arboreal_priestess | Still...Somewhere?, Dear God Please Still Be in Baltimore, Definitely a Time

The sound of footsteps woke her from her doze. She cracked her eyes open just far enough to test the quality of the light. It hadn't changed. There were no windows in her little room, so the passage of time wouldn't affect things, but they also hadn't turned off the lights, or tried setting up an interrogation rig. That was good. She stayed comfortably limp, waiting to see who was approaching and what they wanted.

Taking another slow breath, she took a second to think, as hard as she could, Sarah? Can you hear me?

There was no still response, and even the low-grade telepathic static of her cousin's presence remained gone. Verity pushed back a surge of panic she didn't have time for. There was no reason to suspect that they'd managed to track Sarah down while Verity was asleep, and that meant one of two things. Either she was still under the influence of Margaret's telepathy-blocking charm, or the Covenant had already moved her out of New York, and she was outside Sarah's normal broadcast range. Sarah would be looking for her - they all would and Liam might even be mobilizing the Fandom troopers — but if she was too far for anyone to find telepathically, they wouldn't know what to do.

If Sarah was smart (and Uncle Mike would make her be smart, if he had to), she was already on a plane back to Ohio to hole up with her parents. Two cuckoos in one house meant the Covenant would never find them, no matter how hard they were looking. Sarah and Angela have been the family escape plan for a generation now. And no one would know to look for Liam and even if they did, he had a thousand universes to hide in.

She realized she was thinking like she was already lost, and she embraced it. It wasn't the same as giving up; Verity didn't expect the Covenant to kill her fast, and the longer they kept her alive, the better her chances became. But if her family thought she was out of reach, they might give up on her, and they might be able to minimize the damage.

There was no way they were going to do that. But it was a nice thought.

Margaret	"Are you asleep?" demanded Margaret. She was incredulous. Out of all the things she was expecting from Verity, this had been at the bottom of the list.
Verity	Verity raised her head, yawning. "I was," she said. "Now I'm not. Maybe you should try it sometime. You might be less cranky." "I am not cranky," said Margaret. "You could've fooled me." She was dangerous, employed by the Covenant of St. George, and Verity was totally at her mercy. She probably shouldn't have been taking pleasure in tormenting Margaret. At the same time, she sort of reminded Verity of her sister - a shorter, slimmer, more potentially murderous version of her sister - and she hadn't been able to torment Antimony in person since New Years. And as long as Verity kept thinking of things in those terms, she wouldn't completely lose her shit. Maybe she was going to get away. Maybe she wasn't. Either way, she could keep irritating the Covenant until they killed her. It was a small thing. It was the only thing she currently had.
Margaret	Margaret narrowed her eyes. "Your continuing insolence won't do you any good. You're going to pay for your sins, and I will personally commend you, body and soul, into the arms of the Lord."
Verity	"What sins are those, exactly?" Verity leaned back in her chair. "I'm sorry I hit you and stole your stuff, but you're the one who picked the lock in the first place. I was just acting in self-defense." Still wasn't letting Margaret know that Sarah had been the one that'd hit her.
Margaret	"You are charged with consorting with demons, conspiracy to betray the human race, and corruption of the innocent."
Verity	"That's a whole lot of 'C,'" she said, through lips that felt suddenly numb. She'd been expecting two of those trumped-up charges. The third... 'Consorting with demons' meant 'working with cryptids, rather than shooting them on sight.' 'Conspiracy to betray the human race' meant basically the same thing, with a side order of not shooting any cryptid who looked like they might someday accidentally be a danger to humanity. Like Istas, who had never hurt anyone who didn't hurt her first - that Verity was aware of, anyway - but had been perfectly happy to slaughter snake cultists with extreme prejudice. By the standards of the Covenant, Verity was a traitor just for letting her kill the people who'd been intending to kill her and her friends. But 'corruption of the innocent...' Dominic had been on her side all along. She was an idiot.
