RWD: 5.x (Intermission)(Paige)

Paige woke before her alarm. Not because there was danger, or noise, or a plan that needed checking. Just because her body had learned the r

5.x (Intermission)(Paige)

Paige woke before her alarm. Not because there was danger, or noise, or a plan that needed checking. Just because her body had learned the rhythm of early morning and decided to keep it.

For a few seconds, she lay there, blinking at the ceiling and the faint hairline crack that crossed it like an off-key note. The bed was nice—memory foam under a fluffy duvet and silken sheets. The apartment was nice too. It reminded her so much of her old condo just a few miles away. Paige let herself enjoy it a few moments longer. Today was a Saturday. The Boardwalk outside was quiet at this hour, the gulls not yet brave enough to shout at the world. Heat clicked faintly through the vents.

She ran her fingers through her hair, separating feather from hair by feel—habit—and slipped out of bed. Shower. Steam. She stood in the hot water long enough that her fingers pruned, humming under her breath, then caught herself and stopped before the melody did anything it shouldn’t. Towel. Toothbrush. Mirror. She made a face at the mirror and the mirror made it back.

The upstairs hall smelled like takeout from last night and laundry detergent. She padded downstairs in socks, sweeping her hair and the brighter feathers into a low knot and tucking the runaway ones under a knit cap. The kitchen was empty. No Lisa at the counter, legs crossed and tablet propped up. No Brian leaning against the fridge because the fridge could handle being leaned on. They were usually the ones up by this time. Paige bit the inside of her cheek as she remembered why they weren’t present.

Sighing, she opened the fridge and did mental math. Three people. Four, if Taylor stopped by. But it was unlikely she did; Greg would most likely drive her straight to the base. Three people then. And three dogs. Rachel didn’t care about taste but cared about protein. Alec cared about sugar and the minimum effort required to obtain it. Paige cared about people not running on fumes. As for the dogs, they were fine so long as she stuck to their owner’s requirements. 

Eggs, cheese, spinach, a half-sleeve of tortillas. She set a pan on the stove and worked in quiet, the sizzle of butter filling the room. She caught herself humming again—soft—then traded it for counting breaths. She cracked eggs one-handed like she’d practised two summers ago about a thousand times and folded them with cheese into something that could pass for breakfast burritos. The coffee machine chuffed awake under her hand. She wiped the counter twice, because grease smeared the first time and she hated grease smears.

Rachel appeared first, barefoot, Brutus’ nails scritch-scritch on the stairs behind her. Then Angelica, then Judas. Rachel had tried to teach Paige not to flinch when the dogs took corners too fast; Paige had not learned. The hardy girl wore a hoodie two sizes too big and cargo pants; she gave the kitchen a flat look, then the food, then Paige.

“Morning,” Paige said, light. “Hungry?”

Rachel’s eyes went to the burritos. She nodded, short. “For the dogs?” A chin-jerk to ones set aside grilled in safflower oil rather than butter. The dogs’ eyes were on the counter like they could will the food down into their mouths.

“Yeah,” Paige said. “No butter, no onions.” She passed the girl one of the separate plates, already cooled. “No salt.”

Rachel’s gaze narrowed as she chewed, tasting it. Approval. She took the rest, crouched, and set them on the floor. The dogs inhaled them.

Alec arrived like he’d been poured into his clothes and then stirred—hair a mess, shirt askew, socks mismatched, phone already in hand as he absentmindedly scrolled through. “Coffee,” he said, not a question.

Paige poured him a mug. “Eat first.”

He took a burrito, flipped it end-over-end once like he was testing gravity, then bit in. “Mmm. Responsible adulting. You usually just ordered stuff. Is this a cry for help?”

“It’s Saturday,” Paige said. “I like Saturdays.”

Alec made a face. “Cringe.”

Rachel ignored them both. She ate standing up, one hand on Brutus’ collar to keep him from believing hard enough to get a bite of her food. She soon finished eating and licked a thumb clean. “We going?” she asked.

“We can,” Paige said. “I wanted to kill a bit more time before we left, but we can go now if you want.”

Rachel grunted, which for Rachel meant yes.

They cleaned in a lopsided choreography—Paige doing three tasks to Alec’s one, Rachel handling only what involved the dogs and immediate surfaces. A few minutes later, they were done and Paige dried her hands on a towel before heading upstairs to change.

