Summus Proelium

Obviously, we had to be very careful about the timing of this whole situation. Things would get very bad very quickly if we used that signal to disable all the Biolems, but left the ordinary humans up and kicking. The second they realized what had happened, all those hostages would be in danger. We needed to be ready to get into each of the three areas they were holding those hostages so we could protect them. And, well, finish dealing with whoever was left over.

Finishing dealing with whoever was left over. What sort of thought was that? What was it…still barely close to three months since I had Touched. Three months since finding two armed guys had completely terrified me. Now, after a freaking eyeblink-worth of time, all this was going on. Just… wow.

Unfortunately, there were a few issues with that whole ‘dealing with them’ thing, even considering our advantages of surprise and being able to shut down the Biolems. Namely, Paige and Sierra couldn't be in the building when the signal was sent out, or they'd be shut down too. Which meant Peyton and I were alone in here. Well, not exactly alone. We had Eits, but he wasn't suited for direct physical confrontation. He was going to do his best to help by taking control of the school's security system and keeping doors locked along with anything else that he could manage. But actually punching someone? Yeah, if it came down to that, something had gone horribly wrong. I didn't even want to think about how bad the situation would need to be for that boy to get into a fistfight.

So, we had three hostage locations to cover, and only two people who could fight. Because obviously there had been no sign of any Ministry people yet. Which, to be honest, was really starting to piss me off. They had to realize this was important, right? Did they think I had been lying? Did I not stress the urgency enough? If the guy I spoke to on the phone hadn’t passed on the message, I was gonna… uuurghh.

Someone from the Ministry had better show up soon to help out, I told myself, or I was going to call that number and spend several hours giving them every possible piece of my mind until I was satisfied. There would be a lot of words, and none of them would be very polite. If the Ministry was supposed to be good for anything at all, they should be able to help out with this drastic situation in my own goddamn school. And yes, I knew I was ignoring the fact that they were probably busy with the whole Amanda thing while already working without their full membership due to the Sleeptalk problem. But right then, I really didn’t care. I just wanted to get this situation dealt with and not end up losing any hostages in the process. I needed these people to show up and make themselves useful. And, well, I really wanted to see a bear in a suit stampeding through the halls doing kung fu or whatever on these guys, damn it. Was that so much to ask for? I’d settle for suited raccoon kung fu, but the bear would be even better.

In that moment, while Peyton and I were having a whispered conversation about how exactly we were going to deal with this and somehow manage to cover three locations with only two of us, a voice abruptly spoke up from just behind us. “Are you ready?”

Yeah, I’m not ashamed to say I jumped almost out of my skin. Literally leaping out of my crouched position, I spun while holding a hand out. Beside me, Peyton did the same, each of us yelping. One of her marbles turned into a hammer and swung through the air, while I sent a spray of blue at the shadowy figure who had just appeared out of nowhere.

Shadowy figure turned out to be an apt description. The feminine-looking form seemed to be made out of thick shadows. Both my paint and Alloy’s marble hammer went right through it, like a ghost. Or one of the non-solid Syndicates. For a second, I even thought this was Nasty again. But no, Nasty was… thicker, more solid-looking. This person was like dark smoke shaped in a visibly female body, with a face that was very basic-looking without much in the way of detail. Just a nose, mouth, and vague impression of eyes. Nothing that would allow me to pick her out of a lineup later.

If the ghostly figure was at all put off by having both of us attack and yelp at her, she didn’t show it. Instead, she simply continued with, “You requested help from the Ministry. I’m here to provide that. You may call me Z.”

Wait, Z, I knew that. The files we stole from the Ministry base in the mall had mentioned a Plan Z. They were the person who took Luciano out of the city. I'd thought maybe that was talking about a group, but apparently it was an individual. This individual. And going by what we’d seen in those files, her being here was a big deal.

Alloy found her voice first. “You--wait, you came to help?”

Okay, I said she found her voice first, not that she managed to come up with something brilliant to actually say with that voice. Still, she was a step ahead of me, given the only thing my brain was doing in that moment was giving a high-pitched staticky buzzing noise.

After a very brief pause, the shadow-woman lifted her head before looking back and forth between us. There was a note of what sounded somewhat like amusement in her voice. “Yes. You did request aid, didn’t you? If you’d prefer to handle this situation entirely on your own, I could step back and watch. Or even offer pointers.”

