Embers and Icicles

Chapter Six

Silver turned over the object in his hand. He scanned the view outside the window, though he knew it was too late to see anyone there. The door leading to the conjoined room was unlocked, but there hadn't been anyone in that room either. Strangely, between the two rooms there was only one suitcase.

It was when he was returning from casing the second room that he saw the glint of metal in the curtains. When he bent down to inspect, he found the earpiece, a little piece of tech that proved Jake's information had been spot on, as always. A faint siren sound rose from across the building. Before Silver could write it off as an ambulance, the sound spread, folding in on itself and increasing exponentially in volume. A fire right before his synth was about to abduct Helium? Convenient. For whom, he hadn't yet decided.

He drew cold to his hands and sprinted down the steps towards the main floor, where he could now hear shouting as bystanders fled the building. If this was the synth's diversion, they had done a great job. If not ... It better be the synth.

He reached the base of the staircase and could only stand and watch as the crowd stampeded by. So much for fire drills. Calm and quiet were the farthest thing from these people's behaviour. When the hoard had finally raced by, none of them so much as glancing at Silver lurking in the stairway above them, he was able to cross the now-empty area. He stepped past strewn garbage and belongings lost or left behind in the clamour, reaching the backstage area in a matter of seconds.

He walked into the back hallway just as the final alarm switched to silence, which almost rang louder in his ears. The quiet in the building left space for new sounds to crowd in, the people panicking out front and fire truck sirens blaring as they approached. The synth and Helium were nowhere to be seen, and neither was whoever the earpiece belonged to. Silver would have stuck around longer, but if the emergency response team found him lurking where the fire alarms went off, it wouldn't have been a good look for him.

Outside, the whole sky burned a little hazy, like smoke was blowing over it. The air was thick, and the clatter from in front of the hotel was having trouble breaking through it. Moisture hung heavy in the clouds stretching above. On paper, the tropical temperature and scorching sun peeking through the clouds made for the perfect lazy day, but Silver could feel something brewing.

A couple streets over, he heard a door clang shut. The sound was a wake-up call, spurring him to keep moving. It seemed unlikely that he would find the synth if they had disappeared into the mechanics of the city, and he still had the vigilantes to look out for. So far, all he had was an earpiece to prove that they had even been there. He spun around once, as if he was looking for something, but if he found it, his expression didn't so much as flicker.

The cameras backstage that the synth had shut off didn't turn back on. When the fire alarms started blaring, Slate had to assume Jenny, Helium, or the synth were to blame. He pulled up street views of the surrounding buildings, and opened them just in time to see a door clang shut at Jenny's exe's apartment. Since there was no chance Jenny would go back there for anything short of a crisis, he continued his hunt.

The streets behind the hotel were fairly empty, with everyone crowding the front. Slate watched the back exit open, but the camera viewing it went blurry before he could get a good view of the figure there.

It seemed like he was going to have to go down there and deal with the problem in person. He willed his electric face into an appropriately intimidating expression and took off, barely giving himself enough time to slip the gun from his boot to his pocket, where it was more easily accessible. He also tuned in to the elements around him, taking care to find the materials he could work with–titanium and diamond (or more accurately, the tetrahedrally formed carbon molecules) were his favourites, but in a pinch he could also use a little zirconium or, curiously, carbon fibre. Anything beyond that was a bit of a long shot.