Chum

I hope nobody believes that I'm fast enough to outrun a racing dog, because they'd be sorely mistaken.

Greyhounds and I have a very fraught relationship. My dad got a retired racing greyhound when I was, what, eight or nine? Then, it bit me like a week later because I was a stupid little kid and I was bothering it, so we sent it back to the adoption center or whatever. I have not exactly been the biggest fan of this exact dog breed ever since - not enough that I'd call it a phobia, but they definitely put me on edge. Greyhounds and German shephards, but that's another story.

Anyway, no, I can't outrun a greyhound.

I especially can't outrun a greyhound that's twice as big as a normal one, with a legspan to match. There's no fight. It's over in less than half a second, as Scylla tackles me to the ground, growling, teeth bared at my neck but not striking. It doesn't take long for waiters and waitresses to take note of the commotion around booth #12, for security guards to surround us, and for the party to continue uninterrupted below, Scylla's barks drowned out by the eardrum-breakingly loud music beneath us.

She's easily over a hundred pounds, maybe a hundred and twenty, pinning me down with the same expert precision that I've been learning to apply to other humans via Rampart - her paws on my elbows, her lower body bent down and on top of my stomach. Guns click surrounding us, while Jordan raises their hands.

"This is bad," I wheeze out with the last of my breath.

A bead of sweat forms at Jordan's forehead, and I notice perhaps a little late that as they were raising their hands, they pulled… Something out of their pocket. It takes a couple of seconds for me to actually catch it, to resolve the image, not helped by the disgusting dog breath in my face, distracting me every time I try to think about something else.

It's the prop gun. From the Halloween party. Jordan, what are you planning?

"Drop the weapon!" one of the security guards shouts, although right now, directions are sort of nonexistent to me.

"Stand down, fellers. We've got this handled," The red-clothed woman says, raising a hand as she stands up from her seat on the couch and makes her way over to Jordan and I. "You two, you know how the boss feels about getting minors involved."

Mrs. X sighs. "This is self-defense, they're coming to us."

Mr. T just rolls his neck until it pops.

The woman in red raises an eyebrow, taking control of the situation with an air of unmistakable authority. If there's someone high up on the ladder here, it's her - everyone is deferring to her instructions. Then, she turns to Jordan. I don't wiggle an inch out from under Scylla. I know how dogs bite. "What's that you got there, girl?"

"Is this a good time to point out that I'm not a girl?" Jordan says, their face twitching.

The woman in red smiles an almost sympathetic smile. "Sure. Good a time as any. Answer my question."

Jordan's face twists upwards in an expression I've come to know - the face they make when they're lying. Something that I can only find with a bit of effort most times, it comes naturally to Jordan, as naturally as breathing. "This is my Graviton Beam Emitter. I built it myself using my powers. If you damage it or try to grab it out of my hands, it will turn into a black hole and kill everyone in this building. It will disintegrate anything I point it at."

Mrs. X gasps, covering her mouth with a hand. I can just tell from the noise that she totally bought it.

The woman in red, just barely visible from where I'm laying on the catwalk, puts her hands on her hips. "I don't believe you. Is there a way you can non-lethally demonstrate so I can know if we're in a real Mexican Standoff or not?"

Despite myself, I resist the urge to laugh. My chest shakes a little bit, and Scylla bends down, sniffs my neck, and then growls again. A silent threat in dog-language - move, and I'll kill you.

All eyes on Jordan. "Make clear, throw that cigar box in the air, and I'll show you,"

Mr. T lets out a growl. I can't see what face he's making, but I can just hear his nostrils flaring, and I already have a pretty good idea of what Jordan is going to pull. If escape isn't possible, we're going to need to talk our way out, and the fact that Crossroads hasn't said anything since his previous warning to run makes me… well, not hopeful, but I think if intervention was going to come it would've come already. Or maybe Jordan's cynicism is rubbing off on me.

The woman in red grabs the cigar box and throws it up at an arc that would make it land on me in about two seconds. At the apex of its arc, Jordan aims their prop gun at it and pulls the trigger. There's a soft, charging whine, followed by some sort of dense, mechanical thunk, and as Jordan imitates kickback and recoil, pretending to stumble backwards, the cigar box simply vanishes in mid-air. Totally gone. "Shunted off somewhere perpendicular to 3d space", Jordan explained it to me once.

"What the--" Mr. T shouts out. I hear the discordant chorus of all the security guards taking a step back slightly out of sync with each other. Or most of them, anyway.

"I'm a young kid. Duh. You all have relationships, people you love, and a place in your organization of choice. I've got jack shit, I'm only here to rob you guys and I have very little to lose. So let's not do anything stupid, because even if you all kill me, I can just vanish at least one of you without a trace, like you were never there. There won't be any bodies to mourn," Jordan snarls, bringing the gun down to bear against Mr. T… then one of the security guards, and then Scylla.

"STOP!" Mrs. X shouts. "Don't you dare hurt my dog. I will gut you like a salmon."

