Archive of Our Own

A spasm of regret ran across the more mobile half of his face. "I need to go to the chembaron meeting, especially as I skipped the last one. And I need Sevika with me, and anybody else will look even more out of place on the other side of the river." He paused for a moment, then added hopefully, "Do you want to come to the chembaron meeting?"

"Booooring" said Jinx. "I promise if you let me do it, I'll walk across the bridge as cool as ice and then take the rooftops the rest of the way. Drop the Shimmer and come straight back."

Silco looked over to Sevika imploringly. "I don't think we should be selling Shimmer to Pilties anyway" she said unhelpfully, raising both shoulders - the one with the flesh arm, and the one with the clumsy iron one - in a shrug.

"This Piltie is paying us a month's normal take for the means to win another marathon" said Silco. "We'd be stupid to turn it down. But it needs to get there today."

"Well, the usual Piltie-side delivery boy opened the packages and took a whole consignment of Shimmer at once, and they're still scraping bits of his family out of the ruins of the building" said Sevika. "Jinx can't really do any worse. We're severely understaffed at the moment because of the holiday."

"We can find someone else to send" he insisted. "It's dangerous."

"Pleeeeease" said Jinx. "I'm bored and I want to help. You always say you believe in me, and you won't even let me do a dumb dropoff."

Silco threw up his hands. "You can go. But in, deliver the payload and out, and put on a shirt first."

"This is a shirt!"

"It's not a shirt. It doesn't have enough fabric left."

"Fine." Jinx took the canister from the desk, read the address written under it, and left with a slam of the door.

"And don't kill anyone I wouldn't kill!" Silco shouted after her, and buried his face in his hands. Sevika collapsed on the sofa, taking the weight of the crude metal arm off her frame. She would never admit it to anyone but him, but carrying the metal arm was exhausting, and it was barely better than nothing, function-wise. Singed said it would be much improved if she let him use Shimmer to make connections between the device and her own nerves, but she was holding out for a more refined process. There was never a shortage of volunteers to test prosthetics in Zaun, and most of them now were coming out of the process without debilitating psychosis, which was promising. 

"Why are teenagers?" Silco asked rhetorically after a minute.

"I don't think she's even a teenager yet. You have all that fun still to come" said Sevika maliciously. "Stop worrying and let's get going."

Jinx sauntered out through a relatively bright Zaun morning, wearing a neat white shirt over her croptop and trousers and humming. 

Her mood only darkened when she joined a long queue to cross the bridge. The bridge was never a favourite place of hers. The queue moved steadily, and soon there were as many people packed behind her as in front.

A man behind her shouted forward, "What's the holdup?" 

The reply came back from the front of the queue, "Enforcer bag check".

Most of the queue grumbled, but the blue-haired girl's eyes widened in barely suppressed panic. Little glitches appeared around the edges of her vision, as adrenaline spiked her heart rate and she panted.

Stop, she thought desperately. You're not Powder. Powder would seize up. But you're Jinx. Think. Solve problems like Jinx.

The problem wasn't the Shimmer, which was well hidden in the false bottom of a standard-looking water bottle. The problem was the two handguns in her homemade pockets. The Enforcers would be very interested in those.

She got a glimpse of their uniforms in the distance, and shuddered. For a moment, she saw herself pulling out the handguns and starting to shoot, imagining the screams and chaos and Enforcers shooting back. Far below the bridge, the polluted waters swirled uninvitingly, and she had another idea.

"Are you all right, dear?" asked the man who had called forward. 

She nodded. "Just feeling a bit queasy" she said, and hung her head and upper body over the parapet as if to vomit. Carefully she eased the handguns out of her pockets, and dropped them unobtrusively over the side. Silco would buy her new ones, after all. 

"Better now" she said, giving the man a tense smile.

The Enforcers on duty were a pair of young men, rummaging through everyone's bags and pockets in a desultory manner. "Sorry, ma'am, tightened security today" one said to the lady ahead of her in the queue.

Jinx held her breath as they examined her water bottle and few other trinkets. The man's face was almost totally covered with glitches, and she must have appeared particularly forlorn. "What are you crossing the river for today then?" the Enforcer said jovially, trying to cheer her up.

"Um. Visiting my uncle" Jinx lied.

