It was a quick fight, and I mean quick.

As soon as they stepped out of the elevator, they saw a man who could be none other than Helios waiting for them in front of his office. Electricity crackled between the prongs of his destabilizer rod. He smiled malevolently.

Airin and Brandy didn’t wait another second before doing their thing. Before Brandy finished blinking, the man was blindfolded with a strip of cloth from Airin’s shirt, and a moment later, he was hogtied with a string of sparkly christmas lights. The rod in his hands fell to the ground and crackled.

Then, in true daytime comedy fashion, the christmas lights lit up.

Brandy dusted her hands off and admired her handiwork. “Those were plenty useful,” she quipped.

Airin reached for a spray can before forgetting that she didn’t have her gear. Good thing, too. Any metal detectors would’ve been going off like crazy if she brought in her metal spray cans. Instead, she produced a makeup compact for their signature clown makeup, but Jayden hovered a hand in front of her.

Jayden shook her head slightly, as if saying, not this time. They didn’t want to leave any more signatures than they had to.

They stuffed him into an ornate closet made of wavy glass and that was that. Yet another victim of Team Underground.

The trio surveyed the room. This guy had cabinets covering every available wall in the office, all made of the same opaque glass as the closet. Airin wondered if the clocktower supplied the furniture, or if it was simply an aesthetic.

They got to work finding their criminal reports, ignoring the grunts and struggling coming from the closet. Airin quickly found hers and handed it to Jayden to read.

Jayden’s brows furrowed as her eyes scanned the page. She tore her glasses off her face and reread the report. She rubbed her eyes.

“...We’re done for,” she finally said after a long while.

Brandy looked up from the other end of the room. “What, is it that bad?”

Jayden tsked. She flipped back and forth between the pages of notes, analyses, and photos. “It’s that good. Whoever did this knew us, intimately. Don’t giggle,” she warned, seeing that Brandy was about to point out her innuendo. “They knew our M.O., they replicated our powers, and they left no bodies or id.”

“They didn’t need to kill anyone? How’d they take out dozens of guards?”

“Apparently, Heartbreaker covered the entire labyrinth around the Oval Office in shadow, and Colourist went in and spray-painted everyone’s face into clown makeup while blobs of darkness strangled all the guards. Everyone fainted, and Colourist and the shadow monsters moved too fast to be remembered as anything more than a blue streak. Tsk, tsk.” Jayden flipped a page. “Then – oh, Brandy, you’re gonna like this one – Delinquent picked the lock under broad daylight and – hmm. It says here that the bodyguard’s first alarm said that the president had collapsed on his own, and the later police report said that Delinquent had presumably teleported in and slashed the president’s throat.” Jayden furrowed her brows. “It’s inconsistent.”

Brandy waved it away. “The bodyguard was in shock. They might’ve downplayed the alarm.”

Airin was fine with English, but everyone kept talking too fast. She hummed in frustration. “Can somebody translate?” she signed exasperatedly. Brandy gave the choppy, ASL-as-a-second-language version of that translation.

“I cannot even run through the entire labyrinth in under an hour,” Airin signed glumly as soon as Brandy was done. “The killer knew the way already.”

Jayden was silent, thinking, processing.

“So we all did stuff, but what did Announcer do?” Brandy asked, shuffling through files on her side of the room.

“I don’t know.” Jayden closed the file. “This one’s Airin’s. Hey, can’t we just take our files? Steal their evidence and notes? Do they have duplicates?”

Brandy nodded her head sadly. “Definitely. Triplicates. Digital copy in the clocktower’s data, and another hard copy in a safe underground.”

“We’ve broken into safes before. Remember Bank of Singe? First job?”

Airin got bored of the debate and wandered off to look for the remaining files. She glanced over at Helios. The closet had gone suspiciously still. He probably just tired himself out.

Brandy shook her head again. “This one’s powered by the pendulum and literally buried under the underground. We’d have to dig through 6 feet of dirt, and then drill through the safe.”

“And probably get electrocuted,” Jayden finished. “Tsk.”

“How do they get the files into there?” Brandy mused.

“Probably a mail-slot teleporter.”

“At least the postal service isn’t obsolete yet.”

“I’m surprised you know the word ‘obsolete.’”

Brandy scoffed. She put her hand on her heart and feigned indignation. “I will have you know that I read! And write!”

“Songs and poetry. Not exactly the next great American novel.”

Airin tapped them both on the shoulder. “If you two are done bickering...” She waved two files in the air.

“We’re still taking our files,” said Jayden. “Better fewer traces than all of them.”

“That’s… not an expression.” But she didn’t stop Jayden from stuffing the file into her bag.

Airin handed Brandy her file, and Jayden hers.

Time stopped.

Jayden’s face fell, all traces of humour gone from her eyes. Her heart sank. Her throat went dry.

She knew the person who framed them would have a speech. They always had the speech – that was their thing, along with the clown makeup and the whole “giving back to the people” Robin Hood schtick. And the speech would be hers. It was always hers. But she still thought she could get out of it.

Through all her knowledge and experience and telling herself that, statistically, nothing ever worked out so perfectly, she’d held on to the hope that she could prove her voice files didn’t match, or that her speech patterns didn’t match, or that she had an alibi more than a scribbled note on a flimsy agenda. Her wrist shook violently. She held the key so tight it dug grooves into her palm.

But if she was a watchman, or a thinking judge, or a jury and executioner, she would think she did it too.

Because it was her speech and her voice.