"Don't worry. It's totally painless. They're there one second, and then their molecules are totally disincorporated the next. Are we all feeling a little more pliant now?" Jordan threatens, keeping it pointed at Scylla. I know that Jordan's powers don't affect living things, but do they? That's the million dollar question.

The red-clothed woman bends down and gently nudges Scylla off of me. The gigantic dog doesn't move too much - still "on top" of me - but now the pads of her fingers, through her fingerless gloves, are pressed against my neck. I feel my heartbeat beginning to stutter. "What about this one? What's your game, girl?"

"I'm just along for the ride," I lie.

She laughs. My blood feels like sludge in my veins. I watch Jordan's hands tense up, and so does she. "Do you value her life? Because we can kill her, too."

"Only slightly more than mine," Jordan replies.

"I like this one," Mr. T calls from the corner. "I like her style."

"His." The red-clothed woman corrects. "We can at least be polite while we're threatening to kill people. You know how he feels about professionalism."

"Swing and a miss again. I don't care about professionalism and I'm not a he," Jordan taunts.

"Is this really the time to be doing the gender thing?" I blurt out.

Jordan stares daggers at me, and I feel my body shrinking up. Scylla's teeth get a little bit closer to my neck. My heart feels like it's going so much slower than it should be - I have a headache, and I feel light-headed. Tired. My breathing gets heavier.

I'm not having an emotional reaction to Jordan. Well, I am, but more than that… something's slowing down my heart. My entire body is struggling, and I'm steadily losing muscle tone. "Shut the fuck up, Sarah. I wouldn't have brought you if I knew you were going to be such a fucking thorn in my side."

Mr. T laughs while I start to huff for air. "Sorry. Can't breathe."

I don't correct Jordan, partially because I can tell what they're doing, and partially because my thoughts are getting steadily fuzzier and fuzzier with every passing second. I feel my eyes wobbling in their sockets. My entire body is soaking through with sweat, and my fingers are twitching. The woman in red gets up from her position knelt by my side and gently dusts her hands. "I wasn't referring to you with the professionalism comment. Your friend Sarah is now in bradycardia. That means her heart rate is extremely low, and by the time it recovers she'll risk permanent brain damage. You should've shot me when you had the chance."

Jordan's hands clench the prop gun tighter, swinging it towards the woman in red. My heart beats through jello. Permanent brain damage? That sounds bad, to say the least. Can I even regenerate that? I miss my mom. And my dad. The air feels thin in between my teeth, as I keep my lips curled over them to avoid revealing my most distinguishing feature. "Fucker," they hiss.

"How did… this dog… get so fucking big…" I wheeze, to no response.

"Are you willing to sacrifice your friend for your score?" The woman in red asks, sitting on booth #12's table. She grabs for the cigar box, looks back, and notices that it is missing with a wry smile. She forgot. It's a funny little bit.

"We're barely friends. She's just some bitch in homeroom that caught me selling and blackmailed me to come with. I could give less of a shit," Jordan replies, fingers tense, white-knuckle.

"Thanks, Dylan," I hiss, making up a new name for Jordan on the spot.

She pulls out a cigarette from her pocket, and then that heavy metal lighter she lent to Mr. T earlier. She lights up, and the smell of menthol cigarettes fills the air. I glance around, just to make sure we're still surrounded by security guards. We are! What a surprise. "Alright. Normally, we're not supposed to kill kids, so I'll give you two a chance to make it out of here unscathed. First, you need to tell me how you knew where we were."

"I beat the shit out of Aaron McKinley and he told me that you guys did your business here. Not, like, any specific names, just that the guys that he gave a cut to were in Crescent. From there it was just elbow grease and process of elimination," Jordan replied, throwing someone neither of us liked under the bus.

"Aaron?" I asked, confused, like the revelation that he was giving money to someone else was new to me. Wait, it is. Hold on, is that actually even true, or is Jordan just lying to throw them off? It's getting harder and harder to tell, and my heart is struggling, pumping extra hard every one and a half seconds or so to try and squeeze all the blood through my veins at once.

"Not a thing you were privy to," Jordan answers.

My heart starts beating faster, harder. I will it to. I clench my fingers, digging my nails into my palms to try and wake myself up with pain. The sharp, painted points drive down into my palms, and I squeeze as hard as I can, like drawing blood from a stone. After a couple of seconds, I can tell that I've succeeded, because my own vascular system suddenly comes into sharp relief in my mind's eye. I squeeze, and squeeze, and squeeze, and my heart tries valiantly to start itself back up.

"That little fucking snake, I knew he was useless. Gonna have to pay him a visit," I hear Mr. T mutter, presumably talking about Aaron.

"So you figured you would rob the guys that the neighborhood badass was working under, with just you and a schoolmate and your new powers, and you thought that would go well for you? In the middle of a crowded nightclub?" The woman in red challenges, cracking her knuckles. I hate this. I hate feeling like a bystander. I grit my teeth together. I bite my tongue until I taste blood, trying to wake my heart back up.

"Well, when you lay it out all like that, it sounds kinda stupid, yeah," Jordan replies, laughing bitterly. Their finger tenses around the trigger, and the woman in red's eyes narrow. "But now that you mention a boss-man, I kind of want to meet him. Consider me your free penetration testing. I show you that your super secret club can be infiltrated by two reasonably clever high schoolers, and instead of killing me, you give me some hush money and let me work for your gang."