Margaret	Margaret pressed her lips into a thin line, glaring at the Price girl. "That's right, you succubus, we know. We know you led Dominic De Luca from the paths of righteousness, just as your ancestress led Thomas Price into sin. He may still be forgiven, but you are beyond saving."
Verity	"You know, if you're comparing me to Grandma, the one thing we have in common is that we're both descended from the Healys," Verity said, trying to push aside the cold, sick feeling in her stomach. "What does that say about your family, huh? Have you seduced and betrayed anyone recently?" Not that she had seduced Dominic at all. But she was happy to keep letting Margaret think she had. It was one more layer of protection for Liam, if nothing else.
Margaret	Margaret didn't punch the Price girl this time. Instead, she slapped her, her palm landing hard and stinging against her cheek. Verity rocked back in her chair. "You're a selfish little bitch, just like everyone else in your tainted bloodline," spat Margaret. She sounded like she was about to cry. Verity blinked at her, not saying anything, and she continued, really getting her rant on now: "Do you have any idea what it's like to grow up knowing you're descended from traitors? That once you would have had this amazing family legacy, this endless parade of heroes and saviors and saints, but some self-absorbed idiots had to take all of that away from you? You're an aberration, a monster-loving plague upon the human race! Your parents are no better than you, and we're going to find them, and we're going to make them pay until my family name is clean! Do you understand me?"
Verity	The manacles dug into Verity's wrists, and she barely managed to bite her lip hard enough to keep from crying out as Margaret smacked her again. "I understand that you're upset," she said carefully. Also a little obsessive, she thought, but decided that didn't need sharing. "But I'm not your redemption. I'm just a woman who happens to be distantly related to you, and whatever hell the Covenant may have put you through for being a Healy, it's not my fault. Okay? It wasn't me who chose to leave, or my parents, or my grandparents. Hell, it wasn't even my great-grandparents. Isn't there a statute of limitations on the sins of the father?"
Margaret	"Yes," said Margaret coldly. "Even to the seventh generation. You are still responsible for the things they did to our family, and as they can't pay for them, you will." This time, when she slapped Verity, she was a lot less gentle about it - and she hadn't been pulling her punches the first two times. A thin trickle of blood ran down from Verity's nose, pooling along the top of her lip. She couldn't wipe it away, and so she simply sat there, glaring helplessly. "You're going to tell us everything," Margaret spat. "How many of you there are, where we can find you, what your defenses are like. Everything. And then, when your blasted family is safely in our custody, we can discuss whether or not you should be held accountable for what our ancestors have done."
Verity	"You need a hug," Verity said. "Or maybe therapy. Or maybe - I know! - you need to be kicked in the throat. How about you unchain me, and I'll hug you before I kick you in the throat?"
Margaret	"You're a violent little thing, aren't you?" she asked. "Peter told me how shamefully you treated him. I honestly expected more ladylike behavior from you." Even when she'd been slapping Verity, Margaret had been careful to keep most of her body at an angle that would be virtually impossible for Verity to kick. She was smart. She learned from the mistakes of others.
Verity	That just meant that Verity couldn't give her time to take notes when the time came for Margaret to make her own mistakes. "What can I say?" Verity asked. "Some of us grow up in the care of global terrorist organizations. Others aren't so lucky."
Margaret	For a moment, Margaret actually looked sorry for her. Verity itched to slap that expression right off her smug little face. "We're not terrorists. We're the good guys. And now it's time for you to start earning that redemption." She stepped away. "Gentlemen, she's ready. We can begin the interrogation."

Verity	The Covenant's definition of 'interrogation' wasn't nice. It wasn't gentle. It also wasn't going to leave any scars, so Verity supposed she ought to thank them for that - although it was hard to thank anyone who thought that, say, beating the bottoms of her feet with a wooden baton was a sociable thing to do. They weren't interested in Verity's long-term dance career. They weren't even interested in her being able to walk normally the next day. What they wanted was information, and they were more than happy to hurt her if it would help them get it. As she had suspected, Robert was the most efficient of the three. Margaret was happy to help Peter hold her down, and Peter grinned disturbingly the whole time, but it was Robert who kept producing common household tools from his little box. He looked disappointed every time he had to get a new one, like Verity was letting them down by refusing to break.
