//------------------------------//
// 15 - Sometimes You Still Lose 
// Story: The Lost Connection 
// by A bag of plums 
//------------------------------//

Keila walked up to the front door of Pierce’s house. The Saddle Arabian was careful not to set off any traps that Pierce’s security system might have in store for an intruder, but after a quick scan with eagle vision, she was surprised to find not a single trap waiting for her. Which, considering the computer teacher’s paranoia, was unusual in itself. Not even a remote activated sprinkler came on as she closed in on the front door.

It was there where the ominous feeling set in. As her hand reached for the keyhole to insert the key that Pierce had given her, Keila was both shocked and unnerved as the door swung open at her touch.

Her instincts kicking in, Keila immediately hopped back and got into a combat stance, keeping her arms at her sides as she peered inside the dark hallway of Pierce’s house. Further inspection of the lock revealed that it had not been picked, or forced open with the usual methods. The metal looked as though it had been melted, as if by some acid or extreme temperature. She looked up, seeing a security camera pointed at the doormat. Keila glanced at it once, then proceeded into the house.

It was dark inside. Keila reached out to turn on the lights, but first she decided to use eagle vision to check if there was anyone else in the house. It turned up empty, so Keila relaxed and continued inside. According to Pierce, his extra phone was on a shelf in his computer room.

Arriving in the living room, Keila beheld a shocking sight. Everything electronic had been smashed and destroyed, and a coffee table in the middle had been turned on its side. Long, deep gouges were hacked into the plastic and wood, and in the upper right corner of the room, the remains of a security camera hung, suspended by a single wire. Everything in the room had been systematically ruined, from the keyboards to the monitors to the highly advanced PC tower that now lay in tiny pieces all over the floor. It was as if  a tornado had ripped through the room, wrecking everything that the computer had been, only, Keila knew what the real cause might’ve been.

Mirror Match… or Ebony Wings. 

Keila searched the shelf for the extra phone, but all she found was bits of its screen and battery.

Curses… I’m too late.

Turning around, she produced her own phone and contacted Morning Blade.

There was a short pause before the other ex-Assassin picked up. “Keila?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Bad news.” The Saddle Arabian looked around the room, searching for anything she could possibly salvage. “Pierce’s house, it’s been totaled. Each item, ranging from Pierce’s computer to his phone and cameras, they’ve all been ripped apart.”

“Oh dear. I’ll relay this to Pierce. Hang on.” Keila waited for a bit, picking at the scraps of Pierce’s second phone. “Keila, Pierce wants you to grab whatever is left of his phone. He’ll handle the rest.”

“Um… sure.” Keila grabbed the handful of electronics and stuffed them into her coat pocket. “We’ll need to find somewhere safe. Somewhere Mirror Match wouldn’t know. If Pierce’s house isn’t safe, I don’t know where is.”

“We can settle that when you get back. We’ll first need to get Pierce out of the hospital.”

“Right.” Keila began making her way out. “So you’re saying Pierce can somehow get the phone working again even if it’s all in pieces?”

“Pierce says he can and that’s really the only option we have right now. I suggest we go along with it.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Pocketing her phone and the leftover pieces of Pierce’s phone, Keila swooped out of the computer teacher’s home, closing the front door behind her. With the sun already setting, she figured it would be nighttime by the time she got back to the hospital. Hopefully that wouldn’t be too late for them.



Even while bedridden and heavily injured, Pierce Network was still able to piece his broken phone together, using some extra bits Morning Blade had nicked from one of the nurses. Pierce would say that he hoped the nurse wouldn’t miss her phone too much, but truthfully, he didn’t care. All that mattered right now was hacking his way out of the hospital and getting somewhere safe, somewhere Mirror Match wouldn’t be able to find them.

“You truly are a man of intelligence,” Keila told him as she watched him fix up the makeshift phone.

“Yeah, well, not when he made the choice whether to leave the Assassins or not, and certainly not when he enrolled in my school with the same name.” Morning Blade pulled at her white braid. “You got Principal Celestia in trouble for nothing. I mean, surely you could’ve thought of a better place to lay low?”

“School was the best…” Pierce said with a wheeze. With his lungs damaged, he didn’t have a lot of oxygen to keep up a good conversation for once in his life. All he could manage were the important bits. “I would never… go near children. Best place to be… But you are right. Should’ve changed my name.”

“So when you fix that phone up, what then?” Morning Blade folded her arms and watched him work. “You just program the hospital to let you out?”

Pierce nodded and attached a single red wire into the central chip. A red light suddenly became green and he smiled weakly.

Bringing up the screen on the nurse’s phone, Pierce worked his way into one of his secret apps, entering rows and rows of code before arriving at a simple black screen with green lettering. Now it was only a matter of bypassing the hospital database’s firewall and swap around some codes to change his discharge to today. Simple enough.

With his fingers flying across the screen, though not as quickly as he wanted, Pierce did what he had to do and eventually came to the page with his particulars. He changed his discharge status to today, filling in all the information he needed to make sure no one was going to ask twice with his release. As for his address, he left it as his house. It would better if Mirror Match didn’t know where he was heading off to.

