Seeking Strays

I heard it long before I saw it. A pinball whizzed around a machine, creating a massive racket that broke over the sound of the arcade all around us. The ball slammed into the bumpers, and the buttons clicked constantly as the paddles flicked around the machine.

Lizzie stood over a pinball machine with her tongue sticking out in complete focus. Her hands flew across the buttons as lights flashed erratically. She didn’t even notice us until—

“Lizzie!” Beth darted past me and slammed into the other girl like a human missile. Her red hair flew everywhere with the sudden impact.

“Beth?!” Lizzie staggered away from the machine thanks to Beth’s forceful hug. Behind them, the pinball slipped between the paddles and disappeared down the point of no return. A peppy defeat tune played out.

“No! No, no, no!” Lizzie twisted out of the hug, and dashed back to the pinball machine. She clutched at the sides of it as her score popped up. “I was so close! The high score was right there!”

“B-but… we’ve been looking all over for you.” Beth backed away from her friend with a pained expression.

Lizzie froze as tickets poured out of the ticket slot. Her eyes darted between me and Quinn, then dropped down onto Beth, Tracy, and Robert. The frustration drained out of her. “Sorry.”

“I-It’s okay.” Beth rubbed at the crook of her elbow uncertainly.

Lizzie shrank back at the obvious hurt in her friend’s voice, and looked between me and Quinn. “W-who are you?”

”Guardian Tidebreak.” Quinn stepped past the other kids, and waved to me. “And my Canary, Reyna. We’re here to extract you kids.”

Her eyes widened. For a split second, relief washed across her face and she relaxed. Then her eyes dropped to the tickets hanging from the pinball machine. “I can’t leave yet.”

Quinn squinted at her. “Uh yeah, you can.”

”No, you don’t understand!” Lizzie snatched the strand of tickets, and stuffed them into her pocket. “I’m almost there.”

”How close?” I asked, though it didn’t really matter.

”3,568.” She wasn’t even halfway there. There was no telling how many more hours she’d be stuck here playing games. How many more blackouts she’d try to survive all by herself for that small, desperate chance of getting enough tickets.

“Tracy and I got 2,899,” Beth said. She flicked her red hair over her shoulder when all of us looked at her. “What? We were trying, okay? Neither one of us is particularly skilled.”

“I have a few too.” Robert shrugged. “I didn’t play the right kinds of games, though. S-sorry, Lizzie.”

”It doesn’t matter.” Quinn directly cut through the heart of the matter. “We’re leaving.”

”But together we almost have enough!” Lizzie threw her hands into the air. Hope was starting to well up once more. “W-we just need to play a little longer—“

”No. We’re not doing this.” Quinn’s halo burned a brighter blue behind her head, and more steel entered her voice. “You dragged your friends into a murder arcade, there’s something hunting us whenever the lights go out, and there’s no telling how long it’ll take to get enough. We’re leaving.”

”But you’re a Guardian! How can you just leave people to die? If all six of us play some games, it’ll barely even take any time.” Lizzie took a step back, and looked like she was about to bolt. “My mom needs—“

”Needs you back home safe in Silverport.” I cut her off as my tail twitched in irritation. “What would she think knowing you came here? What would she think if you died here?”

“You—you guys are asking me to leave and sacrifice the only chance I have of saving my mom.” The girl’s voice grew more and more venomous with each passing second. “How can you get that and still ask me to leave? Are you even human?”

“‘Cause we’re responsible for getting the four of you home alive.” Quinn put her foot down again.

”My mom could die!” She cried out in despair. Her voice dropped down to a low whisper. “She c-could die…”

”I know—“

”No you don’t!” Her voice cracked, and tears started to gather under her eyelids. “You don’t know anything. The doctors can’t fix her. They keep trying things, and none of it ever works! She’s getting worse and worse. But there’s a real cure here!”

I swallowed thickly. I could see where she was coming from, obviously. She wasn’t wrong about a cure being here. I’d used the Healing Salve myself. For however awful this place was, the rewards given were real. “Lizzie…”

”You’re asking me to just leave it here.” The girl’s face scrunched in despair as tears flowed down her cheeks. “How am I supposed to just go home and watch her get worse when I could’ve done something?”

My tail curled low around my ankle. If it was Sylvie… Pyre, I already had the answer, didn’t I? I’d spend every waking moment playing games until my fingers bled.

”And so you’d die for that? You’d get your friends killed for that?”

”Quinn.” She was still just a thirteen-year-old girl at the end of the day.

”What?” The Guardian looked away from Lizzie, and glanced at me in annoyance. She got what I was saying, but looked just as irritated that I spoke up about it. “Someone needs to say it.”

“Yeah, maybe. Not like that, though.” I shook my head, and crouched down in front of Lizzie. She refused to look at me. “Hey, Lizzie. I get it.”

”No you don’t.” Her red eyes finally met mine.

”Yeah, yeah I do.” I sighed as my ears drooped slightly. “If it was someone I loved, I’d do the same thing. You aren’t stupid for trying to save your mom, nor are you wrong—“

”Well,” Quinn coughed lightly behind me. She shrugged when we all looked back at her. “A little wrong. This is still a Harbor black site.”

”But Quinn’s right about one thing.” I shot my Guardian an annoyed look as I wiped the tears off of Lizzie’s face. “You can’t keep playing. Every minute you stay here is another minute you endanger yourself and the rest of us.”

”It’s not fair.” She clutched at me and started to cry fully. “It’s not fair!”

