Tony cradled Lucy in his arms, her limp body weighing almost nothing, as he carried her as carefully as he could down the alleyway to the secret door in the wall that led to the safe house. There were no shadows to be seen, and the air felt strangely charged and sterile, as though it had been cleaned of even the idea of shadows. Tony barely noticed the unusual lightness in the air around him as the unseen door swung open, revealing a dark tunnel and then a set of stairs that led down. He had to get the girl to safety, and then he had to check on Daisy, who had been lying unconscious in the alleyway. He didn't know if she was alive or dead, but all he could think about at that moment was getting Lucy to safety.
Bowser was waiting for him when he reached the bottom of the stairs, and Tony felt relief at the sight of him as Bowser exclaimed, "Woh, man, what happened!?" Bowser opened a thick door that led into the underground bunker, and together they laid the girl carefully on an old leather couch, making sure not to move her head and neck more than was necessary.
"Cover her with blankets and call Maverick! I have to check on Daisy," Tony hollered over his shoulder as he sprinted out of the bunker, not waiting for Bowser to reply.
Daylight shone in full strength, the sun breaking through the clouds and the snowflakes slowing to a putter, when Tony reached Daisy and turned her over gently. To his immense relief, she coughed and opened her eyes, looking up at him through tears.
"Hey there, kid," he said, using his old nickname for her.
"Don't call me kid," she croaked, punching him in the arm so gently he barely felt it.
"Can you walk?" he asked as he lifted her into a sitting position. She nodded, putting one hand on her throat and rubbing it as though it hurt.
"Ok, let's get you down to the bunker then." He helped her stand and held her arm as they both walked slowly down the alleyway to the still-open door. Just as they reached the stairs, Tony heard his name and turned around.
"What happened?!" It was Maverick coming down the alleyway. When he saw Daisy, he added, "Are you ok?"
Daisy nodded and whispered, "I'm fine, just a run-in with a shadow I'd rather never think about again." Maverick didn't reply but helped Tony guide Daisy down the stairs instead and into the bunker, where Bowser was busy laying thick blankets over Lucy.
"Where were you, Mav?" Tony asked the older man, trying not to let the anger show in his voice.
"It's a long story, I'm afraid. Let's get the bunker secured, and I'll tell you, but first, how is the girl?" Both men helped Daisy sit down in a matching leather chair in an area that amounted to a living room for the bunker. It was one large open room with a state-of-the-art kitchen, cozy living room, and two consecutive walls designated first for a decent library of books and second for a wall of screens and computers that were lit up with the security cameras that were placed all around the outside of the hideout, including the alleyway.
Maverick knelt over Lucy and put his hand on her head, closing his eyes and using his power to reach into her mind and body to assess the damage. Several moments later, he took his hand away and sat back on the wood coffee table that was behind him.
"She's barely alive," he said.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Tony said, wringing his hands through his hair and turning away from Maverick.
"Don't give up just yet, though. I brought the White Swan with me," he said. As if on cue, someone walked through the doorway.
Tony looked up and was relieved to see the White Swan, dressed in white leather from her skin-tight jacket to her flared leather pants, walk over with a smile on her smooth brown face. She was bald, and she had a dimple on each cheek when she smiled that seemed to lift the weight on Tony's shoulders, if only a little. He had only seen her once before and knew that she was herself a bit of a unicorn, rarely coming out of hiding.
"Tut, tut, tut," she said, bending over Lucy without being asked and placing her hand on the girl's now-sweaty forehead. "What have you done to this poor young woman? She is barely alive! This is why I do not like to work with you, Maverick. You are careless with your people." The White Swan had a thick French accent that made everything she said doubly laced with a general air of disapproval.
"Yes, I know, but can you save her?" Maverick asked.
"Yes, of course I can, though not all of her wounds are my area of expertise. I should be able to heal her head and any swelling in her arm, but the bones, I am afraid, will remain broken."
"How did she break her arm?" Maverick asked Tony, sounding strangely angry with him.
"She was hit by a car right before we found her."
"Is that how she hit her head?" he asked with a frown.
"Uh, no, it most certainly is not!" Bowser said, sounding oddly excited considering what they were discussing.
Tony and Maverick turned to the short man with a pink fade and green mohawk on his angular head as the man turned excitedly and ran over to the wall of computers.
"Check it out!" he said, waving them over.