Robert	"You could end this now, you know," he said, pulling what looked like a blood pressure cuff out of the box. "All you need to do is tell us your name. That's all I'm looking for today, is your name. We know your surname is 'Price.' Why not buy yourself a bit of a rest, and tell us what your first name is?" "Go to hell." "I'm afraid you're going to beat me there," he said. Margaret took the blood pressure cuff, fastening it tight around Verity's upper arm. She tried to squirm away and Robert raised a finger. "This will hurt less if you hold still."
Verity	"Why the hell would I start believing that now?" she demanded.
Robert	"Because I might be telling the truth, and wouldn't it be wonderful if I were?"
Verity	Verity didn't say anything. She just glared mutely, willing him to fall down dead. Maybe that would have worked, if she'd been Sarah and he hadn't been wearing an anti-telepathy charm and oh, right. If they lived in a comic book universe where the rules said that the bad people would be punished, and the good people would always come out on top. Too bad they didn't live in that kind of world. Too bad they never had. And then the cuff around her arm began to expand, and the needles she hadn't previously been able to feel began piercing her skin. After that, she forgot about everything but screaming for a little while.
Peter	"What's your name, love?" asked Peter. Verity screamed. "Just tell us your name and this can all be over for now. What's your name, love?"
Verity	Verity screamed. The more they inflated the cuff, the more the needles dug into her arm. The fact that it was designed to let air slowly out again meant that she never achieved equilibrium; the cuff would inflate, the needles would dig in, the cuff would deflate, the needles would shift positions, and then it would all start again. It was a new, exciting way of hurting someone, and she wanted nothing to do with it.
Peter	"What's your name, love?" asked Peter. Verity screamed, and kept screaming, until the sound ran out and she slumped, practically boneless, in the chair. Robert stopped inflating the cuff, letting it collapse with a soft hissing sound. Then he leaned in, wrapped his hand around the now-deflated cuff, and squeezed. Somehow Verity found it in herself to scream one last time, wailing like someone's family beán sidhe.
Robert	Robert kept squeezing, grinding his hand against the cuff so that the needles danced inside her flesh. His expression was sad, almost disappointed, like he hadn't wanted any of this to happen. "What's your name?" he asked, almost in a whisper. "V-Verity," she replied. "Verity P-Price." "It's a pleasure to meet you, Verity Price," he said, and took his hand away. The needles were still there, but the sudden reduction in pressure was such a blessing that she started to sob. "Take it off. We have what we need for right now."
Margaret	"How is that what we need?" Margaret asked.
Robert	Robert smiled. "Verity's seen the light. She'll be willing to help us, now, won't you?"
Verity	Verity couldn't say anything. She could only sob, and keep sobbing as they gathered their things and left her tiny artificial prison. This time, they remembered to turn off the lights on their way out, and she was left alone again. Well, almost alone; the pain was still there, and was more than happy to be her companion in the dark. Professional dancers learned to work through pain. It was a part of the job. They danced on sprained ankles, they danced with broken ribs, they danced on blisters and bunions and broken toes. They were expected to be beautiful machines, capable of holding their form no matter what injuries they were hiding. All her training told her that she should be able to compartmentalize the pain, and so as soon as she was alone - and as soon as she stopped crying - she began to do exactly that. She took a breath, held it until her lungs ached, and breathed slowly out. She could function. She was hurt, but not too badly, and she could function. She didn't know how long she sat there in the dark, just breathing, waiting for the throbbing in her feet and arm to die down. When the door finally opened, she didn't twitch, even though the light burned her eyes. She just stayed in the same position, chin down, slumped as far over as the chains allowed.
Peter	"Not so mouthy now, are you?" asked a voice. Peter Brandt.