”No…” I said quietly as she cried into my shoulder. I’d been finding myself in this situation way too often lately. “No it isn’t.”

The satchel hanging from my shoulder felt incomparably heavy as she wept. I had 855,431 tickets. It was more than enough to buy the cure. That wasn’t the problem, though. The problem was the containment team once we got out of here. “Quinn…”

Tidebreak looked down at me with narrowed eyes. “No.”

”I haven’t said anything yet.” I patted Lizzie’s back as she tried to get ahold of herself once more.

”You don’t have to,” she said. Suspicion leaked through her eyes. “Your crime face is showing.”

”I definitely don’t have a crime face.” Was she crazy? What the hell even was a crime face? I was a career criminal and I’d never been accused of that before.

”You definitely do, Reyna. It’s a step below your plotting face.” Quinn rubbed a hand down her cheek. She didn’t say anything for a moment, and just looked at me. “Even if we got it, Harbor’s containment team would just confiscate it.”

Lizzie crumpled against me, and started sobbing even harder. She once more lost all hope in saving her mother. I shot a glare at Quinn, and continued to soothingly stroke the girl’s back. “I know that… we could get it by, though.”

”And break the law, Reyna? Really?” Quinn just raised a brow. Her denial didn’t even last a minute. “It’s not impossible…”

Lizzie perked up, and she tried to get her sniffling under control. She pulled away from me, and rubbed her nose against her sleeve. “It’s not?”

“You’ll have to cooperate with us, though. We’re leaving. Between all of us, we have enough for the cure.” Quinn put down the girl’s worries before she could voice them again. “Okay?”

”I… okay.” Lizzie wiped furiously at her eyes, and looked around at her friends. “I-I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you guys here into this mess.”

”We chose this.” Robert spoke for all three, and moved around to give her an awkward side-hug. He handed over his tickets while he was at it. “Here.”

“Yeah,” Beth muttered. She likewise handed over her tickets. Lizzie was starting to gather a sizable sum. “We came here for you, girl.”

”You guys…” Lizzie looked like she was about to start breaking into tears once more. It made my heart throb for her.

Tracy wrapped her arms around the girl. “You didn’t drag us into anything.”

”Except serious trouble,” I muttered softly. All four of them looked back at me. My ear flicked in annoyance. “What? You did break into a Harbor black site. I’m sympathetic, but that doesn’t make me delusional.”

Quinn chuckled and shook her head. “Speaking of which, how’d a thirteen-year-old girl get access to a restricted Harbor facility?”

Lizzie’s shoulders tensed up, and she wrung her hands together. “I… I met a guy at the hospital.”

My ears perked up, and I stood back up to my full height. My tail stilled behind me. “What guy?”

”I-I don’t know. He talked to me while my mom was having surgery.” She swallowed, and looked up to us with an earnest expression. “He said there was something here that could cure her.”

Quinn and I shared a look, and her jaw tensed slightly. ”So you managed to bypass the security of this place?”

“N-no. He sold me a Harbor security badge.” She pulled a laminated badge out of her pocket, and offered it to us. “For a thousand credits.”

”Only a thousand?” This kind of thing could’ve sold for much, much more than that. Giving her the badge for free would’ve just made it look unbelievable, though… I grabbed the badge from her, and looked it over. It was for a Dr. Hovland. “What did this guy look like?”

”I…” The kid’s brows furrowed, and she shook her head. “I can’t remember?”

”You can’t remember?” I echoed her. An unsettling sensation started to rise inside of me. How could she not remember?

“I mean, I remember talking to him and all of that.” Lizzie pressed a hand to her forehead. Her eyes scrunched tightly. “I just… I can’t remember his face?”

Well, that wasn’t ominous at all. Not one bit. An unknown man selling an access card to a Harbor black site was already cause for concern enough. What was even the point, though? I could see selling to a gang or something, but to a thirteen year old kid? The only thing she had going for her was desperation.

My tail stretched out straight. “Was he a doctor there? Patient? Guest?”

“I-I don’t know. I think he was a guest? He might’ve been a patient, though.” Lizzie looked more and more confused by the moment.

There was something deeply, deeply wrong about this whole situation. It was like someone targeted this poor, thirteen-year-old girl. What kind of monster would do that? “Do you remember when?”

”No.” I guess I should’ve seen that answer coming. She didn’t leave me totally out to dry, though. “But my bank account should have the transaction marked down, I think. We were just outside of the surgery room.”

That gave me a time and a place to find this bastard. I could access the hospital’s entry records and cameras with my authority. From there, I should be able to hunt him down. There was just one thing I still didn’t understand, though. “Did you tell him about your mom?”

“Um… no. He just seemed to know.” Lizzie frowned like she was starting to see the same problem as I was. “Did… did he target me?”

“We’ll deal with it later.” Quinn seemed to be thinking the same thing as me. If he did it in the hospital, there was probably cameras too. We’d find this guy. “For now, we need to get out of here before the next blackout.”

”Yeah… yeah.” I pushed away my hunter instincts, and shook my head. We’d have more than enough time to find this person once we were out of here. “I have no idea where the exit is, though.”

“I-I know where it is.” Lizzie raised her hand into the air. She shifted around from foot to foot. “I saw it not that long ago. It’s a big pillar in the middle of the arcade. I-I can take us there.”

Finally, some good news. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too much longer now until we were all back safe and sound in Silverport. “Lead the way.”

———

AN: I started work on a new cover. Dunno if I’ll actually end up using it. I’ll try to throw it up here at some point when I’m done.