Chapter Thirty-Two – Ready

“You ready?” Teddy asked.

“Of course,” Aurora replied.

They were hiding in a bush. Well, more like between several bushes. The big building that the heroes were guarding was just around the corner. She could see it, if she leaned forwards, but Aurora told her not to do that too much. It would make it way too obvious that she was there. Her face was brighter than the colour of the bushes or whatever, and it would stand out if someone flashed some light their way.

That made plenty of sense, she supposed, but she really wanted a look at what was going on.

She reached up and adjusted the mask she was wearing.

They’d snuck over here a while ago, and were hiding ever since. It was kind of boring, actually. They couldn’t even talk much since they might be overheard, and their job was to not be noticed until they got the signal.

She felt at her pocket, where one of Maple’s ringers sat. She had rung it already, letting the Boss know that she and Aurora were in place.

“Want to go over the plan one more time?” Aurora asked.

“Sure,” Teddy muttered back. It was better than nothing.

“Okay. When the signal goes off, we toss a noisemaker here, then run. I go right, you go left.”

Teddy nodded. The noisemakers had little delay fuses on them. They’d only go off after a set time. Like an egg-timer, but way, way louder. “Then we drop the second noise maker,” she said.

“Right. Or throw them out. Honestly, as long as they have to go around looking for them, then we should be okay,” Aurora said. “The goal is to keep them distracted and busy.”

Teddy nodded. It made perfect sense. The Heroes might be trouble, but the unfortunate, enslaved members of the proletariat working for the HRF were just there, working for wages. Wages that were probably far below what the fat cat–why cats, she wasn’t sure–were making in their big ivory towers.

She’d watched a documentary about elephants, and how they were going extinct, and here the capitalists were building entire towers out of their tusks. Messed up.

Anyway, the HRF workers were just following orders and probably not being paid well for it. They’d be easy to distract. Plus, they’d probably be really slow to look into things, since they were paid an hourly wage, instead of owning part of the capital that they worked to build.

She wasn’t sure the capital to where, but she supposed it didn’t matter since they didn’t get it in any case.

“Then we run back and around,” Teddy said with a serious nod.

“Yeah. It’s a long run though,” Aurora said.

“What? Yeah, I can do it,” Teddy replied. “We meet back at that bakery place with the broken window?”

“Mhm!” Aurora said.

Right then would have been a great time for the Boss to buzz and tell them that the plan was on, but the ringer in her pocket stayed entirely still.

Teddy huffed, then sat down on the ground, the heels of her sneakers digging into the soft dirt a little. She’d have mud on her butt, but she didn’t care. She reached down, scratched an itchy calf, then yawned.

So boring.

And yet, no ring.

“So, uh…” Aurora said. “Tic-tac-toe?”

“Yeah, sure,” Teddy muttered.

They were seventeen games in, the squares and lines and circles scratched into the dirt with sticks, when something buzzed in her pocket. She almost dismissed it until she realized what it was.

“It rang,” she hissed to Aurora.

“It did? Oh, okay. Uh…” Aurora fumbled in her pockets and pulled out one of the noisemakers. She had a second one, and Teddy had hers in the pocket of her hoodie. She pressed the front in, to make sure it was still there, then tugged the hood up until it covered her ears. Aurora spun the dial on the noisemaker, then looked up. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” Teddy said.

The noisemaker was tossed to a corner, then they were off.

She shoved through the bushes and onto the road, then looked both ways. No HRF, not yet. Not much noise from the big base either, so the streets were still empty.

Her boots went from stomping on dirt and grass to clacking on the pavement as she took off running as fast as she could. The sound of Athena breaking through the bushes on the far side told her that her sister was going too.

Stolen story; please report.

She picked up the pace, arms working and breath coming in quick, but she couldn’t help but smile. Then the noisemaker went off. It made a loud, awful sound, one that made her ears twitch. Like someone stepping on the tails of a million cats with off-tuned loudspeakers in front of them.

She was only halfway to the intersection when she noticed lights. Some around the base, which she was catching glimpses of between buildings, and more from HRF vans that were being turned on and from jogging troopers way out in the distance.

She dropped her head and ran faster while shoving a hand into her hoodie pocket. She grabbed her noisemaker and fumbled to turn the dial while panting. Behind her, the first van’s engine came alive with a throaty rumble, and she heard the crunch of tires rolling fast over loose gravel.

She didn’t stop to look. The sound of the van rolling into motion made her feel like a much smaller animal when they saw the mighty shadow of a bear climbing over them, it sent a jolt up her spine. The second noisemaker clicked in her palm. Her feet hit the curb and skidded on grit as she cut across the street.

The alley to her left had a wide mouth and a caved-in fence at the back. She didn’t even aim, just tossed the noisemaker in and hoped it bounced far enough in to be convincing. It pinged off a can, rolled, then started ticking. She kept running, legs burning, mouth open, lungs too small for the air she needed.

The second noisemaker went off behind her with a sharp, controlled crackle, more precise than chaotic. It sounded like a hundred glass bottles snapping in sequence. Teddy flinched. That one was going to draw attention. Hopefully it was exactly what the Boss needed right now.

Then, suddenly, it was a lot brighter, her shadow cast out ahead of her as two vans turned around the far corner.

She veered toward the sidewalk, boots scraping as she caught her balance. The pavement here was cracked and lumpy, the streetlights all dark except for the occasional flicker from the base behind her. The two vans hadn’t sped up, not yet, but they didn’t have to. They kept to opposite sides of the street, slow and steady, like hounds locking in on a trail.

She glanced back. The vans were gaining on her!

“Stop!” someone demanded over a loudspeaker from one of the vans.

She didn’t stop, and instead tried to run even faster, breaking out into a sprint with newfound energy.

“Cease movement. You are in a restricted zone.”

She gulped in some air, enough to half-turn and shout something back. “Suck my farts, capitalist pigs!”

Maybe she shouldn’t have done that, because the vans started to move faster, and while she was a great runner, she wasn’t faster than a car.

Teddy’s breath hitched as the van on her right accelerated. It was coming right for her!

Then, there was a blur as something shot out from the side of the road, and it was only when it was in the light of the van that Teddy realized that it was Aurora.

“No!” she shouted.

Cars were the number one killers of moose and their only terrestrial predators!

Aurora’s antlers appeared out of thin air, two huge racks, all spikey and glowing, and then the van ran into her.

A heavy, rapidly-moving object, striking a single girl… one who was entirely immovable.

Her antlers slammed into the van’s front end, and the entire vehicle crumpled like it had run into a tree growing out of nowhere. The crunch of metal and shatter of glass rang out across the empty street. The van veered off to the side, then rammed into the second who hadn’t realized that the first was about to hit something.

Teddy realized she’d stopped moving only when Aurora, antlers gone, turned and ran at her. “Come on! You missed the bakery!”

“Oh,” Teddy said. “Yeah! Let’s go!”

Aurora grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her forward. Teddy stumbled to match her pace, legs rubbery from the sprint. Aurora didn’t let go, even as they cleared the intersection and slipped into the dark between two buildings.

Behind them, metal groaned and something hissed, but while voices shouted, no boots followed. They were in the clear!

***

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