There was something else about her voice. I felt like I’d heard it before, though it seemed somewhat distorted. Whether it was something her shadowy-form was doing or what, I couldn’t say. But what I could make out of the voice definitely seemed familiar. Which wasn’t all that surprising. If she was some important part of the Ministry, I’d probably met her civilian self at some point. Honestly, if I hadn’t already known it was impossible in the current situation, I might’ve wondered if she was my mother. But no, even then, I’d definitely know my mom’s voice. That wasn’t--

Focus, Cassidy. Shaking off those thoughts, I gave a quick nod. “No, we wanted help. Want help. Definitely want help. You kinda got here just in time. There’s three places where these guys have hostages set up, so we’ll each have to take one of them to make sure nobody dies. They’re down in the pool, in the gym, and in the main--”

I stopped talking as Z held up a hand. Her voice was polite. “I mean no offense, but I am aware of the situation. I have… handled the human targets. Or will have handled, when the time comes. You don’t need to worry about them. But there are others who are not so human. Several spread throughout the building. They appear to be wired to explosives. If they and the humans are not disabled together, and all at the same time, one of them will trigger those explosives. Which would be… bad.”

Oh, well that was just great. Blanching at the thought of what would’ve happened if we had tried something without knowing about those bombs, I forced myself to sound as casual as possible. But my voice still cracked. “O-oh, well it’s a good thing we have a way to shut all those Biolems down at once. That’s what this thing we just installed is for.” My head nodded toward the USB drive. “As soon as… our friend activates it, they’ll go down. But we need to be in position to deal with the human bad guys at each hostage location.”

I started to ask her which location she wanted to cover, but Z simply replied, “Go ahead and tell your friend to activate the device.” When both of us protested, she held up her hand again, waiting until we fell silent. “You have my word, when the device activates, the other troops will be handled as well. The hostages will be safe.”

I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean or how exactly she could guarantee that, but if I remembered those files right, this ‘Plan Z’ was supposed to be pretty effective. And, well, the name itself implied she was a person who was called in once every other possible option had been expended. She sounded incredibly dangerous.

“Well okay,” I muttered, “but I really hope that isn’t Z for ‘Zoinks We Really Shouldn’t Have Trusted Her.’ Cuz boy would that be egg on our faces.” With that, I exchanged nods with Peyton while quickly typing a message to Eits, telling him to go ahead and trigger the Biolem countermeasures. He, of course, sent a message back asking if I had lost my mind and wanting to know what we were going to do about the other guys. After all, not only did we not have a third person to handle the hostage areas (as far as he knew), but we weren’t even anywhere near the rooms themselves. There wasn’t a camera in here, so he had no idea we had company.

Grimacing, I sent back a quick message, promising that I knew what I was doing. I simply added that we had help, and that that help had assured us it would be okay. Which, yeah, if this turned out badly, I really was going to feel like shit. Did we even know for certain this ‘Z’ was really from the Ministry? It could be some sort of trick, someone working with these guys, or… no, no, it wasn’t that. We had called those guys for help, and I remembered the whole Plan Z reference in those files. It would be a pretty big coincidence for this woman to claim that name while knowing we asked the Ministry for help. Besides, if she was working with these people there wouldn’t be any reason to show herself and go through all this. Her working with them would mean they knew we were here.

No, she was part of the Ministry. Which meant, in this case at least, we were on the same side. Holding that thought firmly in mind, I sent the assurance to Ryder while adding a little comment about that incredible lasagna we’d had the other day so he’d know it was really me.

After a few seconds, he sent back a thumbs up, along with a link back to the security camera footage, cycling through various scenes while a countdown starting from ten. As I held up my phone so the others could see, the misty, dark form of Z came a little closer. I was pretty sure that should have intimidated me, yet I felt oddly comforted. If she worked for the Ministry--if she was their final problem solver, this lady was obviously incredibly dangerous. But I didn’t feel endangered. I felt safe. And right at this particular moment, I seriously had no time to actually examine what that meant.

Speaking of no time, the countdown finished while all three of us were staring at it. As soon as it did, I heard some sort of faint humming noise go through the intercom system. It was almost imperceptible, just barely at the very edge of my perception. But the effect was instantly apparent. Two of the three guys on the screen in front of us collapsed, leaving the third guy to whirl and stare at them. The view shifted to the next camera in that moment, showing one guy down with two standing over him.

Right, our thing was working, but what about--

And then those two men suddenly recoiled, blood spurting from their throats. I had a view of them collapsing just before the camera shifted again, revealing three fallen figures all laying together, one with blood coming from a similar wound. Then we saw the inside of the gym, where all six guys were down, leaving confused and panicked hostages. The pool was the same story, as was the main office. Everywhere, every bad guy in part of the school, they were all down. The Biolems were disabled, and the humans, they were… they were…

“They’re dead,” Peyton blurted, her eyes snapping up toward Z accusingly. “You… you killed them.”

The woman’s voice was matter-of-fact. “They endangered innocents. They were going to murder every person in here. They willingly worked with people like Amanda Sanvers and Benjamin Pittman, according to you. Of course I killed them. Now they’ll never endanger anyone else again.”