“Done.” He looked up at the two ex-Assassins, thumbing the phone screen off. “Now… we leave.”

Pierce tried to swing his legs off the bed, but he had a lot of trouble to even lift them enough to move himself. Morning Blade and Keila were soon by both his sides, helping him up from under his arms.

A nurse stopped by the door, watching the two of them struggle to move Pierce.

“Leaving so soon? I thought you weren’t due to leave for another few weeks at least.”

“He was just cleared,” Keila explained as Morning Blade ran off to get a wheelchair from the corner. “The doctor decided home treatment would be better for him at this point.”

“The doc said that? Let me see…” The nurse lifted her tablet computer and pulled up the appropriate file. “Hmm… Home movement requested… today… Oh, well, yes, It would seem he has. Would you like some assistance in moving Mr. Pierce?”

“Oh, just to the wheelchair is fine.” Keila waved as Morning came back with the wheelchair. “We can manage the rest.”

“All right then,” the nurse said hesitantly. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to call the doctor to do some last minute checks on him before sending him home?”

“Oh there’s no need.” Morning Blade looked as innocent as she could as the nurse and Keila helped Pierce down onto the wheelchair.

Pierce grunted as they placed him down, his chest still hurting all over. Ebony Wings had really did a number on him. In his whole career as an Assassin or even a vigilante, he’d never been as wounded as he was right now. At least right now, he wasn’t alone.

“Well, it was a pleasure to have you here, Mr. Pierce.” The nurse bowed slightly and smiled. “I would say we hope to see you again, but that would be bad of us. Take care, Mr. Pierce.”

“You take care too…” Pierce wheezed as Morning began wheeling him out of the room.

On the way out of the hospital, Pierce’s mind was a whirl of gears and machinations. While his body was heavily damaged, his mind was almost still as sharp as ever. Even now, he was busy planning how they would stay hidden from Mirror Match and Ebony Wings and what he should do with the information he had. Then there was also the case of Principal Celestia. He needed to call to make sure she was indeed safe, but that would also pose the risk of Mirror Match tracing the call back to him. There were too many things to think about right now and there wasn’t any time for rest.

“So what’s the plan now, Pierce?” Morning Blade whispered as they exited the hospital, emerging through two sliding doors. “Where should we go? Mirror will know all our conventional safehouses.”

“Then we have to look… to my old ones…” Pierce said as they went looking for a car. His van wasn’t here right now and the next best possible thing would be to steal someone’s car. He’d done plenty of that back in the day, so unless he had forgotten how to do it, they shouldn’t have any trouble in getting one.

Eventually, Pierce had settled his eyes on a square white van.

That’ll do just fine.

He had driven plenty of vehicles back in his time and during his years with the Assassins, but he always found vans to be easier to drive, and they also doubled as a storage space when needed, which was nice. Using his makeshift phone, Pierce unlocked the car door for Morning and Keila.

“I’ll drive.” Keila volunteered and got into the driver’s seat. “I think I still remember how to hotwire a car.”

In no time, the Saddle Arabian got the engines running, while Morning helped Pierce into the back of the van, buckling him in with the van’s only seatbelt. Pierce shook his head. It was a poorly managed van, but it was better than nothing. When he got better, he could always fix it up to suit his many needs.

Pierce still remembered some of his older safehouses back in Chicoltgo. It was a far drive from here, but it was better than nothing. Searching up the coordinates on his makeshift phone, Pierce pinpointed one and handed it to Morning Blade to direct Keila.

It was going to be some time before they got to Chicoltgo, so Pierce decided a short nap wouldn’t hurt, at least not as much as his body.



“Deactivate,” Pierce mumbled and weakly pointed a finger to a code input terminal by the door. “Five, five, seven, five, eight… five, five, one, zero…”

“Gee, you sure like the number five, huh?” Keila did as she was told, inputting the code. A red light on the terminal changed to green, letting Pierce know that his old security system was now down.

“Just an old password…” Pierce said as Morning Blade wheeled him up a step.

“Just how old is this place?” Morning Blade pushed the door open, hearing the hinges creak. “It’s like no one’s been here in over ten years.”

She began pushing him in, down a long dark hall, similar to many of the Assassin safehouses, though these ones were only used by Pierce and his hacker friends. They had long since stopped their activities and none of these would’ve been in use for a long, long time.

“More than ten…” Pierce coughed. “Much longer…”

The hall they were in led them down a row of locked doors, where Pierce had once kept his stores of gadgets. Perhaps there were still some in there that he could use, but first, he would have to recover enough to at least move around on his own.

Finding the fuse by the wall, Pierce directed Morning to flip it, suddenly bringing power back to the hall, with the lights flickering on one by one from where they were to the end of the hall. A few flickered a couple of times, then went out.

She trekked back to where Pierce and Keila were, her feet kicking up clouds of dust as they met the carpet.

“Place isn’t exactly a dream come true, but if it’s safe from them, then it’s fine with me.”

“Wait till we are… inside.” Pierce pointed ahead, directing her to keep going. “There is… more.”

