It takes Skye a few seconds to process Constantine is waiting for her response. Through her panic, she forces the words out. “I – I’m not Nigel, you’re right. I’m so sorry, I–” The words feel insincere coming from Nigel’s own voice. Yet again, Skye chokes down disgust at the feeling of wearing someone else’s skin.

Constantine sighs deeply. “Look, I hate being the bad cop here. I’m sorry if it came off like an interrogation.” He lifts his hands in the air, well away from his brightly colored plastic gun. “See? I don’t want to hurt you. When I ask what you’ve done with Nigel, I genuinely just want to know. We can file a report or whatever needs to happen after we talk this out.”

Filing a report would just be a roundabout way of getting captured. Though less immediately terrified, Skye is still very much on edge. “Alright. Right. Sorry. Nigel is okay. He – hang on, are we being recorded?”

“Yeah, but nobody’s going to watch the footage until tonight at the earliest.” Constantine nods his helmet in the direction of a camera. “He’s alright, then?”

“Sorry. Yes, he is.”

“You don’t have to say sorry so much.”

“Okay. Sorry. Er-” Skye pauses, trying to ignore the feeling of taking up space. “He’s fine. He said he wanted to quit Omni entirely, and gave me his Changer in confidence. I asked him not to tell anyone just yet, so that I could attend today’s meeting and learn your broader goals.”

Constantine nods thoughtfully, leaning against the doorframe – still blocking the only exit, but clearly no longer fixing for a fight. “I see. So you are Sky Horizon in disguise, then, right?”

In for a penny, in for a pound. “That’s exactly right. I wanted to know why you’ve been trying to capture me – no offense meant, but you haven’t exactly been the most forthcoming on why your squad was hunting me down.”

Constantine barks a single laugh. “None taken! Bossman has this obsession with holding all the cards. So your story is – and I’m not saying I believe you just yet – you wanted to know why we’re taking potshots at you, and so you took that opportunity when Nigel wanted to leave.”

“Yes. I… regret taking this course of action, in hindsight.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Constantine looks her up and down, taking in her posture. “What did Nigel say, exactly? When he handed you his changer.”

“Well…” Think back. Focus. Ignore all distractions. “He said he ‘couldn’t take’ wearing this suit. That it was ‘a nightmare’. So he would rather quit than deal with it any further.” Was there anything else? “Uh… and that they monitor your emails and calls, so he couldn’t reach out to us save in person.” Constantine doesn’t look convinced – is there anything else Nigel said? “...He told me to tell ‘Cee’ that he’s sorry?”

Constantine flinches like he was shot, before leaning back against the wall, burying his masked face in his hands. “God. I knew it. That sentimental idiot…” After a quiet moment, Constantine turns his attention back to Skye. “He would ask you to do that for him. He and I are going to have words over this later… But in the meantime, alright, yeah. I believe you. And what’s more, I believe that Nigel trusted you.” Deflated, Constantine slouches against the table that Skye’s documents are sitting on.

Skye finally lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. “Thank you for believing me.” An idea takes root in her mind. Would he maybe… “Are you interested in defecting yourself, too? I could help keep you safe.”

Constantine takes a long, reluctant look at her. His expression is hidden behind his visor, making his thoughts unknowable.

Skye takes the risk of taking a step forward. “Please.” She extends a trembling, massive hand.

Constantine looks down to the hand, then back to her mask. Finally, he shakes his head slowly. “Appreciate it, but no. Unlike certain people, I take my job seriously, and I can put up with the downsides, so I’m not about to quit early.” He straightens up, blue armor glinting faintly in the fluorescent lights from overhead.

Immediately, Skye drops into a fighting stance, memories of Bianca flooding her head. “I really, really don’t want to fight.”

“Oh! Oh, no, me neither.” Constantine waves his hands. “Plus, I owe you for helping my – my friend quit a job he hated. So here’s what’s going to happen.” Lifting an arm, he points at one of the printers lined up against the wall. “It turns out, that printer ran out of ink earlier, and I need to go to the supply closet to get another cartridge. I’m obligated to report any unlicensed activities, of course, but for the five minutes or so it’ll take to get that ink cartridge loaded, my hands are gonna be full. And it’s not like I can take these with me,” he continues, pushing forward the documents Skye printed, “So I’ll just have to leave them here. And, of course, if I run into any intruders after that,” He locks his vision on Skye. “Then I would have to do as my contract demands and detain them – by force, if necessary. Got it?”

“Got it.” Skye promptly gets moving, snapping up the documents as she steps past Constantine. At the doorway, she turns back. “Thank you, Constantine.”

He looks away, grumbling. “Clock’s ticking, kid.”

No sense wasting time. Immediately Skye is charging for the elevator bay, power-walking like her life depends on it – for all she knows, it may well be the case. Jamming her finger against the pad over and over, she breathes a sigh of relief when a downwards elevator arrives – only to be replaced by panic when it’s full to brimming with people heading out for lunch. Carefully, she squeezes in, nodding politely at the coworkers who acknowledge her as Omni Black.

Floor fourteen. Two minutes four seconds have passed.

Floor twelve. Two minutes twelve seconds have passed.

Floor eight. Someone is slow getting on. Two minutes forty-five seconds have passed.

Floor seven. Two minutes fifty seconds have passed.

Floor five. Three minutes eight seconds have passed.

Floor two. Three minutes twenty-nine seconds have passed.

