicking the masked girl who had been on an Imparter in the face.

"But it worked!" Avilyn protested, as she threw knives straight towards the woman directly in front of her. "If you didn't want to be thrown around, you shouldn't have been so short!"

Lyra grunted in annoyance.

She hit the woman in both legs, making her cry out, straddled her, and tied her wrists together with wire, which was thankfully just about everywhere. "Tie them up!" Avilyn said to Lyra. She glanced at Lyra's shoulder wound. "Or... as much as you can. I'll help you with the rest."

*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Meanwhile, Adalea, Aerin and Lyana were stumbling around the bushes, trying to follow the rogue Neverseen member.

Finally, Aerin sat down on a tree stump. "I think we lost him," she sighed.

"You mean he lost us?" Adalea corrected.

"Right."

"Crap," Lyana said.

"Crap is right," Aerin agreed miserably.

Somewhere nearby, a loud THUMP-BANG-BOOM echoed, making all three girls jump. Aerin snapped her fingers, drawing double daggers. She glanced at the others. Adalea's hand rested near a row of throwing stars concealed in her tunic. A sphere of water levitated just above her other hand. Lyana had drawn her bow, and her quiver was swung around her shoulders. A golden arrow was notched in her bow, ready to be fired.

They crept to the edge of the bushes, hiding behind an enormous pine tree.

Aerin peeked around, and saw Lyra and Avilyn. Lyra smirked and said something, and Avilyn retorted back. Then they tiptoed through a doorway that Aerin hadn't even noticed. A giant flat piece of metal lay by the doorway, and Aerin realized that Lyra must have kicked down the door, making the sound that startled them all.

She glanced at Lyana and Adalea and saw that they were peeking around the tree too. "Should we follow them in?" Lyana asked. "That looks like a Neverseen hideout. If there's more members in there, Avi and Lyra might need our help."

Aerin opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, she was yanked aside by strong arms.

"Oh, they'll definitely need your help," the man they'd been following said. "Unfortunately, they won't be getting it."

"Well, great," Lyana muttered.

She raised her bow, an arrow pointing in between the Technopath's eyes. But she couldn't fire, because he'd brought other members with him, and an especially big and muscular ogre had put a jagged sword at Aerin's throat.

The sky turned dark. It started to rain. Lyana glanced behind her, and saw that Adalea was causing the storm, her eyes squeezed tight with concentration.

The rain swirled around the Neverseen members, forming a hand that knocked the sword at Aerin's throat away. The ogre grunted, reaching for a dagger, but Aerin snapped with both hands. All of the enemies' weapons disappeared, and a wave knocked them over. Adalea gritted her teeth in strain.

Lyana took the opportunity.

She let her arrow fly, but not at the Technopath. At the ogre holding Aerin. It sprouted perfectly in the middle of his forehead, and the ogre grunted in surprise, stumbling back.

Aerin broke free from the ogre's grip, snapping her fingers again. Daggers materialized in her hands, and she leapt forwards, slicing off the ogre's head.

The Technopath stumbled up, reaching for something in his pocket. Before Lyana had time to cry a warning, he'd thrown the object, and it blew up in front of them.

Smoke and white light erupted from whatever it was, blinding Lyana and choking her at the same time. She squeezed her eyes shut and fumbled for another arrow, relying completely on her hearing as she notched it and fired.

A shriek told her that she'd hit her target and she opened her eyes to find that the blinding light had disappeared. The man now lay at her feet, an arrow sprouting from his chest, and Aerin had a dagger at the throat of another Neverseen member, just the way the ogre had previously had a sword at her throat. Adalea was drowning another hooded elf in a giant sphere of water, and the person kicked and struggled, but refused to answer Adalea's questions, even when she promised to let him go afterwards.

"God—these people are stubborn," Adalea sighed.

"Need some help?" Lyana asked. She walked over to the drowning Neverseen member.

"Hey, do me a favor," Lyana said to the person, her voice smooth as honey, slipping into his mind, manipulating his emotions. "Addy here has just a few things to ask. You know, it's just polite to answer someone's questions, especially when they are offering you freedom in exchange for your answers, isn't it?"

