Chapter Text
“She lost a lot of blood-.”
“...some significant head trauma…”
“We need to be working on the Kiramman girl, not this one.”
“Kiramman isn’t as critical, this girl needs the help.”
“... just a trencher…”
“...doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be saved.”
~
A team of medics rushed the young girl on the stretcher into the hospital for further attention. Her eyes peaked through slitted lids every so often, only to roll back into her head as she let out a low, gurgling moan. Wires and tubing ran across her body, maroon blood coursing through one while the others were attached to her chest with several electrodes. Despite her fluctuating levels of consciousness, she could hear her own heartbeat being mimicked by the monitor that was carried by one of the paramedics. Even without any knowledge of the sort, the girl knew it was too fast. Maybe it should have been like that if she were fighting or running from Enforcers, but definitely not now.
Thoughts came and went through the mist of her mind just like the voices of the medics around her.
Powder- is Powder…?
Where are the rest? My friends… Where?
There was an explosion… how?
She heard the monitor increase its frequency even more, feeling the pressure against her ribs as her heart threatened to beat out of its cavity. When she tried to concentrate on opening her eyes, all she felt was pain. It migrated from her lungs to her neck to her head and then back to her lungs again. She managed to let a wheezing breath escape her lips and instinctively tried to curl on her side. But there was the pain again. The wheeze turned into a choke and then a drawn out groan as what was left of her awareness slowly faded from her.
This can’t be it… can it?
~
Vi gasped herself awake as she shot up from the hospital bed. She tried to grab for her chest, still feeling pain in her lung so severe that it migrated to her shoulder. Metal bit into her wrists at the attempt, the jolting restriction even further aggravating her injuries. Her breath increased with panic but her body refused to let the oxygen in, her ribs making her exhales shudder like she had just taken a punch to the diaphragm.
Vi looked back and forth at her restraints, jingling and tugging at them praying for a weakness in the metal. But there was no such luck. Even in a room larger than the bedroom she was accustomed to in the Lanes, she felt it close in on her. The white lights from the hallway shone like spotlights across the sterile linoleum tile on the floor and the glossy white paint on the walls was entirely unwelcoming compared to the lived-in grunginess that Vi had grown up with.
Everything about it made her head hurt even worse. Her left temple throbbed, its wakes leaving her nauseous with a metallic taste in her mouth. Her entire body ached and she wanted nothing more than to change every action that led her to this point.
A figure passed near the window of the door to her room, turning the knob to elicit a click and creak of the hinges. A woman in all white clothing entered with a clipboard. Vi pulled at the shackles one more time, startling the woman’s attention away from the papers she had been mulling over.
“You’re awake. Good,” the woman easily regained her composure. She spoke with a sweet, comforting lilt that was completely foreign to Vi. People weren’t kind without wanting something, especially not these people. “You’ve sustained quite the injuries, we weren’t sure you would pull through. You were asleep for four days, sweetheart.”
Vi remained silent, eyeing the woman suspiciously. The events of the past few days were a puzzle that Vi’s mind hadn’t fully put together. She remembered being with Powder, Mylo, and Claggor. They were on a job. Something happened… an explosion. It couldn’t be, though. It didn’t make any sense how that could have happened.
“What’s your name, dear?” the nurse asked. She leaned over the hospital bed, checking the ports on Vi’s arms, noting her blood pressure and oxygen saturation, and shining a light into her pupils. Vi’s jaw quivered, stubbornness the only dam for her fear.
The woman stood back up and looked at Vi. Was it sympathy Vi could see in her eyes? It had to just be an act.
“Ok. You don’t have to talk to me right now. I know you’re probably still processing everything that’s happened. It’s ok. I do just have to lift up your gown and take a look at your ribs. That explosion did a number on you.” Vi looked down at herself; she hadn’t even realized that she didn’t have her clothes on anymore. She pressed her body deeper into the thin mattress of the bed, but she didn’t fight the woman.
There really was an explosion… none of it made any sense. The nurse rolled up the left side of Vi's gown, inspecting the area between her 7th and 8th ribs. Now that Vi was focused on it, she could feel a slight pull that was different from the ache throughout the rest of her body. The woman scanned the area and pressed gently with a gloved hand. It was tender but compared to the rest, Vi could take it.
“Your lung collapsed, sweetheart,” the nurse said. “It looks like it’s on the right path to heal, though. Your pupils looked good too, all things considered.” She unrolled the gown and brought the blankets back up to cover Vi, tucking it in at her hips. The woman palpated the shaved side of Vi’s head. Even though she didn’t put much force into it, the pressure amplified the throb which made bile rise to the back of Vi’s throat. She winced away from the touch, letting out a shuddering breath.