Bowser pushed a few buttons on the keyboard, making the paused image of a video show up on the large screen in front of him. Daisy rose slowly from her chair and walked shakily to Tony's side to watch as Bowser pushed play. The video was from the alleyway upstairs, and it showed Daisy run into the alleyway and then the grotesque shadow grabbing her by the neck and lifting her into the air. Tony couldn't help but put his arm around her shoulder and squeeze gently as he saw her hang limply from the shadow's arm.
The four of them watched in silence as Lucy fell at the shadow's feet, saying something, though they couldn't hear what it was. The shadows were circling the women like hyenas waiting for a kill, so that the cameras had barely enough light to see what was happening. They could barely see as Lucy lifted her arm up out of the snow, something long and thin in her hand, and then suddenly a light showed from within the wand that spilled out at every angle, until the entire camera was white with light, blinding the viewers from seeing anything else.
"That's all there is. The light fried my sensors and broke the cameras," Bowser said as he hit the pause button and turned towards the others, an excited look on his face.
"Frak!" Daisy croaked, shaking her head. "What is she?"
"I don't know, but that's when I showed up," Tony said, rubbing his hand through his hair.
"I've never seen anything like that before. What did you say her power was?" Maverick asked, rubbing his chin with his robotic hand. He used it like it wasn't a piece of machinery.
"We don't know. Daisy couldn't get a handle on it. There was too much going on, right, Daze?" Tony asked her.
"Yeah, lots of images flashed at once, but what her power was wasn't clear. She seemed to have lost her memory or something."
"How did the shadow hunters know about her?" Maverick asked.
"Where is Bali?" Daisy asked suddenly, her voice squeaking and scratchy.
Tony's cheeks turned red, but he couldn't help it. The shame he felt at losing Bali was eating him from the inside out. It was his fault she was taken. He had underestimated the importance of the girl and hadn't taken into account the potential of a witch. Reluctantly, he told them what had happened, including the temporal tick-tock and Bali disappearing in front of his eyes. Maverick's eyes grew wide as he described the time lapse.
"Temporal tick-tocks, or time watches, aren't supposed to exist anymore," Maverick said, going over to the wall of books and taking an older, leather-bound copy from the top shelf and flipping through it until he found a page with an old hand-drawn image of the exact watch Tony had seen in the witch's grasp.
"Did it look like this?" Maverick asked, showing Tony, who looked at the picture and then nodded. "This is the last reference to time watches in the ancient texts, and it was believed to have been lost a long time ago. If the witches have had one this whole time and only used it now, then this girl must be really important to them somehow."
"They called her the shadow eater," Tony said.
Maverick closed the book with a loud snap and stepped towards Tony suddenly. "Are you sure those were their words?" he asked, a fiery look in his eyes.
"Yes, they said that once she ate the shadow, she would be willing to do whatever they wanted. Have you heard that phrase before? Shadow eater?"
"Only yesterday, and for the first time," Maverick replied. "We were unable to come and help you because there was an influx of shadows across the bridges like nothing we have seen before. Every hand we had was out trying to push the shadows back and keep this side of the city safe. We managed to capture a witch with a crystal ball. He was lower level in his order, sent to carry the ball to someone higher up, and he was young and scared. He told us that there was a prophecy about a shadow eater and that when the shadow eater came, the light would fade. Did the girl reveal anything else about her abilities?"
Tony shook his head, but then Daisy cleared her throat painfully and said, "Yes, she did, remember, Tony? She tackled a shadow. A pretty big one."
"Impossible!" Maverick said, eyes going wide as he glanced over to where Lucy still lay unconscious, with the White Swan's hand on her forehead. "No one can touch the shadows."
"Well, she did," Daisy whispered, matter-of-factly.
"If this is true, then we need to find out who she is and what she is capable of. It cannot wait. I will need to search her mind," Maverick said resolutely.
"That will be risky if she isn't stable," Daisy replied.
"I know, but it simply cannot wait. If the order at its highest level is working with the shadow hunters to find her, then we don't have much time."
"What about Bali? We can't just leave her to the witches," Tony said.
"No, no, we can't, and we won't. But we need to know what we're dealing with before we do anything," Maverick replied. "I will give the White Swan another hour to do as much as she can, and then I will have to take over and dive into the girl's mind and see what I can see."
"What can we do?" Tony asked, feeling the need to do something, anything.
"Take a shower, get a bite to eat, close your eyes for five minutes if you can. Then come back and start researching everything we have on the sun and moon eaters. See if there are any references to shadow eaters or anything else that might give us an idea of what this girl's powers are."