The person looked like he wanted to say something, but he was still struggling under the water.

"Adalea, please let this person talk, thanks."

Adalea flicked her hands, and the surface of the water lowered to the person's chin. She glared daggers at him.

Lyana smiled brightly. "Now, please answer my friend's questions." She signaled to Adalea, who cracked her knuckles threateningly.

*ೃ༄

Adalea sighed, flicking her hand and sending the sphere of water with Zip, the Technopath, in it crashing into an oak tree. The wave rolled back and evaporated into the air, and Adalea slumped down onto the leaf-covered ground.

Lyana sighed as well, slinging her bow over her shoulder, and Aerin conjured it away.

Apparently either the Neverseen trained for resisting manipulation or they simply didn't tell most members interesting information, because the only things Lyana had managed to squeeze out was Zip's code name, and that the Technopaths were working on a new assignment from Gisela.

"Finding Keefe?" Aerin immediately asked.

Lyana frowned. "I'm not sure," she said. "It seemed like they were... building a lot of something, though it could be cameras to, you know, find Keefe?"

Aerin nodded. "Well, we found a Neverseen hideout. Yay." She would have been a lot happier if they'd collected useful intel. "We'd better watch them, to see what they do. And watch the area around them for suspicious activity."

Adalea nodded and pulled a handful of small spheres out of the small bag strapped across her shoulder. They were the size of her pinky nails, with three long parallel spikes jutting out the bottom.

The girls stabbed them into the ground around the hideout, spreading them out.

Finally, Adalea dusted her hands off. "Done." She snapped her fingers again, and this time, a flat square about as large as a milk bottle cap materialized. It had two leather straps on either side of the square, and Adalea put it on like a watch, snapping it in place with two small magnets on the ends of the straps.

She tapped the dark screen, and it blinked to life, displaying a holographic grid map in the air that she could move and manipulate by touch. She expanded it and little red blips appeared where the girls had placed the spiky gadgets. When she tapped on them, the map zoomed in and displayed the heat signatures of everything within the area. She could see figures moving inside the hideout, and she gestured for Aerin and Lyana to come look.

Lyana gave Zip, who was either unconscious or dead, slumped against the tree, one last glance and then motioned towards the hideout.

"Shall we?"

The three of them headed inside.

The hideout was a mess. Lyra and Avilyn had completely ransacked it. There were electronic parts strewn everywhere, cabinets and walls were dented or had holes blasted through them, and most impressively, every last Neverseen member in that hideout had their hands and feet tied with wire, and their mouths covered with gags. Avilyn dusted her hands off just as she finished up the last person and looked up to see the others.

"Oh! How did it go?" she asked.

Lyana, Adalea, and Aerin were astonished. "Probably not as well as it went for you," Adalea remarked, nudging a passed-out Technopath with her foot.

"Did you get both of them?" Lyra said. She gingerly touched her shoulder, which looked like it had been burned by acid or something, and hissed in pain.

Aerin frowned. "What do you mean, 'both of them'?"

"The guy and the girl. Oh no," Lyra said, realizing they hadn't run into the woman that had seen her and Avilyn at all. "You never saw her, did you?"

"Her name was Crypto," Avilyn said, running her tongue along her teeth as she rubbed blood off her arms with a rag.

"We dealt with the guy, Zip," Lyana told them. She cringed as she accidentally stepped on someone's hand, and stepped back carefully. "This place is a mess."

"They all have tech-related names, I guess," said Avilyn.

Adalea shook her head. "Zip is probably short for something. Maybe it's a clue to his identity."

"Not likely. He was kind of short, right? A zip is a compressed file. That name is more of an inside joke than anything else. Technopaths are never too keen on giving up their identities."

They all thought of Tinker. Very helpful, but sort of strange, and hell-bent on keeping her identity a secret for some reason.

"All right," Avilyn said, surveying the room. "It looks like everything is taken care of. Pick up anything you think will be useful, and I'm going to go hail the Black Swan. They need to come raid this place."

