Everyone nods, so I do too. Yes, I understand what is happening. I’m not totally out of my element. She defers to Taylor, who steps forward and transforms into Eos.
“I will go into the house alone. Alisa on front, Javier on back. Hel and Miss Piccolo stay in the van. The handoff is in exactly one hour. Our transport is two blocks over. We expect minor CO resistance inside and perhaps Force doing rounds on street level. Go nonlethal, but use your judgment. Our intel suggests Lightbringers have been sighted as far north as the edge of the park, which means it is likely that if we attract attention, they will come.” Taylor pauses to let the information settle with her comrades. “No one is to engage a Lightbringer under any circumstances. A high-frequency pitch in our radios will signal their approach, a fortunate flaw in the design. If anyone picks up on it, we abandon mission immediately. Understood?”
Yes, but I don’t like it.
Skulking down darkened avenues, we arrive at an unmarked van that screams “kidnapping.” Except I know flying through a glass ceiling in the arms of a gun-wielding femme fatale is what actually screams “kidnapping.”
Exponentially more sophisticated on the inside, one side is full of expensive surveillance equipment with a sleek black sheen. Parallel is one independent chair and a bench. We cram onto the bench while Mason climbs into the unseen front seat and turns the engine over.
Taylor unpacks a duffel bag, inserts an electronic button in her ear, and pulls out a short stick to hook around her belt loop.
“Are you going to be armed?” None of her items would do more than lightly incapacitate, if that. “Lightbringers are outfitted to detect gunfire.”
“I am armed, should the need arise. I will be primarily using this.” From within the duffel bag she withdraws a bracer. Around forearm-length, the conical band of leather gets wrapped around her wrist and over her hand. Inlaid into the top are metal divots, which she loads with syringes.
“What’s that?”
“A gauntlet wristbow. Sort of like a crossbow for my arm.” A mini-syringe is held up in front of my face for inspection before she loads it. “These are tranquilizer darts. They incapacitate an enemy for two to three hours, depending on age and weight.”
Next out of her bag of tricks is a bandana, and her attempts to tie it around her neck are thwarted by the bumping and careening of the van. “Gimme. At least one of us has re-dressed in a moving vehicle before.”
With an eye roll she lets go of the bandana and I take it up, tying it behind her neck with a steady hand and pulling her hair out from underneath it. I skim the edges of the gray material until I have it resting comfortably around her neck. My fingers drift over to hold her chin and I use this as leverage to move her head and inspect her cut.
“That’s looking better, at least.”
“Of course it is,” she says, gently pushing my hand off her face.
We bump a curb as Mason parks the van, jostling us in our seats. Alisa and Javier arm themselves with rifles, place earpieces in their ears, and put on green-tinted sunglasses. Everyone exits out the back doors and listens to Taylor’s hushed instructions with bowed heads. Mason ducks into the van with me and sits in the master seat to my right.
Taylor peers back inside. “Do not leave the van. Do not cause trouble.” The bandana goes up over her face, hood over her head, and she closes the back doors on us.
I turn to Mason. “Was that warning for me or you?”
Mason chuckles, donning a headset and switching on screens. Taylor reappears on the center screen, but the camera is behind her, above her head. It hovers near her but swivels around to record the surroundings. The van, the street, a stop sign. It spins around again and I watch her skillfully scale a wrought iron fence, peeling white paint falling like snow in her wake. The building is old—one of those ostentatious mansions left over from the industry magnates of the early twentieth century—squished between two other mansions. Many of these city mansions are abandoned, but some lucky blocks stayed in money if my ancestors allowed it.
I press my finger against the convex glass screen. “How am I seeing this?”
“It’s a hummingbird camera,” Mason says. “It floats above and behind her, watching her back. Smaller than a golf ball, and follows whoever’s got the remote. T’s got it in her pocket.”
Taylor taps her ear twice and Mason clicks on his earpiece, pulling down the microphone. Her voice crackles through the speaker and I lean in.
“You there, Hel?”
“I got you, Eos, loud and clear.” I’m leaning close to him to get a better look, and his glare prompts me to back off. He hands me another set of headphones. “Don’t talk into your mic.”
I smile apologetically. Alisa and Javier take up on the other screens, scoping the front and back entrances. Their cameras must be embedded in their sunglasses, which I realize are not sunglasses, but night vision goggles. With Javier watching from below, Taylor crawls like a shadow up the building’s facade, slithering in through a jimmied-open window and landing noiselessly in a darkened hallway.
“Oh my God, you’re robbing the place,” I whisper, glancing at Mason with a shock that is perhaps foolish. So much for their altruistic purpose.
Mason shrugs his hulking shoulders. “Eos calls the shots.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Apparently.”
We turn back to the screens and watch Taylor as she tiptoes through the house. The camera catches a shadow crossing near her and I take in a sharp breath. Taylor goes flat against a wall. The shadow stops, and then moves in the opposite direction. She winds down a staircase and onto the next floor, keeping close to the walls, slowly but confidently stalking toward another door. Every so often she halts abruptly, giving me mini heart attacks.
Someone enters the room behind her and she slides underneath a coffee table to hide. Two boots appear in the camera, directly next to her head. I hold my breath. They retreat, and arm over arm she commando-crawls out from beneath the table—just like we practiced on the obstacle course. Upon reaching the far wall, she runs her fingers over the divots in the wood panels, searching without sight. Suddenly she digs her nails in and yanks the wood to the left, sliding open a secret wall.
It reveals a square dumbwaiter, empty of serving trays and food but chock-full of dust and spiderwebs and probably spiders. She slinks inside, clearly unperturbed by the potential for eight-legged pests, and closes the wall behind her, swallowing the feed in darkness.