“I’m sorry about that. I just wanted to check the swelling there, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” The nurse pulled over a chair from the corner and sat next to Vi. “Is there anyone we can call for you? Surely your parents must be worried that you haven’t been home.”
Vi gritted her teeth as she forgot about the pact of silence she had made with herself minutes earlier. “My parents are dead. Because of Enforcers. Who only serve people like you,” Vi spat bitterly. Truly, the woman hadn’t done anything to deserve that but Vi didn’t care. They were all the same in her eyes.
“I see…,” the woman said, unaffected by Vi’s jab. “I’m sorry about your parents, dear. I really am. Is there anyone who takes care of you that I can contact? I’m sure someone is wondering where you’ve been.”
“I-,” Vi started but she was interrupted by the click of the door opening again. An older woman in an Enforcer uniform entered. The heels of her shoes clacked against the floor, echoing off the barren walls of the room. She had short, dark hair, olive skin, and an unreadable expression on her face. Her crow’s feet made it look as though she were constantly furrowing her brow and her lips pressed together tightly.
Her uniform was meticulously kept without so much as a wrinkle or stray thread out of place. The sigil of the Enforcers was embroidered in gold on the patch stitched into the left breast of her jacket. The sheriff’s badge.
~
The nurse excused herself from the room as soon as the sheriff entered. The older woman took the seat next to the hospital bed and Vi instantly wished that the nurse had remained. The sight of the blue and gold uniform ignited the pain coursing through Vi, turning it into anger and bitter resentment. Vi chewed on the inside of her lip and clenched her fingers into fists. Only the smallest spark of provocation from the woman would spark the rage that Vi felt primed and ready to go. She anticipated it. Waited for it. Like that first leap off a roof into the parkour of the fissures, as soon as she was over the ledge, there would be no stopping it from continuing.
But the woman prevented the fall from the first words that came out of her mouth.
“Are you in pain, child?” she asked. The question threw Vi off, slackening the tension in her fists and jaw. She scanned between the woman and the window, unsure of making conversation with the Enforcer. The woman simply sighed as she leaned back in the chair. “Of course you are. Look at you. When I heard that people from the Undercity were responsible for the explosion, I had to assume the worst. An insurrection. Terrorism. And when I received word that one of those found at the scene was taken to the hospital, you can imagine that I had to come right here. I wasn’t expecting someone like you, though. Do you know what I see when I look at you?”
Words flooded across Vi’s mind. Trencher. Sumprat. Punk. Criminal. Fissure drifter. Most of the people in Piltover would have no qualms about calling her any of the above, explosion or otherwise.
“A child,” the woman said. Vi’s eyes darted back onto the woman, staring at her. “You’re just a child. And something tells me that there’s more to this story than simply you deciding to blow up a building.” Vi looked down, tears welling in the corner of her eyes. She shook her head and sniffled.
“I’m going to be straightforward with you, you won’t be leaving this situation with a slap on the wrist. However, the more honest you are, the more we can work with you on that end. Leave nothing out and we’ll see what we can do. Do you understand?” Vi swallowed and nodded. “Let’s start from the beginning.”
Vi cleared her throat. “My name is Violet. I got a tip from someone that a man came down to Benzo’s shop in the Lanes and bought a bunch of weird mechanical stuff… full price. So I got the idea…”
~
“You told that Undercity hooligan that you’d be willing to work with her?!” Cassandra whispered sharp enough to cut glass. “She could have killed my daughter and you want to parlay with her?”
“She’s a kid, Councilor,” Grayson said, maintaining her calm demeanor. “And from what I gathered from our conversation, she wasn’t responsible for the explosion. Breaking and entering- yes. Attempted theft- yes. But that destruction wasn’t her.”
“You’d take the word of a-,” Cassandra stuttered. “-of a person like that?”
Cassandra had to choose her words carefully. She was a councilor that oversaw not only Piltover, but the Undercity as well. She couldn’t overtly proclaim the bigotry she had against that section of the territory, although her apathetic attitude towards them spoke loud enough. She resented their indignance and fear of a potential rebellion always lingered at the back of her mind. It wouldn’t be the first time.
If only they knew the work that the Kiramman house had gone through to try to help them. Their efforts were the reason the Grey was largely contained, giving the Undercity access to clean air once again. They had engineered and installed the ventilation system that funneled the toxins far into the fissures, away from the inhabited settlements in the trenches. But the folk were ignorant to that piece of history. Even if they knew, Cassandra was sure that they wouldn’t care. There would always be tension between the two cities, no matter the efforts made or the olive branches extended.