Once they arrived at the end, Pierce could see the rusty railings beyond the door and only Morning Blade and Keila were high enough to see what was beyond them. Pierce smiled internally as he watched their faces warp with surprise.

Down past the railing was where his real lair was, filled with server mainframes to the sides and more than a dozen computer screens at the far end of the room against the wall, with a table filled with gadget bits and an old keyboard where he used to monitor the city.

“Pierce this is all… Wow.” Keila walked down the metal staircase to the main room, her footsteps echoing around the desolate room.

“It’s all supremely outdated though...” Pierce admitted. “No one’s been here... to upgrade or update anything in over a decade. Still, if I do… this…” Pierce took out his phone and handed it to Morning and asked her to have it plugged it into one of the servers with a cable. “We can at least… see the security camera footage from… my house. See what happened.”

“All done, Pierce.” Morning stood up from the corner with all the servers and dusted her hands down.

The hacker nodded and pointed to the CPU switches for Keila to turn on. She did so and activated his  multiple screens, each dusty monitor flickering to life after a few moments. Two of them stayed off, and more than a few sputtered, the images coming through with bursts of static. It had really felt like a lifetime since his activities as a vigilante back in his prime.

“Let’s see…” Pierce reached both his hands out to the dusty keyboard and an older mouse, sitting on his dusty table. He was surprised they still worked, though they were caked in so much dirt, it began affecting the mouse sensor underneath.

“The phone bits you recovered probably hold some of the footage…” Pierce said, his fingers working on the keyboard, plumes of dust rising with each keystroke. “I’m banking on the assumption... that whoever wrecked my stuff... went for the computer first. Then moved on to the camera and the phone.”

As he hoped, the screen began showing footage from his camera as the perpetrator entered his room, holding an axe in their hand. It was hard to tell from the washed out colored images, but the intruder appeared to have light-colored hair, and skin to match.

“That doesn’t look like Mirror Match,” Keila muttered.

“Could be Ebony Wings.” Morning walked back over and folded her arms as she surveyed the footage. “She’s an actor. She might have wigs to use and stuff.”

Pierce grunted in response and went back to surveying the screen. His frown deepened as the intruder hefted the axe and delivered a crushing blow to his computer, continuing to axe apart every single component. The intruder was clearly enjoying this, a wide smile on her face as she systematically wrecked the entire setup.

After that, she got to the camera, which buzzed out of existence as the perpetrator swung her axe at the screen. Pierce leaned back in his wheelchair and sighed. Now he knew what had happened to his home. It really didn’t change anything, but it made him feel better knowing what Keila had seen.

This Ebony Wings was a problem and Mirror Match still was. As long as he was alive, he was sure they would be out there, searching for him, ready to end him with those black blades of theirs, just like the others so many years ago.

There didn’t look like there was much of a chance against them, especially not against Ebony Wings; she was more powerful and vicious than Mirror Match ever was. Pierce considered just wheeling himself out there and waiting for them to finish him, but then he shook his head.

No. It won’t end like that and I’m sure as hay not making it this easy for them. If I am to die, I will die knowing I will have caused a great deal of inconvenience for these monsters.

“So…” Morning ventured after a long moment of silence. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t suppose we can do anything about those two?” Keila said with a sigh. “I mean, who’s going to believe that Ebony Wings is… well, all that? You know, fangs and claws.”

“We’re Assassins,” Morning Blade said discontentedly. “Or at least we were. Couldn’t we just assassinate them?”

“That... would be a good idea…” Pierce wheezed. “You know we can’t… Not anymore. We were close… but with Ebony Wings… too much.”

“Well then…” Keila said despondently. “What can we do? Just sitting and doing nothing doesn’t seem like much of a plan.”

“One thing we can do…” Pierce looked up at his various ancient screens. “Ebony Wings. If we can expose her… she will have nowhere to hide. Expose her for what… she really is. A monster.”

“Expose her?” Keila looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “How do you plan on doing that?”

“We don’t have anything on her,” Morning told him. “Right?”

“We can… start here.” Pierce pointed to his screens.

All he had to do was some digging. And then he also had the data from Mirror Match and her identity change to Ivory Wings, not to mention her estate and her funds. He gave her her things back. He could always take them away just as easily. Then he also had his old data about Mirror and all the strange things she had done. Given time, he knew he could expose them to the world and once that happened, things would be a lot easier for sure.

“We can still… turn this around.” Pierce patted his wheelchair’s armrests. “We haven’t lost…”

As long as he still had any of his tech and some connection, then there was still hope in turning all this around. Pierce pictured Ebony Wings in his mind, remembering as she tore into him with her long talons. His lungs still hurt a little when he breathed, but it only served as an encouragement to expose her to the world.

Now that he knew her true nature and that of her sister, Mirror Match, it was only a matter of time until he had all the information he needed to turn the world against time.

This time for sure, Pierce knew he could beat them. They weren’t as invincible as they might think. This time, he would have the upper hand.

“Sometimes… you still lose…” Pierce looked up at his monitor and smiled.




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