When we arrived to the hotel, Technix frowned. “There’s definitely a generator set up here. Actually, I’m feeling three, and… I dunno, there’s some weird tech in there.”

“Three generators? It’s only a two story old hotel, why would they need three?” Jet Force asked, confused. “Everyone on guard, this might be more than we expected. Be ready to back out and call for backup, Technix. Ladies, ready?”

“Ready, Jet,” Hurricane nodded.

“Lead on, Captain,” I agreed. Jet nodded and walked for the door. Once we were all inside, the light in the lobby flickered on. “Orders?” I asked quietly, mildly unnerved by the automatic lights in a building that most definitely hadn’t had them when it closed.

“Hold for now,” Jet replied, signaling us all to stay by the door as he walked forward. “Hello? We’re with the Hero’s Association, we’re just checking in to make sure everything is alright here. Anyone willing to come chat with us?” We waited and there was no answer, before a section of a wall facing the door lowered and a screen was revealed. It showed static for a moment, then a young man’s face.

“Oh, wait- There we go! Hello, heroes! Nothing to worry about, I’ve bought the hotel and am in the process of renovating it,” he said cheerfully. “Automation, security cameras, and a few bits of amusement for those that find themselves visiting.”

“Sounds like a nice project for you,” Jet replied with an easy smile. “We were on our ways to another spot and thought we’d just check in, make sure everything was alright here.”

“Jet…” Technix said nervously.

“Just a sec, Tech- We’ll be heading out in a moment,” Jet promised.

“Oh? Going already? I would love a chance to meet some of my favorite heroes before you go, if I could?” The young man asked eagerly. “My study is just through the door on the right there, by the old elevator. I can meet you there in just a minute!”

“I don’t see why not,” Jet agreed. “We will meet you there, then.” The screen turned off and the wall closed back up. Technix looked both worried and annoyed.

“Jet, something isn’t right here. We need to leave now, not wait and meet this guy.”

“If you’re worried, then you can wait outside,” Jet pointed out, heading for the door that had been pointed out. “It never hurts to show good will toward citizens, y’know. We don’t want to be cold and aloof, and it’s not like we’re on an emergency.” Hurricane looked between the two, shrugged, and followed Jet. Technix scowled and looked at me.

“I’ll be outside. Here-” He handed me his spare comm. As the techie one, he usually handled communication. “If something happens, radio out.” With that, he stormed back outside.

I felt uneasy myself, but someone with a communicator needed to be on the inside, so I followed the cousins. Once we were all three in the study we’d been pointed to, Jet took a spot by a window and waited, looking outside. Hurricane moved to look at a bookshelf on the far wall, and I stayed close to the door. No one said anything and we just waited for our mysterious fan to show up.

“Guys, get out of there!” Came Technix’s voice over the comms after a moment. “It’s a trap, theres-” The signal cut out as we all heard a strange noise outside. Jet tried to punch out the window so we could leave easily, only to find it was strangely strong. As he looked at it, confused, a sheet of metal closed over it outside the room.

“What? How did… What?”

“Jet, focus!” Hurricane said, grabbing his arm and pulling him toward the study door as I led the way back towards the front door. The windows in the lobby showed the same metal sheet outside as the study window had, and opening the front door showed the sheet had engulfed the building.

“Shit… We need to find a different way out,” I told the other two, turning to them.

“Move, let me try to break it,” Jet answered, moving forward. I stepped aside and let him punch the metal a few times with no dents. “What the hell is this? It looks like plain steel, but I can’t even dent it?”

“Clearly, we’re not dealing with a normal citizen. We’ve got a rogue.” Hurricane moved to another door in the lobby and opened it. “Which means we’ll need to find them or some other way out, like Flare said. Let’s start searching.”

“Agreed, I guess.” Jet nodded. “Let’s stick close. Flare, you’ve got a com? Any signal?”

I held it up and pushed some buttons where he could see. “None. I’d bet whatever this is around the building is blocking the signal.”

“You’d win money on that bet,” our captor’s voice said. I assumed there was an intercom somewhere in the building. “I never expected my trap to draw my exact target so soon. And two more strong steel tiers on top? It’s lovely when things go well.”

“So, which of us is your target, then?” I asked. “And why? Far as we know, none of us are that impressive for a rogue to take out.”

“I suppose you’ll just have to wait to find out, won’t you? Once you’ve found a few more of my… improvements to this building, you’ll likely find your answer. And if you don’t… Well, you’ll likely just be out of my hair, so who cares?” The voice chuckled. “I suppose it would be fair to at least tell you… By the ratings of your little League buddies, I’d be classed as gold. If the three of you can survive to reach me, you might just manage to defeat me. Then again… Maybe not. Maybe I’m not even in the hotel.”

