Serve and Protect

Chapter 44

Adora and her friends stood on the sidewalk, staring up at a swanky downtown hotel.

"Wait," Bow said, "aren't we supposed to be meeting Scorpia's moms? Why are we at a hotel?"

"We need a command center." Catra said, shifting from one foot to the other.

Bow tipped his head. "But wouldn't it have been easier to meet at the Black Garnet offices?"

"Prime might have someone planted in the newsroom," Adora explained. "We can't risk this getting back to him."

"I love it!" Glimmer was nearly vibrating with excitement. "I feel like I'm in a spy movie."

For all intents and purposes, Adora should have been excited too. After all, they were meeting with Scorpia's moms to finalize their plan, and there were few things Adora enjoyed more than a strategy session.

But instead, Adora was anxious. Her stomach tossed and pitched knowing that this plan revolved around putting Catra directly in harm's way. Instinctively, she reached out and looped her arm around Catra's and held her close to her side.

"Come on," she said with false confidence, "let's do this."

The four of them filed through the hotel's rotating doors and across the polished lobby floor to the elevators. When the elevator doors slid open and they shuffled inside, Adora double checked the text she'd received from Scorpia earlier that day.

"Twelve," she said to Glimmer, who gave the appropriate button a quick jab. Soft lounge music filled the elevator, smothering the nervous silence of its riders with a soothing melody and an easy beat. With each floor light that flashed above the brushed bronze doors, Adora knew they were creeping ever closer to an ending. Though whether that ending would be the one Adora hoped for was impossible to know; a fact that she found both exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time.

A cheerful ding announced their arrival to the fifth floor. When the doors opened, the friends found Scorpia waiting for them.

"You made it," she said, her broad shoulders slumping with unmistakable relief. "C'mon, we're down here." They followed Scorpia down the hall and around a corner to a corner room door. She scanned her keycard and stepped aside so the others could file in before her. Once they were all securely inside, she slid the security lock into place.

"Woah," Adora whispered, gazing around what seemed more like an apartment than a hotel room. "This place is huge!"

Catra carefully extricated her arm from Adora's grip. "Like I said: it's our command center."

In the middle of that command center was a dining table that Entrapta and one of Scorpia's moms were busy transforming into an elaborate work station filled with monitors and harddrives connected to laptops and headsets. A tangle of cables spilled onto the floor and snaked outward to various outlets, like an estuary of rivers seen from above.

Scorpia's other mother motioned for them to join her in the sitting area, where she had already laid claim to a chic armchair in the corner.

"We're just about ready on our end," she said as Adora and her friends settled onto the sofa. Adora couldn't help but notice the way her eyes followed Catra's every move, watching her as though she were appraising her readiness for what lay ahead. "Have you figured out your angle yet?"

Everyone looked at Catra expectantly. The plan, as decided in that cramped corner booth, wasn't particularly sophisticated: Catra—sporting a clandestine streaming camera and mic—would meet with Prime under the guise of wanting to get back to work now that she had been given a clean bill of health. The tricky part would be getting Prime to incriminate himself, and that was the "angle" Scorpia's moms had tasked them with figuring out.