Verity	Verity allowed herself a brief moment of satisfaction. Of the three, he was the one she'd been hoping would come to check on her. Margaret had a holy crusade. Robert had a job to do. And Peter? Peter had a grudge. "Please," she whispered.
Peter	"Please? Please what, love? Please mercy? You didn't show much mercy when you thought you had me. Why should we show any mercy to you now?" Peter crossed the room to Verity's chair. "There's not any mercy here for the likes of you. We're going to beat the devil right out of you."
Verity	Verity's leg twitched with the urge to be reintroduced to his balls, at speed. She forced herself to keep still. "Please," she whispered again. "I need to use the bathroom. I don't...I mean, I don't want to..." She started crying again. It wasn't hard. All she had to do was press her feet a little harder against the floor and the tears came practically on their own.
Peter	"What's to stop you pulling a fast one and trying to get away from me, hmm?"
Verity	He was smarter than Verity'd expected; damn. She sniffled, and said, "My feet hurt so bad I'm not even sure I can walk. How am I supposed to pull a fast one when I can't even walk?" "What's in it for me?" She almost dropped her subservient posture in favor of taking another shot at his groin. She managed to suppress the rage - barely - and whispered, “Anything you want." Hopefully, if she couldn't escape, his 'anything' wouldn't be anything that forced her to kill him any more than she was already planning to.
Peter	Peter hesitated. Then, finally, he made up his mind. "Stay there," he said, and laughed as he walked out of the room. Oh, she was definitely going to kill that man when she got the opportunity, or at least hurt him a lot. Verity stayed in her half-hunched position, listening intently to the noises coming from outside her little room. First came the clinking of metal, and then the soft sound of a hasp being turned. He was undoing her chains. Her wrists and ankle were still cuffed, but the chains themselves were no longer attached to whatever was outside the walls. Peter stepped back into the room a moment later. "All right, love. Let's get you out of here."
Verity	"But how?" Verity whispered, raising her head. "I can't...I mean, I'm still..."
Peter	"I'm the man with the solution to your problem." Peter held up a key, grinning.
Verity	Verity grinned back. "Awesome."
Peter	"What?" His grin faltered, replaced by confusion. "Don't you get any ideas, now. You're still--"
Verity	"Chained? Yeah, I know," she said, and lunged. The chains had approximately a foot of give when they were attached to their anchor. If the false room was at floor level - which it was, because none of her captors had stepped up to enter - that meant that the anchor had to be a minimum of a foot from the opening. She had at least two feet to play with, and she was going to play. To her surprise, her estimates had been off, a lot, and in the direction that worked for her, rather than against her: she ended up four feet of slack to play with. The chain was still unspooling when her elbow hit Peter in the chin, followed less than a second later by her knee slamming into his stomach. She hadn't been kidding about how difficult it would be for her to walk on her bruised-up soles, but what she hadn't mentioned was that they'd been focusing on her instep, not the balls of her feet. As a dancer, the balls of her feet were where she lived.
Peter	Peter went down like a sack of arrogant Irish potatoes, and Verity finished the job by slamming her balled-up, manacle-weighted fists into the back of his head. There was a risk she could kill him — that was always a risk with blows to the head — and somehow she couldn't find it in her to care very much. He'd been willing to do a lot worse than killing her.
Verity	The key was on the floor only inches from his hand. Verity grabbed it, unlocking the manacles on her wrists and ankle, and shoved it into the pocket of her bathrobe. Then she grabbed his belt, feeling frantically around until she found what she was looking for: the hilt of a knife. "Thank God," she muttered. She took the knife and his shoelaces. Then she turned, and she was out the door.

Verity	The false room where she'd been held was set squarely in the middle of a large warehouse that had clearly been used for storage before it was converted into a temporary Covenant base. Old boxes still lined the walls, and there were hooks hanging from the ceiling. They looked disturbingly like giant meat hooks. Verity paused only long enough to be sure that neither of the remaining Covenant members were coming for her. Then she ran for the nearest wall, moving as fast as her aching body and battered feet allowed. It was amazing what a little adrenaline can do. She beat her own personal record for the twenty-yard dash, reaching one of the stacks of boxes and ducking behind it a split second before she heard voices coming from the far end of the warehouse.
