FORGERY . . . THE BOYS ! [1]

sixteen.

Brooke is left alone while the boys go hunt down Mindstorm. The Boys, they call themselves. The Boys. Payback. The Seven. So many silly groups led by men and their silly names, Brooke can hardly keep track.

At least one is about to be wiped off the planet.

Good riddance, Brooke thinks, sprawling herself out on the bed.

The Boys used something called a printer from something called a laptop to print all the blue internet links that Brooke found for her after using something called Google Translate on them. They were damn near unintelligible, English sentences tossed together like mad libs.

But.

They were something.

A start.

Brooke can handle a start while The Boys handled a murder. Or a torture. Or an interrogation? She had no idea.

She was hereby banished from attending after the last horrible incident where she charged up Soldier Boy in his already traumatized state and he exploded the orgy party. Banished like it was her fault.

It was not, mind you, but Butcher was insistent and Hughie was sympathetic and Ben was furious, furious that they were leaving her, but what could she do? It was true. True, against her will, but true.

Brooke is brave. She can stay in this unfamiliar place, introducing herself to things that Hughie tried to explain to her (again). He explained instant coffee makers and the HD televisions.

He did not explain that this Keurig was a variation of an instant coffee maker, but it was fine. It was totally fine. She was managing.

She was. She was managing just fine, not worrying over these broken Russian-to-English sentences, or the fact her husband was hunting down someone who could trap him in his broken mind and kill him, or the fact that Hughie was her friend and that his mind was completely and utterly susceptible to such tortures, and–

The coffee maker makes a fun little song, and Brooke actually jumped.

Maybe she wasn't fine.

Hughie luckily explained to her that the hotel phone was kind of like the phones she was used to, and wrote down Annie's phone number so that she had it on hand.

For emergencies, he said, though, after patting the hotel's notepad like it was a toddler's head, because it will kind of compromise our humble little abode.

But she's not our enemy. Brooke teased that line, asking without asking, trying to figure out why their little group was divided and if it was a group and how The Boys worked because The Boys seemed to be a little dysfunctional.

Hughie only sighed.

She did not, in fact, find out anything.

And she did not, in fact, care about compromising the abode when she dialed the phone number.

Annie picks up after a few rings. She sounds just as untrusting even without a face to pair the voice with. "Hello?"

"Annie?" Brooke asks.

"Who is this?"

Brooke wants to scoff, because her voice is completely recognizable. But it's not anymore. It's been forty years. "It's Rose Quartz."

Annie makes a disapproving noise, scratchier through the phone static. "Why are you calling– Where are you calling?"

"I'm at Sunnyside Motel. Room 2D." Butcher was likely to have words with her over this, but that wasn't her business. She felt like she was pitting two divorced parents in the same room, not like she was double crossing. "No one put me up to this. They're– They all left. I'm alone."

"They left you." If it was possible, Annie sounded even less trusting of her. "Why would they–"

In the background, Brooke hears, "Is that Rose Quartz?" It sounded like M.M. She focuses her hearing on it, especially because the phone muffles, like Annie covers the speaker.

"Yeah," she says. "Any idea why the hell she'd call?"

"No, but hand it over, I've got something."

"You've–"

An accented voice speaks up, one she hasn't heard since the fateful day she met any of these people. Brooke's eyebrows shoot up. "We are going to lose our heads for this."

"Rose Quartz?" M.M.'s voice comes in loud and clear, causing Brooke to yank the phone away from her ear in a jolt of pain. She lets go of the focused hearing, blinking off the shock.

"Hello, Mother," she says, stifling her own laughter. It's not funny. It's not! She just thinks it is. "I haven't seen you in a while."

M.M. snorts out a humorless laugh. "Thank fuck for that," he says, "but that's gotta change. Where did you say you were?"

"Sunnyside Motel, room 2D." She is playing with the loopy cord on the phone as she talks, her eyes roaming over to the scatter of papers on the table. "Why–"

"Got in contact with Grace Mallory. Before you say shit–"

She had already opened her mouth to say shit. Because what the fuck–

"She got me a location on your daughter. And some interesting information on her too that I'm gonna have to see you in person to tell you."

Brooke shakes her head, sitting up straighter on the edge of the bed. "No," she says, her voice trembling a little. "No, tell me now."

"See you soon." He hangs up the phone before Brooke can keep arguing, leaving her with her jaw dropped, the cord tangled between her fingers.

Her ears start to ring.

She thought that, while she had a start, it was closer to a dead end than it was a beginning but–

But now, in the pits of her chest, a string of hope is starting to extend itself down, down, down. Down into her heart. A flicker of candlelight is starting to come to burst again, threatening to stay lit, daring to, hoping it can.

Marvin Milk knows where her daughter is.

Marvin Milk knows something about her daughter.

Marvin Milk is coming to tell her.

She barely has the phone put back, barely has the papers stacked neatly, barely has a breath in her lungs after this realization, when the door is burst open.

A flash of worry goes through her, somehow thinking that they've found out she revealed their location to the part of the group they're fighting with. That is, until Brooke actually stops to look at the faces of the men walking through the door.

Butcher's face is his typical fury, but there's something a little sympathetic in it, which stops Brooke dead in her tracks.

Hughie stares at her in horror. Absolute, bone-chilling horror.

And Ben–

Ben looks haunted.

"What happened?" Her voice is just a breath, barely escaping her mouth before the air is snatching it away.

Ben blinks a few times, his eyes shuddering and his mouth trembling and his head shaking and everything shaking.

"He's mine, too."