“Of course I wouldn’t take her word alone. That’s the precise reason why I had my detectives and associates from the Academy do a sweep of the building’s ruins. They found some unusual equipment and materials… ones that belonged to your beneficiary, Jayce.” Grayson delivered the news as if she were calling a family about the death of a loved one. It wouldn’t be easy news for the Kiramman matriarch to take.
“Jayce? Jayce would never do such a foolish thing. He has too much at stake. Our patronage, the Academy scholarship. He wouldn’t risk it for… for what exactly, Sheriff? What were the materials?”
“Councilor Kiramman, Jayce has already confessed to the possession of what we found. Councilor Heimerdinger will understand the purpose of it more than I can, but I can surmise that it was some sort of energy harnessing device utilizing gemstones. From the forensics at the scene, it appears that one of them got loose during the attempted theft and that was what caused the destruction.”
Cassandra opened and closed her mouth like a fish that had been pulled onto a dock, her voice unable to produce the words she wanted to say. It was a rare event, seeing the stoic woman lose that sense of tact that seemed an ever present companion to her. She pressed her fingers into her eyes, massaging the headache building behind her sockets.
“And what of the others involved in the break in?” she finally asked.
“The child, Violet, said that it was her plan alone. We didn’t find any evidence of anyone else involved,” the sheriff replied. Cassandra let a scoffing laugh of disbelief pass over her lips.
“Caitlyn said that she thought she saw more than one shadow behind the door to Jayce’s quarters. My daughter would not lie about such a thing,” the councilwoman said.
Grayson crossed her arms and allowed a sympathetic expression to cross her face, for only the briefest moment. “That’s one of the reasons I came by. I would like to ask your daughter about what she remembers, now that she’s been cleared from the hospital. I didn’t want to add any additional stress to her recovery earlier.”
“I’ll show you to her room, then,” Cassandra replied.
~
Cait scurried back through the entryway to her room. She caught most of the conversation between her mother and the sheriff; she had learned to move silently since she was a child. Eyes were constantly on her, waiting for her to misstep or move out of turn so that they could bring up the behavior to her mother. Although it did its job to keep her prim and proper while in the spotlight, it also taught her how to be sneaky when necessary. And everything about the past few days told her that it was necessary.
She, like most of the people involved, couldn’t figure out the pieces to the puzzle of the explosion. It had been a fairly ordinary day. Jayce asked her for help unloading supplies that he secretly retrieved from the Undercity. Cait relished being involved; she had no siblings of her own but Jayce might as well have been that for her. Her family sponsored him for several years and she was constantly in awe of the projects he was working on. The dedication he had to his studies at the Academy, as well as his own endeavors, was something that Caitlyn admired about him.
However, that day turned on its end awfully quickly. The door to Jayce’s room was jammed from the inside and Cait could make out rustling shapes slipping behind the frosted glass. Jayce slammed his shoulder into the door and, seemingly out of nowhere, an electric blue blast from inside threw her back against the hallway wall. The metal in the box she was carrying hit her chest, opening a long gash as her head rocked against drywall behind her.
Her vision was fuzzy from the impact but she could make out Jayce slumped unconscious, as well as a figure with pink hair laying motionless inside the room Jayce had been trying to get into. She held her hand to her chest, trying to apply pressure to the wound just like she had been taught in one of her emergency medicine classes in junior patrol. The blood was slick over her fingers, its sticky warmth making Cait’s stomach turn. She had never been one to be squeamish about it, but it was an entirely different sensation when it was your own blood you were trying to stop.
She woke up hours later in a hospital room fit for a councilor. Of course it was, her mother had undoubtedly heard about what happened and mandated that her daughter be given the same treatment as if it were Councilwoman Kiramman who had been hurt instead. Her fingers grazed over the raised stitches on her chest- it was tender but it wasn’t Cait’s first time with an injury.
There was the time she accidentally ricocheted a bullet off a metal barrier during shooting practice, only for it to graze her thigh. Another time, she was learning hand to hand combat in junior patrol and her partner twisted too hard on a maneuver, leaving her with a spiral fracture in her arm. And a different time where she sneaked over the gates of her family’s mansion, not realizing just how sharp those finials were. The metal bit into her hip but somehow she managed to get to her destination, return home, and bandage her wound without her mother so much as catching a whiff of what she was up to. That had been one of her proudest achievements.
She was discharged relatively quickly with aftercare instructions, as well as a personal medic who would visit every two days to change her bandages. At her mother’s insistence, of course.
