Chapter Forty-Four – Progress

Emily was a little nervous, sending Trinity out so casually, but she had confidence that Trinity could be stealthy when she put her mind to it. “Just don’t get caught, and let me know what you see and what’s happening.”

Trinity gave her a twinned salute. “Got it!” she said. Then she was out of the door and running along the street. The only thing Emily could see of her was her head and some of her legs beneath her poncho.

“We need to find stealth hats,” Emily muttered.

“Ah, um, I can make that,” Maple said.

Emily reached over and patted Maple between her little ears. “I know,” she said. “Your ponchos are very good. You did well.”

Maple smiled shyly without meeting Emily’s eyes. “T-thanks.”

Emily turned her attention to the remaining Trinity. “What do you see so far?”

“Not much,” Trinity said with a shrug. “They’re moving along the rooftops. Uh… wait… okay, no.”

“What is it?” Emily asked.

“I almost lost them. They’re not staying on the edge of the roof,” Trinity explained. She made a few gestures to help. “I lost them, but then they showed up again when they jumped over a gap. I think they’re coming down to the road, though? They’re at… oh, yeah, they are. They’re at the end of a road, and the building there is just one floor up, so now they’re climbing down the side. I’m hiding behind a big mailbox.”

Emily nodded along, then scrambled to get the map out of her bag. “Can you show me where, on here?”

“Uh,” Trinity said. She stared at the map for a long time, then shrug. “No?”

“You can’t?”

“I don’t know how maps work,” Trinity said.

“Oh,” Emily replied. Well, that was something to fix, but not right now. “Nevermind, then. Remind me to teach you all later.”

“I know how,” Athena muttered.

That might have been true, but it wasn’t exactly helpful at the moment. “Alright, let’s head out, then? Are they far enough that they won’t see us?” At Trinity’s nod, Emily gathered up her things. She paused just long enough to grab a soda from the machine and a bottle of water.

She would have told her sisters to grab a snack for the road, but it was very much not necessary. Every one of them, even the rather mature Aurora, had their pockets stuffed full of candy bars and junk food.

Emily took the lead exiting the building, her sisters trailing right behind her, but soon Trinity ran ahead since she knew where her other third was. They stuck to the sides of the road, always moving a little faster when they had to cross space where there wouldn’t be a place to hide if an HRF patrol rounded the corner, only there didn’t seem to be any patrols around at the moment.

“Oh, she’s going down another street,” Trinity said. “Wait… I’m gonna catch up to her.”

“She?” Emily asked.

“Oh, yeah, it’s an old lady,” Trinity confirmed.

From one of her sisters that meant that the woman was anywhere between twenty and ninety-nine. “What does she look like?”

“She’s wearing a lot of stuff, but she had boobies, so she’s probably a lady,” Trinity said with a vague gesture. “She’s got brown hair, and she’s pale? Um, about as tall as you or little sister Aurora.”

“With our without the antlers?” Aurora asked.

“Without,” Trinity said.

Right, so a white, brown-haired woman of average height. That narrowed it down to about… twenty percent of the population of Anada, by Emily’s estimate. “Did she had anything else that made her stand out?”

“Not really,” Trinity said. “Oh! She has a mask on.”

“A mask?”

“Yeah. It looks like one of those we got from that Halloween store?”

“Does she have one of these?” Emily asked as she reached up to her face. The little black domino mask that appeared every time she or her sisters entered the Endgame was small and unobtrusive. It was easy to forget that it was even there.

“I can’t see anything like that,” Trinity said. “Want me to get closer?”

“No, better not. Just follow from as far back as you can without losing her,” Emily said.

She didn’t know whether the woman was a villain or a hero, but someone running around in all-black clothes with a mask on while out of the reach of HRF patrols didn’t strike her as terribly heroic.

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“She’s moving,” Trinity said. “Into an alleyway. I can’t see her.”

“Alright, let us get closer, then try to subtly peek around the corner,” Emily said. She picked up the pace a little, and her sisters followed along. They rounded a corner, and she noticed Trinity further off, crouching down next to the mouth of an alley. She wouldn’t have noticed her if she wasn’t looking, however. Trinity had made herself small, and was hidden in the shadows of the nearby buildings.

“Keep quiet,” she muttered to her sisters and they walked over. She couldn’t help but wince at the sounds of footfalls on the sidewalk, most of all her own. Still, they made it, and she crouched down a little to make herself smaller as well. “Did you see anything?” she whispered to Trinity.

The racoon girl shook her head. “She just went in here. I heard something open and close, though.”

Emily nodded, then turned to Maple. Maple caught on to her gestures and passed her the mirror on a stick that she’d made earlier, for seeing around corners. Emily slowly, carefully, moved it up and looked around the corner. It was a little hard to make anything out but… there was nothing.

The alley ended in a brick wall, four metres tall, and with nothing to help climb it. The only other things in there were some garbage cans, and a metal door to one side.

No mysterious women in black. “She must have gone in,” Emily said. “Trinity, can you sprint around the building and see if she didn’t come out the other side? She might have been trying to lose any followers.”

“Okay!” Trinity said. Then she took off at a dead sprint down the road.

Emily watched her go for a moment, then leaned up against the wall. “Let’s wait here… quietly

,” she suggested.

Her sisters settled in to wait. If the woman hadn’t run off, then she was likely still inside that building. It looked like nothing special. Just some old industrial building off to one side of the city, doing its own thing.

If she were looking for a base inside of Saint Arie, she might well be inclined to pick out a building exactly like this one. It had a roof that looked like it was flat, with access to the roofs around it, there were few windows at the front, and she imagined that it might be possible to break open one or more of the inner walls to gain access to the building at the back and on the other side, providing even more exits.

“Y’all smell that?” Teddy asked.

All of them sniffed the air. “Hydrocarbons,” Athena said.

Emily blinked before she placed the meaning. Gas, or diesel, or some other sort of engine smoke. “I can’t hear anything,” she said.

Teddy moved up to the wall, then pressed her ear right up to the bricks. “Yeah, there’s a noise in there. Like a car.”

“A generator, maybe?” Athena wondered. “Good job, idiot bear.”

“You wish you were as observant as me, owl…diot.”

“Girls,” Emily muttered.

Trinity glanced up. “Nothing on the other side,” she said.

Well well, either they’d missed the mystery woman moving on, or… they weren’t gone yet. Emily licked her lips. Could this be them?

If it was… then what? Bust in the door and smack them around? That was very tempting… but probably not reasonable or smart. They were hiding with the Orbject, which meant that she was on a tight schedule, but that didn’t mean she had to be hasty.

“Let’s find a place to hide across the street,” she said. “We have snacks enough to last us the day, right? We can keep an eye on this place until dusk, then maybe sneak in. Or maybe that’ll be enough time for Maple to make something?”

“I can try,” Maple said.

“Sounds like a plan,” Aurora replied. “If we’re staying overnight, though, we’ll need more supplies.”

“Right. No overnight for now. Just a watch,” Emily decided.

There was a shoe store right across the street with what looked like apartments on the floors above. The windows would give them a good vantage, and there seemed to be a side-access that wasn’t too visible.

It would do.

This felt like progress. Progress towards getting her revenge.

***

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