The Enforcer thought for a moment about why a miserable, tense Zaunite girl-child, alone with almost no possessions on her, might be visiting a man in Piltover. He opened his mouth to say something, but his colleague elbowed him and cried "Next!", and Jinx walked on quickly, hyperventilating.

She calmed down on the Piltover bank, and found a way up onto the roofs. It felt good to walk in the sunshine and see all the people below, unaware of her watching. She took deep breaths, and her recent growth spurt helped her on the big jumps. This wasn't so bad. She wished Silco was there to see it, and to exchange mean comments with her about the Piltovans on the streets below.

She dropped down to street level behind the house she was headed for, rang the doorbell, and handed over the bottle to a member of staff who was obviously expecting it ("from his friend downtown" she said sweetly). Then she turned back, ran over the roofs again to the bridge, and trotted over without being stopped. Of course, nobody cared if people smuggled weapons into Zaun.

"Nothing to it" Jinx said smugly to herself as she headed down through the arcades, and saw Little Mek, her father's large henchman with a nose ring, coming out of a shop on the other side of the street. He waved to her cheerily, and she trotted across the road to say hello.

"Getting a new tattoo designed" he explained. "A tree. Like in pictures. On my - actually, well, somewhere I won't be able to show you."

Jinx laughed. "I just delivered a package in Piltover. It went fine" she said. "Lovely day up there. Wish I'd taken some money for ice cream."

"You going home?" he asked. "I was gonna get cracked corn. Want some?"

She did, and they ambled companionably through Zaun, sharing a bag of snacks and gossip. She even told him about dropping the guns into the river, which made him suck his teeth at the expense and made her feel a tiny bit bad (but still very clever). And then they walked under an arch and something crashed down on Little Mek's head, and a couple of figures somersaulted from above and started punching him.

"Come with us, Powder" said an adult voice that Jinx vaguely remembered from Vander's bar. "We can keep you safe."

She reached for her guns, which of course were gone. The realisation threw her back into a panic again and she wasn't Jinx, just another undersized street orphan with wobbly legs. She backed into a wall, gasping, and the adult dropped a net over her, swung her onto their broad back, and ran off down the street with their companions.

Jinx spat and twisted in the net when they manhandled her down through a trapdoor, down a few steps of corridor, turned right into a small room and set her down. "It's ok, Powder. It's ok." said the adult voice. "Someone fetch Ekko."

"Let me the fuck go!" Jinx snarled. "You're going to regret laying hands on me." The whole room was glitching, and she felt like her head would explode.

"You don't understand, we won't let him have you back. You're safe, don't worry. He can't find you here" said the voice. Jinx made a creditable effort to bite the hand that was attempting to untangle the net, and the hand retreated. Her chest and legs heaved with adrenaline, and she could barely understand words, never mind speak them. The voice droned on and on with its horrifying reassurances.

Sevika and Silco turned into The Last Drop as the daylight faded. Sevika was planning to leave a weary-looking Silco in his office and head over to the brothel for a deep tissue massage and possibly other activities, with still time after that for an early night.

Silco carefully threw off the impression of tiredness as they came in through the door. He spotted one of his more effective dealers at the bar, and went over to talk to her. Sevika scanned around nervously. Everyone was armed and half of them had a reason to stab him, so she hated it when he mingled. She had no illusions about being able to run the business part of his empire, or finding someone else to run it who was both less insane and committed to an independent Zaun.

Little Mek was in a corner, a bandage round his head, being reassured by the bodyguard Loveday. The dark-haired woman hurried over to Sevika. "Jinx is missing" she whispered.

Sevika froze, took Loveday by the shoulder and moved further away from Silco, who was explaining the rationale for an upcoming rise in the price of Shimmer to the unimpressed-looking dealer. She hoped it would turn out to be a mishearing, but Loveday repeated, "Jinx is missing" a little louder.

"She'll turn up" said Sevika after a long moment. "Where did you last see her?"

"Little Mek was walking with her on Slab Street. She'd been in Piltover, they got jumped by someone who beat him up, he doesn't know what happened to her" said Loveday. 

"I thought she'd come back here" said Little Mek, joining in. "We have to tell Silco."