Margaret	"--talk," said Margaret, her irritation clear even at a distance. "She simply won't. We don't work that way."
Robert	"You must stop regarding this woman as a member of your family," said Robert. "Her limits are not the same as yours."
Margaret	"She's held up fairly well so far," said Margaret sourly. "Who's to say she won't hold out until we get her back to England?"
Robert	"If she does that, she's not our problem anymore. I know you want to be the one who breaks her, but what matters is that she's broken, not who does it."
Verity	They were getting closer. Verity pressed deeper into the shadows behind her concealing wall of boxes, trying to assess her options in the rapidly decreasing time she had available. The bathrobe was white, or mostly; the front was more bloodstained than it had been when they first put it on her. It would show up against the gloom like a beacon. Grimly, she untied the belt and slipped the terrycloth off her shoulders. Naked might not provide much protection from the elements, but a bathrobe never stopped a bullet. She needed to disappear more than she needed to preserve her feeble sense of modesty. She tied Peter's shoelaces hastily around the hilt of his knife, creating a makeshift cord that would hopefully keep her from going unarmed. She needed both her hands free, but she also needed the knife. This was the best compromise she could come up with on short notice. Once Verity was reasonably sure the knots would hold, she wrapped the cord around her right arm, using it to secure the knife to her bicep. The knots held.
Margaret	"Don't talk to me like I'm a child. I know what's at stake here." "Do you really?" "Of course I-" Margaret's voice cut off mid-sentence, followed by a shout that was half-wordless exclamation, half-profanity as she ran toward the false room.
Robert	Only one set of footsteps; Robert wasn't moving. "So we lost you already, did we? Clever little thing. I'll have to arrange for additional containment measures when we get you back. And we will get you back, Verity Price. You can be certain of that."
Verity	He spoke like he knew that Verity could hear him - and maybe he did. If there was only one way into the warehouse, he'd have noticed her going by. That meant she had to be in the main room, somewhere. That didn't mean she had to make things easy for him. She slipped farther back behind the wall of boxes, hooked her fingers onto the first available handhold, and started climbing. If there was one thing she'd learned from years of free running, it was how to ascend without making any noise. She stopped once she was ten feet off the ground, moving sideways until she found a cleft between two boxes that she could wedge herself into without making herself visible. And then she waited.
Margaret	It wasn't a long wait. "She's gone!" shouted Margaret.
Robert	"I gathered as much," said Robert. His voice was closer now. Verity didn't move. "What happened?"
Margaret	"I can't be sure - Peter's out cold - but it looks like she somehow convinced him to unchain her, and then walloped the holy hell out of him."
Robert	"She improvises well. We'll have to remember that." Robert stepped suddenly around the edge of the wall of boxes, visible from Verity's current position only as a flicker of motion in her peripheral vision. She froze in her hidey-hole, trying not to breathe. Her robe's here." "She left her robe?" Margaret sounded incredulous. "What good did she expect that to do her?" "It's white. White would stand out in here. It was the right choice, assuming she's not worried about running around naked." Robert raised his voice, calling, "You can come out. We understand why you ran away, and we're not angry, but there's no way you're getting out of here. You may as well make things easy on yourself, and stop hiding before we come looking for you."
Verity	Biting back the snarky replies took an almost physical effort. She succeeded. The pounding ache in her feet helped. If they'd done this to her when they weren't angry, what would they do if they got her back?
Robert	Robert sighed audibly. "It's going to be like that, is it?" He started walking away, presumably moving toward the boxes along the next wall. "You know, I'd really hoped that we were making progress, Verity. I know we'll never be friends, but I wanted you to know that we respect your willpower."