###

The disguise was habit by now. Autumn layers: long-sleeve, soft flannel, old denim jacket. Neutral colors, nothing tight enough to draw the eye, nothing loose enough to read as odd. A scarf, plain and grey around her neck. A cute hat to hide her yellow hair and feathers. Sunglasses tucked into her bag, ready if she needed them. It wasn’t perfect — nothing was, short of not existing — but it passed casual inspection.

She checked the time. 07:13. Downstairs, she met Alec and Rachel at the door. Rachel had a ball cap pulled low, hoodie up, Brutus’ leash looped twice around her wrist. Alec wore an expression that said “arrest me, I dare you,” wrapped in a muted jacket that literally said “Please don’t.”

They locked the apartment. The security camera over the door blinked its little light at them. The street smelled like salt and distant oil. A taxi took them along the water, and soon enough, through streets that had more plywood than glass. Paige paid cash and didn’t make a note of the license plate. She should have. Lisa would have scolded her for forgetting.

They got out a few blocks from the warehouse and walked the rest. Walking made you aware, Paige had learned recently: the ordinary life on the edge of the city’s scar, the way people looked at Brutus and pretended not to, the way the wind cut differently in the alleys. She never really did much of walking before she became famous; even less after. Ironic, now that she thought of it, being a felon and all, yet choosing to stay out in public more.

Greg’s truck sat where it always did, parked by the side of the warehouse. Paige’s stomach did a little tilt when she saw it. Stupid. She let it be stupid and kept walking.

The airlock hissed them inside. The base had that alive-silence that made you aware of how much had been planned into it: vents murmuring, the faint whir of cameras tracking motion, the weight of doors that could stop most of the things you didn’t want getting through. The main floor was clean in lines. Someone had swept. Someone always swept. Paige didn’t know who, but someone always did.

Taylor was on the range already, ear protection on, lush hair bunned and tucked into a cap. Her shots were tight, controlled. The rhythm was a metronome with breath built in. Paige watched for a moment and then walked over.

“Hey,” Taylor said, taking the muffs off one ear.

“Hey,” Paige said. “Mind if I…?”

Taylor shifted over, giving her space to walk over to the second lane without comment. Paige took a pistol from one of the wall racks, along with ear and eye protection, and calmly screwed on a suppressor. She checked the chamber by habit, then sent her first shots downrange. Solid. She let the mechanical part of her brain take over and used the rest for small talk, because quiet could turn into wrong if you let it stretch.

“How’s Arcadia?” Paige asked between shots. “Less terrible than Winslow, I hope. That feels like a low bar, but. Still.”

Taylor hesitated, then—tiny—smiled. “They have a programming club,” she said, like she was admitting to a crush. “It’s organised. People show up on time.”

“Wow,” Paige said, stage-whisper. “Structure. Rules. I’m scandalised.” She shifted her grip and corrected her sight picture by a millimetre. “Kids decent?”

Taylor’s mouth went wry. “Yeah. Some are aloof, but no one is… horrible.”

“She says, careful,” Paige said.

Taylor shrugged, a small, complicated movement. “It’s nice,” she said, then made a quiet sound that might have been a laugh. Focusing again, she put three in a neat line, reset her stance the way Greg had taught them, weight over the balls of her feet. Paige mirrored it without thinking.

Alec had settled into a couch in the lounge to play games on the console again. Across the room, Greg’s workshop doors were closed. The new, heavy ones. Even closed, you could hear movement through it—metal’s language. Then, suddenly, it opened and the blonde emerged, pausing for the briefest moments before waving off-handedly in their direction when he noticed them. Paige waved back, smiling. Across the room, a big clunk echoed as he wielded a pair of bolt cutters and broke the seal on the twenty-foot shipping container that had been winched into the far bay. Then the sound of a dolly rolling as he moved things from the metal box into the workshop.

From the corner of her eye, Paige saw Rachel hesitate for a moment, her gaze drawn to Greg. Paige recognised the look in her eyes—the same focused intensity she tended to have when she was itching for a good spar. Brian wasn’t around, so there was only one other person in the building she was willing to tussle with.

"He's probably busy," Paige offered gently.

The other girl shrugged, the gesture managing to convey both disappointment and acceptance. Instead, she moved toward one of the nearby storage lockers, retrieving grooming supplies and settling cross-legged on the floor beside Brutus. The big dog immediately lowered himself to lie flat, head resting on his front paws as Rachel began working a brush through his coat.