*ೃ༄

Lyra yawned as Avilyn set a plate in front of her. "Thanks," she mumbled. Her shoulder felt a lot better now, after Avilyn had helped her clean and bandage it the previous night. Unfortunately, that meant she got less sleep than the other girls because applying the Wound Wipe, Blister Blast, and Scratches n' Splits that Avilyn had conjured had taken a very long time, and Avilyn had made her drink a bottle of both Achey-Break and Youth respectively. It had been a long night, but Lyra had no choice but to listen to her since Avilyn was the only one in their group that was any good at healing.

Everyone was slumped at the small table Aerin had conjured, and Avilyn—who somehow seemed as if she'd slept for twelve hours—had cooked up breakfast: porcaroot pie, fluffcreams, and she had conjured some blitzenberry muffins.

Adalea's face lit up when she tried the fluffcreams, and she grabbed another one. "These taste exactly like the ones my father... used to make for me." Her face fell again when she thought of him.

Adalea's parents had both died on a secret mission in the Forbidden Cities, leaving only her and her younger sister to fend for themselves. She didn't talk about it much anymore, but everyone knew she'd been separated from her sister and sent to Exilium before being recruited with Phoenix to the Black Swan.

Lyra cleared her throat, slicing through the awkwardness. "You're an amazing cook, Avilyn," she said, taking a huge bite out of her pie.

Pink colored Avilyn's cheeks. Compliments were a rarity and she wasn't sure how to properly respond.

"How did you learn?" Aerin asked with a mouthful of blitzenberry muffin.

"Oh. Um. Reading, mostly." Avilyn said vaguely. Lyra's eyes narrowed. She could tell that was a lie. She was fine with Avilyn wanting to have her own privacy, but a false response to such a silly, meaningless question meant she obviously had something to hide.

"Really?" Lyra said carefully. "I want to learn to cook too—what books specifically?"

Avilyn shifted in her seat uncomfortably, refusing to meet her scrutinizing gaze. "I... can't remember. It was a long time ago."

HA! Lyra wanted to shout. They had been taught to identify when someone was lying. And what Avilyn had just said, along with her body language, gave herself away. Avilyn had a photographic memory. She couldn't have forgotten.

Lyra didn't like that Avilyn was keeping secrets. Of course, she had noticed long ago that Kayleey was hiding something as well. Cloud had noticed too, and she and Cloud had even shared stupid theories on what Kayleey's secret might've been. But now two girls on the team were keeping secrets. That wasn't good. The more they kept from each other, the harder it was to work together.

But before Lyra could do or say anything, Lyana stood up and stretched. "We should pack camp and leave," she said. "Where should we search next?"

Avilyn's expression briefly showed relief, and then she was stoic again "Well, I doubt Keefe'll magically appear the more we wander around the woods. I guess we should should go to the next place on our list of places we might find him?"

Aerin nodded, snapping her fingers. It took a moment for the list to appear, because she didn't actually know where it was, just that Aeyva had it. When it dropped out of the void, she caught it and went through the list of places. "Hmm, how about this cookie factory place? That sounds fun!"

Avilyn pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Yes... But we have to think about the most likely places Keefe would go, not the places that sound the most fun—" She was interrupted by Aerin's watch going off.

Adalea jumped up. "What is it?"

Aerin tapped furiously on the screen. "There's people near our cameras but—oh gosh," she muttered. The other girls crowded around her to see it. The little red blips were disappearing, one by one.

Someone was getting rid of them.

"Did the Black Swan ever show up?" Lyra asked.

"Blur said he would send somebody. He didn't say when. So I'm not sure," answered Avilyn, looking anxious. "There's a good chance that's the Neverseen."

"We are so screwed," Adalea mumbled, tugging on her hair. "We're screwed, we're screwed."

Lyra pulled out her Imparter. "Hail Forkle." It blinked a few times, then went dark. Forkle didn't answer. "Avi, you don't happen to still have the coordinates to that place, do you?"

"I messaged them to Blur. Give me a second and I'll pull them up."

The girls light leaped back to the hideout.

─── · 。ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

tysm for reading! the updated version of this chapter includes a couple extra keefe and celine scenes, so enjoy!

please take some time to check out the club's applyfic, which is currently open! :)