Verity	Verity held perfectly still as she began counting down silently from ten. Sure enough, she had just reached four when a flicker of motion betrayed Margaret creeping cat-silent into the narrow space between the boxes and the wall. She was looking for her, and so Verity did the one thing that she could do: she didn't move. Without the bathrobe and in this degree of shadow, her hair and skin would look like they were all one color. She just hoped that it would be the color of the box that she was huddling against. She could climb - climbing was mostly a matter of digging in with her toes and forcing her way past the pain - but she wasn't going to place bets on her being able to run any time soon.
Peter	"Where is she?!" Peter's voice blasted into the warehouse, loud and sudden enough that Verity nearly flinched. "Where's that little Healy bitch? I'll strangle her with my bare hands!"
Margaret	"Your interest in doing things with your bare hands is how we lost her in the first place," snapped Robert. His voice was a whip crack in the quiet of the warehouse. Margaret was still creeping along, moving like she thought there was no chance Verity had have seen her. She looked up, saw only shadows, and passed out of Verity's sight, her footsteps moving to join the others.
Robert	"She must be in the upstairs," said Robert. "Well, let's go get her," snapped Margaret. "We need to get her back into custody, now." "I'm going to kill her," said Peter. "No," said Robert. "You're not. We're going to enlighten her. I think you'll find that she enjoys that far less."
Verity	They kept searching, talking about more and more horrific treatments that awaited for Verity when they got their hands on her again. She knew it was a tactic meant to make her stupid with fear, make her give herself up, so the best she could do was lock her shoulders and silently cry. Her tears turned the grime against her cheek into a horrible, foul-smelling mud that smeared on her face. She struggled into a sitting position and tried to wipe it away, but only succeeded in smearing it down her chin and all over her hand. That just made her cry more. She was dirty, she was alone, and she was hurt too badly to be doing this by herself. It was funny, really. She'd always known that she wasn't going to have a long and peaceful life; that sort of thing was reserved for people who thought the monster under the bed was just a story, and who ran away from the sound of screaming, not toward it. Somehow she'd always expected to die so fast that she wouldn't even realize it was happening - a broken neck, like her great-grandmother, or a swarm of Apraxis wasps, like her great-grandfather. Maybe even sucked into a portal to another dimension, like Grandpa. But no, her choices had to be 'tortured to death by the Covenant' or 'starved to death in an old warehouse.' Talk about a rock and a hard place. She was running out of time, but worse, she was running out of hope.

Verity	Evetually, the three Covenant agents moved off together. Their footsteps faded into silence, until Verity finally heard a door close in the distance. As much as she wanted to continue to sit and feel sorry for herself, this was the best her situation was going to get. Her captors were gone, for now, and she was alone. She might be certain of her death, but she wasn't going to docilely sit and wait for it. So Verity did what she always did in times of stress: she climbed. The boxes were piled high enough that she could see the rafters overhead, but not so high that she could reach them. She couldn't even jump with any assurance that she'd hit her target - not with her feet in their current condition - and a misjudged landing could send the entire stack of boxes toppling. That wouldn't be exactly what she'd call 'subtle,' and it would bring the Covenant rushing back to find her, instead of wasting more time searching the upstairs. But there were long chain hooks that hung from the ceiling. She looked at them, assessing the distance she would have to leap. If she could just grab hold before she fell, she could climb the chain to reach the rafters. Tetanus would be a risk, but hell, in her line of work, tetanus was always a risk. "Only die once," she muttered (that wasn't quite true, either), and started climbing back down the boxes. It was a stupid plan. It was a potentially suicidal plan. It was the only plan she had, and so she intended to go for it. Her feet hurt worse than ever by the time she reached the floor. Every bend of her toes was agony, and putting her weight down on her heels was like standing on hot coals. Ballet helped with that. After years of pointe classes, where bleeding toes were considered a status symbol, a little bruising wasn't going to slow Verity down. She hit the ground running, a naked blonde streak heading as fast as she could for the false room that had been her prison, and would now hopefully be her salvation. She didn't slow down as she approached the side of the false room. Instead, she aimed for the doorway, leaping at the last moment to grab the top of the frame. Verity let her own momentum carry her into a forward jackknife, then whipped herself backward and flipped up onto the roof. She landed silently, her bare feet actually helping with the action. "If you wanted to keep me, you shoulda broken my fingers," Verity murmured. Then she straightened, turned, and started running again before her feet could fully realize that she had stopped. This time when she jumped, she launched herself into empty air. For a moment, Verity flew, arms outstretched, like a Lady Godiva superheroine aiming for the sky. Then her hands hit the big metal hook dangling from the ceiling. She grabbed hold, clinging as tightly as she could while the force of her leap sent the whole chain swaying. The extra ten feet of height she'd been able to gain from the false room had been enough to boost her to the necessary level. Thank God. If this hadn't worked, she probably would have wound up with a broken leg, and that would have been a lot harder to work around. Hands aching and feet on fire, she climbed.