“Yeah, we’ll believe you’d be gold when we see it.” Hurricane retorted.

“Come on, guys. Let’s look around and find a way out, or our friend here.” Jet said, walking. Hurricane and I followed, heading through a door with him.

“As an added bit of fun… I’m broadcasting your adventure. There are cameras nearly everywhere here. And there are plenty of challenges for you along your way.”

“At least if he’s broadcasting this, the Association knows exactly what’s going on,” Hurricane pointed out. “So, they’ll be working on getting us out from the outside.”

“And, the building’s two stories. Maybe with a basement. There’s not that much for us to look through.” Jet seemed not to be bothered at all by all of this. I got the feeling he thought our enemy wasn’t nearly as strong as he claimed.

“He claimed to have made changes to the building. So… We could have more to worry about than we think,” I pointed out. Jet snorted, before Hurricane grabbed his arm and pulled him back. I was confused, until I saw a tripwire right in front of Jet. “Well… There’s at least traps.”

“Okay… So we need to keep an eye out for-” Jet began, then the lights cut out. “Should’ve seen that coming. If he wants us to blunder into traps, why would he keep the lights on?”

“I mean, we’ve dealt with this kinda thing before,” I pointed out, raising a hand and producing just enough of a fireball for us to see by. I waited, looking around to see if a fire suppression system was going to kick in, then sighed. “No sprinklers, no fire alarms. Which could be a clue, or he could have just not cared to get them up and running yet.”

“A clue?” Jet asked. “What, to who he was looking to trap?”

“Exactly,” I nodded. “He said he was only after one of us. So, there could be a lot of traps aimed at only one of us, our specific powers. The lack of sprinklers could hint that I’m not the main target, or it could just mean he hadn’t bothered with them or he has traps that the water would ruin… It’s not definite, could still go a couple ways, but it could help us narrow it down with some other information.”

“We’ll see what else we can gather, might also help us decide what he’s prepared for,” Hurricane nodded. Jet sighed, running a hand through his hair.

“Flare… Take point on this. My quick thinking is best in a fight, you’re intelligent overall. I think we’ll have a better chance of survival and success if you take the lead.” Hurricane and I just stared at him. “I know I can be an ass, and I have been lately. But you’re a good hero. And right now, we need you in charge. So take the lead, and let’s do our best to get out of here.”

“Well… if you think that’s best, Jet Force, I’ll take charge,” I agreed reluctantly. Jet never handed the reins over, even if it would be the smart choice. Then again, we’d never been trapped a man down in an unknown environment before, either. I slipped past them, careful of the tripwire, and made sure they could see it as we moved further down the hall, alert for other traps. “Alright… We need a gameplan. We saw no obvious changes to the outside of the building, so if any expansions happened, I’d bet they were to the basement. I would also bet that, if our rogue is in the building at all, he’s not going to be easy to get to.”

“So, what, not on the first or second floors?” Hurricane asked. I nodded.

“Except, we can’t be certain. If I’m right and he’s expanded, then he may think that we would think that way…” I trailed off, thinking it over. “We’re clearly dealing with an intelligent rogue. The problem is, what kind of intelligent? Is he only good with tech, but bad at predicting people? Hmm… No, he knew enough to know he could probably easily trap at least some of us. He also knows that the idea that we’re under constant watch and broadcast to the city means we’ll have to be careful what we say, or we give away secrets we don’t want to. That’s less of a problem for you two, your identities aren’t secret, but does put my identity in a bind.”

“She thinks she’s working me out, doesn’t she?” Came our enemy over the intercom system. “Cute, thinking you can out-think me. You’re just a pathetic little girl, you can’t even begin to get ahead of me.”

I stopped and looked around, contemplating. “Well… There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” I could tell he was trying to goad me into rashness. If my teammates hadn’t been trapped in here with me, it may have even worked, but I couldn’t put them at risk by rushing into things. “You’ve at least ruled out one solution for me.”

“Oh? Do tell, Flare, what have I ruled out?” The young man chuckled over the intercom.

“I can’t simply burn you out. Even if the metal you’ve put around the building has a low melting point and would fail to the heat, that would just kill my teammates.”

“And baby’s afraid of getting her first error?” The voice taunted.

“I’ll get an error at some point. I’m human, I’m far from perfect. But I’m not going to make choices that I know will cost lives.” He hadn’t said anything that would specifically tell me anything, but how he said that bothered me for some reason. I couldn’t place it, but it felt like his taunt about errors meant something. “Even if you were definitely locked in here with us and it would stop you, I can’t risk that.”