Floor one. Stuck near the back of the elevator as she is, and considerably larger and brawnier than most other passengers (Ignore it. Ignore it. Ignore it.) Skye is one of the last ones off, stuck looking back and forth in the lobby. There. The entrance. Skye scans her way past the turnstile, steps into the lobby–

Her heart stops. Pamela is there, standing in front of the main entrance, still in her bright pink suit. “You’re signing out for the day already, Black? You do realize that failing to spend time in the office is a punishable offense, yes?”

Skye fumbles for a response. “Look, I really don’t-”

“Indeed you don’t.” Pamela cuts her off, tapping a foot. “You don’t come into the office, you don’t contribute during meetings, you’re nowhere to be found on patrols. If you’re truly so uncommitted to our initiative, the least you could do is resign so that your tools can go to someone who cares about them. To say nothing of-”

A sudden loud noise makes her jump, stopping her sentence cold. The alarms blare overhead, announcing an intruder’s presence. Looking behind her, Skye can already see a team of security guards gathering – looking in her direction. Do they already know where she is?

“An intruder?” Pamela sounds more frustrated than surprised. “Well, whatever. Come on. We can talk about your truancy after we’ve squashed this pest.” It’s a moment before Skye realizes that she’s talking to her – thinks that she’s part of the security team.

Skye checks her vitals – power output is at 43% of what she’d have in her own suit. No way can she handle both Pamela and Constantine at once, and if Constantine sees her with Pamela, he’ll be left with no choice but to detain her.

“Nigel.” Pamela snaps her gloved fingers in Skye’s face. “Come on. You can run home after this is handled.” The entrance is blocked. The offices are full of hostiles. On either side of her are doors, leading into the cafe… or the warehouse.

Wordlessly, thoughtlessly, Skye breaks into a run, sprinting gracelessly for the warehouse, nearly tripping from her longer strides, battering past the “closed” sign and smashing through the door. She doesn’t hear footsteps behind her – Pamela isn’t following her. Once she’s deep enough in, she leans against a rack of supplies, panting. With the lack of immediate danger, she looks around, trying to get her bearings.

Way back in the day, before they got into alternative power sources, Omni was a consumer electronics manufacturer with their fingers in all sorts of different industries. To quote Kit, it wasn’t dissimilar to how Yamaha makes instruments, golf clubs, and car parts all at once. Apparently, though the demand leveled off, it never quite died out – so Skye finds herself leaning against a shelf full of boxed electric toothbrushes. Teethbrush? That’s a question for once she’s home and out of this horrible, awful suit.

Carefully, Skye hauls herself to her feet, looking for any kind of “exit” sign overhead. No immediate luck… just shelves and shelves as far as the eye can see. Looking each way for security, she wanders the stocks, eyes peeled for any kind of garage.

Another set of steps on the floor makes her jump. Holding very still, she peers around the next shelf, looking over a box full of USB splitters, to see Constantine, also meandering around looking for her.

“Sky Horizon? Hello?” he calls. “I really wanna give you the benefit of the doubt, but can’t we just… talk? I begged everyone else to stay outside, I promise nobody’s gonna hurt you.” As he speaks, he wanders around a rack covered in digital cameras. “I’m doing everything I can to try and soften things here, but I really do think it’d be for the best if you face the music, y’know?”

In the distance, something clunks, and Constantine turns in that direction with a gasp. “Is that you?” Tentatively, he takes one, two, three steps in that direction, and Skye lets out a sigh of relief.

Too deep. Constantine perks up at the breath, and swivels back around. “Are you there?” Skye trembles, faintly rattling the rack. Constantine’s voice is getting closer. “I can hear you, you know.” It’s over. It’s over. Might as well just get it over with, at this point.

With a shaky breath, Skye steps out, her fists clenched more from fear than anger. “Alright. You caught me.” Somewhere on the other side of the warehouse, something falls over, startling them both. Neither of them let out a particularly pleasing sound at that.

Slowly, Constantine looks back to her. “They’re not going to let me go easy on you twice, sorry to say.” Behind him, something sprints out into the open, too far and too dim to make out what. Heedless, he keeps talking, slowly stepping toward Skye. “It won’t be that bad. I promise, the boss still wants you to join our engineering team. Nothing bad is going to happen to you if you just come with me.”

Skye leans forward slightly, watching something stamp across the concrete floor towards her and Constantine. Something flares to light behind it, backlighting the newcomer in bright blue.

Constantine pauses. “Hello? Sky Horizon?”

“JET LAUNCH.”

Constantine is tackled from behind at ludicrous speed, thrown gracelessly into a supply rack. The tower teeters back and forth from the impact, not quite tipping over but leaning enough to dump a landslide of toothbrushes onto Constantine, burying him from sight.

The figure tumbles to a stop before hauling herself to her feet. “Alright,” she groans in a familiar voice, “Do you agree that this was a stupid plan yet?” 

Skye is gobstruck, staring at the heroine in front of her. That’s her suit. That is her suit. It should be her in that body, not goggling uselessly at whoever this is. “How did… why are you here…?”

Sky Horizon laughs, her voice tinkling like a bell and driving another spike of discomfort under Skye’s skin. “Someone had to come bail you out. Or would you rather I was still on the couch eating bonbons?”

Wait.

Alice?

Spoiler

Sophibeans

A bit of a shorter connective chapter today; hope you don't mind. I'm curious, is this update schedule too slow? Too fast?

Next time, a jet-fueled debate on what it's like to be a sidekick. See you there for Episode 15: Squall Line!

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