"You're clever?" I ask, swallowing blood. "Also, I have to spit. Can you please make sure this dog does not maul me?"

Jordan points the prop gun at Scylla. I hear Mrs. X shifting, her tiny voice calling out. "Scylla… stay calm, darling."

I hawk a glob of bloody saliva at the woman in red's ankle, just barely catching her by the hem. I feel my little tracker instantly latching onto the cloth, while Scylla presses her snout against my neck, teeth out, scraping them against my skin. Mr. T starts laughing hysterically, a deep, booming cackle that almost feels like it's making the ground shake.

"Got you." He says on my behalf. My heart revs back up to sixty, maybe seventy beats per minute. I think if I keep hurting myself like this, squeezing the blood out of my palms, wiping it, scraping it against the black-painted catwalk.

"Mrs. X, if you could kindly order Scylla rip this girl's throat--" "Don't you fucking dare, I will obliterate this mutt." Jordan cuts in, taking a step back. "I don't care if you ventilate me. But you care about this dog. I will make sure if you hurt Sarah, you will regret it."

"Mrs. H…" Mrs. X whines, like a sad dog herself. "Don't let them hurt my baby girl!"

"You know, once they reach twenty years old, you really shouldn't be allowed to call them baby girls anymore." The woman in red - Mrs. H - cracks. She takes another puff of her cigarette. "Code of conduct, section one, rule number five. No minors: Recruitment or involvement of individuals under 18 in any operation is strictly prohibited. Section one, rule number two. Discretion: All operations, discussions, and internal affairs shall remain confidential. Disclosing any information to outsiders is strictly prohibited."

"Dogs don't live that long," I point out, trying to pretend that I'm still delirious.

"Correct!" Mrs. X shouts, sounding extremely proud of herself.

"Whatever you two are doing up there, keep it up. Everything went calm very, very fast." Crossroads' voice hisses in our ears. Jordan doesn't even seem to acknowledge it.

"Mad science, bitch!" Mrs. X cheers, with Mrs. H mouthing her words mockingly, bobbing her head, like this is a phrase she's heard from Mrs. X a million times before.

"Okay, so, you turn off people's hearts. You do mad science. And you… Something about dinosaurs?" Jordan guesses, pointing the prop gun towards Mr. T.

He doesn't respond, other than a gutteral little grunt.

"He turns into a T-Rex," I wheeze. "Context clues."

Mrs. X mentioned a couple of minutes ago that he's "not people 20% of the day" and that they didn't know if "her powers worked on Tyrannosaurus Rex specimens". The reason it's not him summoning them or whatever is that she mentioned him donating himself to science. I think this process is called 'deductive reasoning', and I feel very smart for doing it.

"Clever girl," He confirms, cracking up a little. Jordan, despite themselves, can't help but laugh.

"Mrs. Heartstopper, Mr. T-Rex, and Mrs. Xeno-something. Come on. A teenager is dismantling your whole veil of secrecy. You guys should be embarassed. You even have theme names," Jordan taunts them again.

"Don't blame me," Mr. T-Rex(?) grunts, sitting back down on the couch. "I'm getting bored. Can you kill them yet?"

"I thought you weren't allowed to kill kids?" Jordan asked, hands shaking.

I reach down, quietly unbuttoning my pants. Silently moving the zipper down, inch by inch. I nudge my shoes out, so that my ankles are hanging loose from my sneakers. It'll make sense in a second.

"Sure," Mrs. Heartstopper(?) says, reaching down to grab me by the throat. "I mean, we shouldn't, but I don't think anyone will think twice if two drunk teens got heart failure in the bathroom stall. We're definitely not allowed to recruit kids, and we're not allowed to kill civvies, but you put your nose in our business, so…"

I take a deep breath.

There are eight security guards around us, all of them with guns, arranged roughly in a 3/4 circle formation, with the remaining quarter being the booth. They can't actually fire at us without risking shooting one another or hitting someone on the floor below, which I'm sure is extremely undesirable. Then, there's Mrs. Xeno-whatever and Mr. T-Rex. Scylla seems to be her power, and there's absolutely no way, if his power really is turning into a Tyrannosaurus Rex, that he's allowed to use it inside. Imagine the scandal - dozens of partygoers crushed by sudden spontaneous dinosaur manifestation.

Scylla is the wild card here. Besides being an extremely large, and apparently, extremely old, well-trained attack dog, I have no idea if there's anything else special there. Mrs. Heartstopper has to get close to me to turn off my heart, and touch me for a while, which means I have an opportunity to attack. I run calculations in my head, trying to figure out angles, albeit not in, like, a Sherlock Holmes way. More of an impulse way, like running through my dictionary of approaches taught through weeks of drills and considering which way of getting up from the ground would put me least at risk of being turned into swiss cheese.

Then, a cigar box appears mid-air, vertically stacked with another - three - seven - fifteen - even more duplicates, before I lose count.

Everything after that happens in slow motion.