“Aww, you’re so kind,” He retorted. I heard a beeping down the hall and turned to look, as did the other two. A red light had appeared in the darkness. “I’m not, however. You know the best thing about a pyro? You’re so easy for a heat seeking computer to find.” There was a mechanical noise behind the beeping and the light started coming closer to us.

“Guys… There’s a side room to our left,” Hurricane whispered. “I don’t see a trap on the door.”

“Get in, and I’ll keep this heat seeker trained on me,” I told the two, watching the light. I heard a door to the left open and felt the two of them move away from me.

As the light approached, I grew my fire a little to give me a better view of what was approaching me. It was like a bare-bones version of a train engine with tank treads. The red light I had seen was on the front, right above a strange little tube sticking out of the robot. The robot stopped, and I heard a whirring noise that sounded like something spinning up.

That felt like my cue. I dropped the fireball and dodged into the door on my left just before bullets started flying from the machine. Hurricane closed the door behind me, and Jet Force shoved a dresser up against it. I stumbled away from the door before once more lighting a small fireball so we could see the room better.

It was a small hotel room, predictably. The window was covered by a sheet of metal, just like the other windows were. I moved closer to take a look. “Careful… I don’t know what the office window was made of, but it’s way stronger than glass. That metal sure ain’t steel, either,” Jet warned me quietly as he and Hurricane guarded the door.

“I figured. Do you think he’s replaced all the windows with whatever was in the office?” I asked, putting my free hand up to it. It didn’t feel like glass to me, but I wasn’t sure what it could be instead. “It doesn’t feel like glass… And it doesn’t feel like it would be easy to melt.”

“So, what do we do from here? None of us is bullet-proof, and we have no access to medical supplies or first aid while we’re trapped in here,” Hurricane sighed, shifting to lean against the wall.

“We also don’t have an easy way to distract the thing. I can’t risk leaving something burning while we make an escape,” I agreed, frowning. We heard a noise and turned to the wall opposite the door as a section of it slid down and a monitor, much like the one in the lobby, was revealed. A picture flickered into focus, but it wasn’t our enemy. It was the current top villain, Belladonna. My mother.

“Hero team- I think we’ve gotten a signal in. The Heroes and our League are working together to break into the building you’re trapped in. We know who your rogue is, and he is too much for a group of steel tier heroes to handle alone, especially with one of your team out of the situation. We are keeping an eye on the broadcast as well, and trying to sort what his goal is with this.”

“Well, this will be a tale for the grandkids one day, if we survive,” Jet sighed, rubbing his face. “Being rescued by villains…”

“If we don’t get ourselves out first,” I pointed out.

“We appreciate the news, Belladonna. Though this is going to make your case with the various rogues harder,” Hurricane pointed out.

“Right now, that’s not our main concern. If this psycho takes things too far, he’ll interfere in plans a few of us are working on, and we’re not going to let some little punk ruin all our hard work,” Belladonna retorted with a bit of a smirk. “Just do your best to survive, and we’ll do our best to keep getting into his network and learn what we can.” The monitor shut off and the wall closed back. Jet and Hurricane sighed, both sounding mildly relieved, but I couldn’t. I was tense, fists clenched, after the first time I had spoken to my mother since the day she’d abandoned me.

“Well, what are we thinking for an escape from the room here?” Jet asked, looking at Hurricane, then at me. He frowned, shifting a little. “Flare? You uh… You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I growled, moving closer to where the monitor had been. “Just peachy.”

“You clearly aren’t,” Hurricane retorted. “I get it, I’m not a fan of getting help from the League either, but…”

“I’m. Fine.” I wasn’t, she was right. I was trying to get my mind back where I needed it, but when I finally lost my temper, that could be hard. I was right on the edge of that at this point.

“It’s not the League. It’s Belladonna,” Jet observed. “I know she’s the biggest bad in the city, but-”

“She- I have a personal reason not to like her right now. Alright? But I can’t focus on that when I need to sort out how to get us moving on without getting us all shot.” I could feel their eyes on me. They wanted to know, I knew that, but it wasn’t the time for it. Besides, I couldn’t explain more than that when we knew the city was watching. Hell, the world could be watching for all we knew.

They talked more, but I ignored them, kneeling and examining the floor. It wasn’t very hard or sturdy, so we should be able to slip into the basement here. The problem was that we wouldn’t know what was below us until we were already in there. But we also couldn’t wait forever to do something, as I was certain the rogue had something else up his sleeve and was just waiting for us to drop our guard to use it.

“Jet. I think our best bet is if you break the floor and we drop through. It’s risky, but… We’ll have to take our chances.” The cousins stopped talking behind me and Jet walked over, kneeling to examine the floor himself.

“Should be doable. Stand back, I’ll break through and help you two down one at a time.” I moved back by Hurricane, and Jet punch a hole in the floor, then motioned us over to head down to the basement.