Sevika sighed. This was the worst news. Not because Sevika particularly cared about Jinx, but because Silco would make it everyone's problem. She savoured the last few minutes of him not being furious.

"Don't tell him yet, he doesn't need to be bothered about every little thing" she said, bidding a regretful farewell to her evening plans. "First, you go and check the old arcade. I'll ask Taz to check Jericho's and the food shops that way. Maybe she'll find her way back, she's like a cat."

"She's been gone six hours" said Little Mek.

"And no rumours or anything?"

"Someone said the Firelights were moving around a lot today. And their territory is close to Slab Street."

Sevika nodded. "Just give it a half hour, okay? If she's not back by then, I'll tell him." She moved back towards the bar, and Silco.

"No, we will not be continuing production of the old formula. The new one is better and costs more. You are, of course, free to go back to selling painkillers cut with rat poison." Silco was saying pleasantly.

"You keep 'improving the formula' just for your own profits" said the dealer.

"Of course". He spread his hands in mock helplessness. "But the new formula is demonstrably less likely to cause... the more unfortunate side effects of Shimmer. You can't argue with progress."

The woman looked like she certainly could argue with progress, but she saw Sevika hovering and thought better of it. Silco said goodnight to the woman, and Sevika thought she'd have to confess the problem shortly, but he saw a known troublemaker across the room and stalked over to make veiled threats. Sevika stared anxiously at the door to The Last Drop. 

Finally, he finished networking and turned upstairs to his office. Maybe he'll just go to bed without asking for her, thought Sevika as she followed him, and we'll have until morning to sort this out.

He stepped into his office, turned on the light, and peered up into the crawlspace. "Jinx?" Then he checked the little bedroom next to his, leading off from his office. "Jinx?"

"Damn, I was hoping she was there" said Sevika, and there was nothing else for it. "She's... not come back."

"She's what?" He spun around to glare at her accusingly.

"She's not come back. Taz and Loveday are checking the obvious places. She was attacked on Slab Street on her way back from Piltover, we don't know what happened after that."

Both of his eyes roved over the room, lost. 

"I'll just go and see if they're back with news" said Sevika hastily, and vanished downstairs.

Silco, alone, started opening the message tubes on his desk wildly. "She was back in Zaun" he muttered. "Ransom demand? Why wouldn't they send me a ransom demand?" None of the message tubes contained anything relating to Jinx, so he threw them hard at the wall.

Sevika found Loveday and Taz and briefed the doormen about the situation. Then she turned around to find Silco on the nightclub floor, asking random partygoers if they had seen a blue haired girl. She seriously considered decking him with her iron hand (even if she had to hold it in the other to do it), but settled for dragging him up the stairs by his collar.

"You can't do that, sir" she hissed, pushing him against his office door. "Firstly, because everyone knows who you are and some of them have knives. Secondly, if there's any chance to play it cool and trade her back, you're not helping."

"I... know that" said Silco, not struggling in her grip.

"I think the Firelights might have her, from rumours on the street. I'm going to start with a search of the Grit area."

"Let's go."

"Wait. The Firelights are a new gang but they're an unknown quantity. I don't think they'll hurt Jinx, at least quickly, but we might need an edge over them and we are very short-handed." Sevika sighed heavily. "Sir, I need a few hours to consult Singed." 

She let him go, and he slumped against the wall. "Singed. Yes. Your arm" he said. "Finally." He'd been hinting that she should get the Shimmer upgrades done since the accident. "Go."

"What are you going to do, sir?" Sevika did not want him going off on one of his pretending-to-be-invincible stunts. 

"Marcus" he breathed. "He recently had a daughter and thinks I'm threatening to kill her. Maybe he had Jinx followed back into Zaun and took her."

"Are you threatening to kill his daughter?"

"No, I would never kill someone's daughter and leave them alive to take vengeance. I was threatening to kill him."

Sevika felt that Silco was considerably safer in Piltover, where the few people who knew him mostly considered him a genial capitalist with an unfortunate face and a vivacious but adorable daughter, than trying to beat Jinx's whereabouts out of Zaunites. "Meet back here, then. And... I hope you find her. But if not we'll pay these Firelights a visit."

"Survive the therapy" he ordered, which was as close as he was likely to come to offering best wishes.