Grandma Alice (Sort of)	It was a slow, agonizing climb. The chain was filthy, rusty, and incredibly cold; something that would have been a pain to climb fully dressed and healthy. And at the top was another obstacle: the support beam it was anchored to that was bigger around than the span of her arms. Verity finally managed to hook her foot into the loop that secured the chain to the beam, scrabbling up the side of the wood and collapsing, facedown, onto it. What were a few splinters in sensitive places after everything she'd already been through? The idea of just lying here and taking whatever came next was very strong. Unbidden, the image of her grandmother rose in her mind's eye, hair spiked with some unnamable goo from some equally unnamable hell-thing that she'd just killed, a sour expression on her face. "You call yourself a Price girl? Get up. Fight. Don't you give up like this. That's something a Covenant trainee would do, and you're better than them."
Verity	Verity winced at her imaginary grandmother's tirade and pulled herself up into a sitting position. She hissed as the feeling came slowly back into her arms, but at least she was upright again. That was something. When all else fails, talk to yourself. It had been gotten her up, at least. "My feet hurt," Verity informed her grandmother.
Alice	"And they've hurt before, too." she countered. "Show me what you're made of, girl, or I'll start thinking you're a cuckoo left in place of my real granddaughter. Now look around and tell me what you see." The big beams, like the one Verity was starting to think of as hers, were spaced evenly down the length of the warehouse. Smaller beams connected them, creating almost a network of catwalks that someone without a fear of heights could use to traverse the building easily. Best of all, they connected to the windows that were set high into the walls. All she had to do was get there, get the windows open, and get out.
Verity	Emboldened by what looked like the nearness of her escape, Verity stood. Only years of hard training and harder discipline kept her from screaming as she put her weight back on her bruised feet and promptly fell down again. She managed to grab the edge of the beam before she could roll off into space. She clung for dear life, curling into a ball and sobbing into the dirt. This moment had been coming since she escaped; she'd known it was coming, had seen and cataloged the signs. You can only keep running on a bruise for so long. Still, she'd refused to believe that her body would betray her like this while she was still in danger. Like the idiot she sometimes was, she'd allowed herself to believe that she could just keep running, and fall down when it was safe. It wasn't safe. It was a long damn way from safe. But she'd fallen down anyway.
Alice	But Grandma Alice wasn't prepared to just let her stay down, no matter how much Verity wanted to. "I carried my father's dead body out of the woods when I was bleeding out from Apraxis stings," she said, voice sympathetic but words uncompromising. "If you can't walk, sweetheart, you crawl."
Verity	It wasn't really Grandma, but Verity's imagination definitely talked like her. "Yes, ma'am," she said, and shifted to her hands and knees. Her imaginary grandmother smiled before she disappeared. Verity smiled back. And then she started crawling. The beam was rough and splintery in addition to everything else; she'd barely gone five feet before her knees were bleeding. She was going to need more than just a tetanus shot when this was all over. Still, she was moving, and that was better than she'd been managing a few minutes before. Infection was something to worry about after she'd escaped. The beam terminated where it met the wall, joining with the rest of the building's support structure. Verity stood again, gritting her teeth against the pain in her feet, and pressed her hands against the wall as she leaned sideways to examine the window. Her heart sank as she realized that there were no latches, no hinges, no way to open it at all. The windows were made to let in light, not fresh air. It made sense; who would be climbing up here to open them? Besides a naked girl with bruised feet and a stolen knife, of course. Trapped. She was still trapped.