Paige put five more rounds downrange and let her arms relax.“ The new headphones sits wrong on me,” she said to Taylor as she adjusted her ear protection. “Feathers, probably. I keep trying to adjust the seal.”

Taylor glanced. “You can add a spacer,” she said. “Talk to Greg about it.”

“Alright, sure. Later though; he looks really busy now.”

Taylor sniffed. “When is he not busy?”

“I know right,” Paige said, almost without thinking. “It’s kinda hot though.”

Taylor paused, looking at her with a surprised expression. "What?"

Paige froze, then shrugged as she tried to play off the comment casually.  "I don't know. He just... he's got it all figured out, doesn't he? Always busy, focused, intense. That's kind of... attractive. No?"

Taylor blinked at her. Then blinked again, like her brain had skipped and needed to re-cue. Her eyes widened a little, and she looked over at Greg rummaging around in the shipping container. He stepped out lifting a crate that looked quite obviously heavy, yet somehow made the task look effortless; lean muscles barely tensing where they were visible beneath his short-sleeved shirt. After staring for a bit, Taylor looked back at Paige, a hint of confusion in her eyes. "I… I never really thought about it that way."

Paige raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?”

Taylor shook her head, a blush creeping up her cheeks. "No! I mean, I've known him since middle school. He was… Greg. You know? Awkward, nerdy. The…he was a dork.” The last word came out helplessly honest, and then she flinched like she’d been impolite to someone’s face even though he wasn’t listening.

The girl turned her gaze to Greg again, and Paige saw a different kind of focus in her eyes this time. A flicker of something new, something contemplative. "It's hard to shake that image, I guess. Even with everything that's happened."

Paige was about to say something else when Rachel’s voice cut in, blunt and uninflected. “That’s dumb,” she said. She didn’t look up from Brutus’ coat. “He’s strong. He’s pretty. He tells people what to do and they do it. You look at him and you know where you are.” She stopped brushing and glanced at them, testing if she’d said it wrong. “That’s fucking hot.”

Paige looked at Taylor. Taylor looked back with a face that said: Did she just—? Paige couldn’t tell if she was more surprised by Rachel’s comment or the fact that Rachel had decided to volunteer it.

“You think he knows you think that?” Paige asked before she could stop herself.

Rachel shrugged. “Should,” she said. “I asked him to fuck me once.”

Paige choked on air. Her fingers did a useless little flutter over the bench. “What?”

Taylor meeped. “You— you asked—” She went crimson in a heartbeat, then paled, like her circulatory system was doing a stress test.

Rachel’s expression turned confused. “What?” she asked. “I wanted to. He’s clean. He smells good. He’s strong. He makes sense. Why not?” She scratched Brutus behind his ear. Brutus made a sound like a motorcycle starting.

“What did he say?” Taylor asked, voice tight with curiosity.

Rachel shrugged. “He said no— said he wasn’t interested. Dunno. Fine by me.”

The words sat there, simple, square-edged.

Paige opened her mouth, then closed it. A dozen thoughts started and ran into each other. Relief tangled with something like embarrassment on someone else’s behalf and something else she didn’t want to name.

“You weren’t… bothered?” Paige managed in the end.

“Why would I be?” Rachel went on, already back to the dog, already elsewhere. “It’s just sex. He didn’t want to. His choice.”

Paige stared downrange at the paper person. The holes she’d made from that point on didn’t line up anymore. On the other side of the base, metal thumped from the workshop—heavy thing onto heavier thing. A container door, moved. The warehouse hummed, unchanged. She could feel her pulse in her ears under the ill-fitting muffs as she tried to distract herself from the source of the commotion.

She thought for more time than she was willing to admit about Rachel’s words, before dismissing the thought with a shake of her head. She couldn’t do what Rachel did. The casualness, the bluntness of it all. There were too many reasons not to pursue even a casual relationship with Greg, much less what she knew she probably actually wanted—their age difference, their power dynamic, the fact that he was her boss and her literal savior. But even if she did have the guts to try, she wasn't sure her heart could handle a likely rejection the same way Rachel did. 