Cait felt like she was part of the practice crime investigations that she participated in during junior patrol. Cait loved collecting the evidence and putting the pieces together. The culmination of cracking the case was everything that Cait enjoyed. Despite feeling the pain of this investigation firsthand, the intrigue of it overshadowed any of her other feelings.
Caitlyn found herself thinking about the figure in the room that day. A girl. Cait thought that she caught a glimpse of that same person in the hospital as she was discharged, although she couldn’t be sure. An explosion was a great way to scramble someone’s brain. Cait couldn’t tell what had actually happened and what was part of a dream that ensued shortly after she fell unconscious.
Her eavesdropping on the sheriff and her mother’s conversation had given her vital intel, though. It confirmed her suspicions of the person she saw, but it also flooded her mind with dozens more questions.
That girl lied. I know I saw more than one person in that room.
Why would she lie?
She didn’t cause the explosion. Grayson said so herself.
Was she actually the bad guy here? Well, yes, because of the breaking and entering but she didn’t want to hurt us at all.
Maybe she needed to steal. Maybe she didn’t have any money.
Or maybe she just wanted to.
I wish I could just talk to her and find out-.
Cait’s thoughts were interrupted by a knock at her door.
“Come in,” she called out as she laid back onto her bed. Her mom wanted her to take her bedrest seriously, so Cait pretended to do so.
Her mother and the sheriff entered. Caitlyn met Sheriff Grayson long ago. The woman oversaw the junior patrol program that was the main feeder organization into the Enforcers. While her mother hadn’t been thrilled with her choice, Grayson always gave Cait the utmost support. She seemed to be one of the few people to genuinely recognize Cait’s talents and intellect, not solely her last name.
“Caitlyn, darling, Sheriff Grayson just has some questions for you about everything that happened,” her mother said as she sat on the end of Cait’s bed. “I know it might be difficult with the stress of it all, but try to tell her everything that you can remember.”
Cait looked back and forth between her mother and Grayson, exhaling a shaky breath. She nodded an ok and waited for the questioning to start, making a mental note of how Grayson solicited information so that she would be able to use her techniques some day.
“This should be fairly quick, Caitlyn,” Grayson said. “I’ve spoken with the girl we found at the scene and I just have some things to cross check with you. Firstly, your mother mentioned that you saw multiple people behind the glass. Is that true?”
Cait knew that the easier thing to do would have been to tell the truth. Yes, she had definitely seen at least three, maybe more shadows. Yes, that girl wasn’t working alone. But if Cait wanted easy, she would have followed the pathway set in front of her by her mother years ago. She desperately wanted to be the one to put the pieces together. And mostly, she wanted to be the one to collect the information from the girl that was arrested at the scene. Maybe then, finally, her mother would see that she was born to do this. That she was born to be an Enforcer.
“I, uh, I don’t think I did,” Cait lied. “I know I saw one figure but the explosion happened so fast and the light from it maybe made it look like something else was moving in there. But I don’t think there was anyone else.”
Her mother’s lips tightened into a frown as her gaze bored a hole into Caitlyn. Her mind seemed to be calculating what Cait had just said, unable to perform an equation that made any sense as to why her daughter would lie about this. So the final solution to it had to be that she was telling the truth.
“I see,” Grayson said as she shot a look at Cassandra. “Can you describe the person you saw?”
“It was a girl- I think. I saw her after the door blew open. She had pink hair.”
“Was there anything else notable in your opinion before or after the blast occurred?” Grayson asked.
Cait thought about it for a moment. She felt compelled to give the sheriff something to work with after her blatant lie, however little it might help the investigation. “She wedged the door shut with something. She didn’t want us coming in, it seems to me that it was only about the robbery. I don’t think there was ever the intention to hurt anyone.”
“Ok, Caitlyn, that’s enough,” her mother interjected. “I’m sure that the sheriff can make her own deductions on the matter.” Cassandra turned her attention to Grayson. “If she remembers anything else, I will be sure to contact you. In the meantime, please keep me apprised of any new details of the case. Besides the impact on my daughter, I also have the patronage sponsorship and the insurance on the building to manage.”
Grayson nodded. “Of course, thank you for your time, Councilor. And thank you, young Kiramman, for the information.”
Her mother escorted the sheriff from Cait’s room and as soon as the door closed, Cait let out an exhale so heavy that she felt it ripple over her stitches. She threw off her covers and looked out the window. She could see the hospital in the distance, its unpolished and bare block walls making it a misfit among Piltover’s gilded and towering buildings.
I need to talk to that girl tonight.