Margaret	A door slammed somewhere below Verity and she froze, only long practice at navigating rooftops and high places keeping her from losing her balance. "--she not be there? There's no way she made it out of this building!" The voice was Margaret's.
Verity	Verity forced herself to ignore her cousin, looking up to where the window frame met the ceiling. Somewhere up there was the roof and that was still her best way out. She couldn't let herself get distracted now. She knew nothing about the warehouse, except that it was a warehouse, and it was built before they had cheap and dependable elevator technology. That meant all the floors would need to be connected by some sort of hatch system, to enable them to move things from one floor to another. She turned and started scanning the ceiling, looking for the telltale outlines of a removable panel. She found what she was looking for about halfway across the room: a square where the cobwebs didn't quite match the ones around them, maybe due to drafts blowing down through the ceiling/floor. More tellingly, that was one of the only patches not used to anchor anything at all, and there were no beams crossing in the space below it. That had to be one of the transportation hatches. Now to make it over there without drawing Margaret's attention.
Robert	"You're right, and she's not going to get past us." Okay, without drawing Margaret or Robert's attention. Still, that was actually a good thing. Peter might be the one who'd been most willing to harass her, but he wasn't the planner of the bunch. If he was the one guarding the second floor, Verity's odds had just improved. "The front door is locked. The back door is locked. The basement has been sealed off for years. She's trapped."
Verity	That's what they thought. But while humans were descended from primates, they'd stopped looking up as soon as they'd left the trees. Verity debated her options. She could crawl and risk shredding her hands and knees further when she might still need them, or she could try to walk. Neither option seemed like it was a particularly good one, and so she went for the better of two evils: she would walk. Maybe that would make her feet go numb enough that she'd be able to escape without tripping. If it didn't work, well....she'd find another way. Taking a deep breath, Verity centered herself as she found her balance, and began walking slowly down the beam toward the hatch, her grandma's voice still echoing in her mind. Step by painful step, the hatch came closer.
Margaret	"I hate her." There was a note in Margaret's voice that might have been grudging respect, under different circumstances.
Robert	Robert actually laughed. "Not for nothing, but I bet she's not too fond of you, either."
Verity	Verity froze in place as they passed directly beneath her. Please don't look up. Please, please don't look up. She was filthy enough that she would probably blend into the ceiling by this point, but that didn't mean she needed to start tempting fate. She was so focused on keeping still that she was barely even breathing.
Robert	"Has there been any sign of De Luca?" Robert asked the question calmly, almost casually, like it was of no real importance.
Margaret	"No. You were right. The little whore turned him traitor," snarled Margaret. "He's just as bad as she is."
Robert	"Peace, Margaret. We'll catch him next, and deliver them both to our superiors. He'll have a great deal of explaining to do."
Verity	The footsteps stopped, still far too close to her spot on the beam for comfort. In a way, Verity's damaged feet were almost a blessing. If she hadn't been hurt, she would almost certainly have run. The best she could do was kind of shift forward an inch or so, moving at a snail's pace.
Robert	"What is it?" asked Margaret suspiciously. "I just don't understand how we could have lost her like this." The footsteps didn't resume. "There's no way out of this room. There's nowhere she could have run. But she's gone, all the same. It's impossible."
Margaret	"Nothing's impossible," said Margaret. "Apparently not," said Robert.
Verity	The footsteps started again. She waited until she heard a door slam on the far end of the room before relaxing enough to start breathing. She still counted silently to a hundred before she peeked over the edge of the beam... ...and found herself looking straight down into Robert Bullard's smiling face. "Gotcha," he said. Verity straightened up, and bolted for the hatch.