Awkwardly, she changed the topic, and they talked about their new costumes, the upcoming mission against the ABB, anything to get their minds off the problematic topic. Not long after, a familiar hiss announced the airlock opening. Paige turned, expecting to see Greg stepping out, but instead saw Lisa walking in. The Thinker looked the same as when she’d left: dark jacket, hair pulled back, expression pitched somewhere between smug and mildly annoyed.

Behind her were three women Paige didn’t recognise.

The first was a slim, short, conventionally attractive Asian girl—early to mid twenties, about Paige’s age—wearing a smirk that looked custom-fit for trouble. Her dark eyes swept the space with a proprietary kind of curiosity.

The second was younger, in her mid-teens. Pale, long blonde hair tied back in a low ponytail. Her posture was straight, arms folded loosely in front of her like she was trying not to clench her fists. 

The third was somewhere in between in terms of age, light brown hair, her gaze flicking around the space with a quickness that made Paige think of prey animals.

Paige’s stomach momentarily knotted at the sight of them. There were strangers in the base, and they weren’t wearing their disguises. But again, the trio were with Lisa, and Lisa was trusted. She must have brought them here for a reason.

Momentarily suppressing her concern, Paige waved, and Lisa waved back, a relieved smile on her face. Taylor waved as well. Rachel didn’t bother, content to simply stare. Paige set her pistol down and jogged across the room over to Lisa, and they hugged. “You didn’t tell me you were coming back today,” she said as she pulled away.

“I didn’t know I was coming back today,” Lisa said, her voice a little tired. “Greg literally sprung this on me a few hours ago? That said, where’s the prick?”

Paige giggled and gestured with her chin at his workshop. It was at that moment that Greg emerged again. His gaze flickered from Paige to Lisa then to the three women behind her.

The Asian girl spotted him and her whole face changed as she assumed a cloy pose and waved at him. “Hi, Greggy,” she said, the syllables syrup-sweet and practiced, “did you miss me?”

Paige’s eyebrows shot up. Greggy?

“Behave,” Greg said without slowing.

The woman’s smile flattened into a pout before bouncing back into something more mischievous. “No!”

He didn’t even glance at her. “Any trouble?” he asked Lisa instead.

“No,” Lisa said, deadpan. “Everything went smoothly."

He nodded once, then raised his voice to address the others. “Taylor, Rachel, Alec—get over here.” 

A minute later, everyone had gathered around, and Greg gestured to the newcomers. “Introductions. This is Keiko Ayase, cape name Hibana. Formerly the ABB's bomb tinker, Bakuda. She's decided that working with me represents a better use of her considerable talents than whatever Lung had planned for her."

The Asian woman—Keiko, Bakuda—gave a small wave, her smile not quite reaching her eyes.

“As for the lovely ladies to my left,” Greg continued, not allowing Paige’s disbelief to settle as he gestured to the other two. “Agnes Herren and Tammi Williams, formerly Othala and Rune respectively, now Ambrosia and Scribe. They have both expressed their desire to contribute positively to the city's well-being after some... reflection on their previous life choices. Keiko has similar motivations, plus the added incentive of getting to build things that explode, which seems to make her happy for some reason." 

The clearly unstable woman giggled again.

Greg, however, did not seem to notice as he turned to address the rest of the group. “Team, meet your new colleagues. Brian's dealing with personal matters and won't be back for a few days, but in the meantime, you lot should get acquainted." He paused, his gaze sweeping across both groups.  "I want everyone to work on building rapport. The next few months would see us operating as a unit, which means familiarity and communication are essential. So please, be cordial and try not to kill each other. That would make me very upset; you don’t want me upset."

A very pointed stare was shot at Keiko and Tammi, before he turned to address Lisa. “You. With me. We have things to discuss.”

And then he was gone, striding back to his workshop, Lisa hurrying after him. The rest of them were left in a thick, uncomfortable silence. Paige looked at the three newcomers. Bakuda was still pouting. Agnes looked uneasy, and Tammi looked like she wanted to strangle Greg, her hands finally clenching at her sides.

That left Paige standing there with three very dangerous supervillains, her teammates fanned out behind her, and a silence that wasn’t quite comfortable. She inhaled, slow and even. She didn’t like them — didn’t need to, either — but they were here because Greg wanted them here. That was enough to put the reflexive wariness in check.

“Okay,” she said finally, breaking the awkward quiet. “Guess we should start with names. Hi, I am Paige Mcabee. Singer. Master. Convicted felon. Nice to meet you.”