“But how did you do that?” I found myself cutting in, the shock in my voice readily apparent even to my own ears. “You just--they were okay and then they… they just…”

The very simple-looking mouth on the woman’s shadowy face turned up in a faint smile. “I’m good at my job.” That was all she said, all she needed to say, really. Then she added, “Just as you are good at what you do. We all make the world go round in our own ways. I’m rather glad this city has people like you to protect it. I do what I can for certain problems, but my way can’t solve everything. You’re important too.”

There was… a lot I wanted to say to that, but now really wasn’t the time. Nor was it the time to focus on the fact that she had killed all those people. Sure, the thought made me feel queasy, especially for the part I’d played in it. But she wasn’t wrong about the fact that these guys had been threatening to kill a whole lot of people. I just… yeah, it was complicated and I really didn’t want to think about it right then.

Fortunately, I had a ready-made distraction so I wouldn’t have to. Those hostages were freaking out, especially the ones who were suspended over the pool. The whole thing had gone down too quickly for any of Cup’s people (or were they more Pittman’s people, was there a difference?) to cut the ropes, but those people were still losing their minds. And why not? After all, they’d literally just seen the guys who had taken them hostage keel over dead of apparently nothing. Whether it was the Biolems we had knocked out of commission, or the humans Z had… had… done whatever she did to, the people holding them prisoner had all just keeled over.

Yeah, maybe they weren’t exactly crying over the loss, but it still had to be pretty terrifying to witness. It was scary from here and I was just seeing the aftermath through the camera. Plus I’d been partially responsible for half of it! Just… just not the permanent part.

Either way, we had to go help them. I was already rising and turning to head for the door even as Eits continued blowing up my phone with a rush of messages asking what the hell had just happened and how. Instead of getting into it, I sent a quick text telling him to get out of the building before people came to investigate, and that I’d tell him exactly what happened later. After a brief hesitation, I sent another message, thanking him for everything and reiterating my promise to explain as much as I could as soon as I had a chance.

Alloy was right behind me. As we passed through the library beyond the server room and made it to the door leading into the hall, I looked over my shoulder to ask Z if she was going to help out with the cleanup. But, of course, she was gone. She’d disappeared as silently and mysteriously as she had arrived.

“That is one terrifying chick,” Peyton murmured, eyes clearly scanning the shadows in every corner of the library as though searching for any sign of her. “And umm, what exactly are we gonna tell people about what happened to those bodies? Or, hell, what the biolems even are.”

“I don’t know, we’ll figure it out,” I managed with a wince as the realization of just how much trouble this could be began to settle in. “But we’ve gotta help the hostages first.”

So, we ran to deal with that, passing a couple different… piles of bodies in the process. I wasn’t sure how many of them were dead and how many were simply disabled Biolems, and right then we didn’t have time to check. We just… we just had to make sure all those people made it out of here. Preferably without having to see any more bodies than they already had. As it was, I really did have no idea how we were ever going to explain any of what happened to the authorities. It was a lot.

On the way to the pool (we were going there first since those people were in the most danger, suspended over the water while being tied up like that), I called Paige, talking to her through the bluetooth. “It’s done!” I blurted while the two of us careened down the stairs and past another trio of fallen forms we were trying very hard to ignore. “They’re down, but don’t come in yet, we don’t know exactly what sort of defenses those guys might’ve set up. Just--just stay there.” Before Paige could argue, I gave her a roughly ten second explanation of what had happened. She was quiet when I mentioned Z showing up, and what the woman had done. Then she simply replied, “Good. Amanda and Pittman have enough of an advantage, taking away any resources from them is… it’s for the best.”

Before I had to try to find a response to that, Peyton and I made it through the locker rooms and to the pool. As soon as we arrived, I expected to hear the people suspended by the rope start shouting for help. But there was no shouting. Even more surprising, there were no hostages. None. They weren’t there. Nor were there any dead human bad guys or disabled Biolem ones. The pool area was empty. Everyone who had been there just a minute or two earlier were just… gone.

Peyton and I looked at one another, while Paige and Sierra demanded to know what was going on. Immediately, I took out my phone to check the security camera footage once more, since the link was still active even though Eits had taken off. Bit by bit, I checked each camera, only to see it was the same in all of them. Every single one of the hostages throughout the building were gone, as were all the bodies. The school was empty. It had been cleared out that quickly.

That was when a message came across the screen from one of the cameras. It simply read, ‘Thank you for your service, Avant-Guard. The bodies will be disposed of and the hostages will be returned to their homes without memory of these events. And I meant what I said, I do admire you. Good luck! - Z’