Chapter 25: [25] Someone Should
"Took you long enough. I was starting to think you’d actually gotten a job in there."
Pierre pulled the door shut behind him and dusted off his hands.
"Get the map?"
Pierre shook his head, watching her expression carefully. "It wasn’t in the library. Total bust."
Raven’s confident posture crumbled. Her shoulders sagged in a rare, visible moment of defeat. Her eyes, usually so sharp, went flat. Empty.
"But I got these." He pulled the folded documents from his jacket. Blueprints and scattered papers, still warm from his body, unfolded in his hands. "Base schematics, guard rotations, personnel files—the works."
Raven’s eyes widened as she examined the blueprints, her nimble fingers—the same ones that had picked countless pockets—traced the corridors and security checkpoints.
"Holy hell, Pierre. These are worth their weight in gold. How did you—" She paused mid-sentence, studying his face with newfound intensity. Those cat-like pupils contracted slightly. "You look different. What happened in there?"
Pierre flexed his fingers. An echo of Diana’s essence, hummed beneath his skin. It wasn’t his own power; it felt foreign, stolen, like a discordant note playing in the quiet symphony of his soul.
"Just Navy bureaucracy," he lied smoothly. "Nothing exciting."
Raven raised a skeptical eyebrow but didn’t press further. Instead, she leaned against the grimy alley wall and crossed her arms over her chest, the curve of her hips and chest a bold silhouette against the fading daylight.
"I found Mika’s father," she offered, changing the subject. "Third cell from the left in the basement. Poor bastard looks like he hasn’t eaten a real meal in weeks." Her voice carried an edge that hadn’t been there before. "But with the whole base on alert, there’s no way to get him out clean. Not without raising every alarm from here to Naval Headquarters."