As Radiance seized her by the jaw, Trinity couldn't believe what she was hearing. For a moment she, quite sincerely, worried that she was suffering from some kind of head trauma. It didn't make any sense. Why? Why would Radiance suddenly start talking like that, after how far they'd come with each other?
"What?" she demanded of the amazonian woman, in a slightly strangled voice. "What did you just say?"
"I'm not letting you go," Radiance said, in the firmest and coldest voice Trinity had ever heard her use. "Not until you return all the money you stole."
Trinity shivered and tried to squirm away, but Radiance wouldn't let her.
"But... but you just said-"
"It doesn't matter what I said before," Radiance interrupted.
Her face was utterly, mercilessly unreadable. Trinity started shaking her head as much as she was able.
"This isn't funny," she said. Trinity could sense that a change had come over Radiance, and it scared her. "This is a real shitty joke, Vi."
That seemed to get through to the superhero, but only a little. She released her grip on Trinity and turned away.
"I'm not joking."
"What..." Trinity started backing off, aiming vaguely towards the door. "What the fuck? So, what? You were just jerking me around? Another one of your sick fucking lessons?"
"No!" Radiance replied quickly. "No, I just... I realized you still need to make up for what you did."
There was an uncharacteristic stiffness to her voice. She sounded like she was trying to rationalize her own words to herself. Trinity kept waiting for her to say more, but she didn't.
"OK, well, first of all, there's nothing to return, remember?" Trinity shot back. "I burnt it all. It's all up in flames."
Radiance nodded. She was still staring at the wall. "The security guard. I remember. But you're wrong." She sighed. "You brainwashed one of Eleanor Quinn's people. You told her to deliver all the money collected at the event to you. Well, she was still the person responsible for the accounts once the event started appealing for donors to come forward and rewrite the checks you torched. Guess what she did with it all."
Trinity's eyes went wide. "Then..."
If she managed to get out of here, she had millions waiting for her. And Radiance had seriously been about to let her go?
"Yeah," Radiance said. "That brings us to now. To this."
Trinity still couldn't quite believe it. "There's got to be a mistake," she insisted. "I mean, there's no way they just let her handle all that money after I got to her!"
"No one saw," Radiance replied. "No one knew. Except..."
"Except you." Trinity finished quietly.
It was starting to click into place. Radiance had been too obsessed with punishing Trinity to stick around and do her due diligence. As a result, a vast sum of money had simply disappeared. Now, after finding out, Radiance felt guilty and needed to make Trinity give it all back in order to soothe her guilty conscience.
That almost made sense. Almost.
There was still one thing Trinity couldn't get past. Just minutes ago, Radiance had seemed so sincere. So earnest. After their little heart-to-heart, Trinity had completely and totally believed that Radiance had intended to let her go. Would she really have changed her mind that fast? It seemed decidedly out of character for the superhero. If nothing else, she was the honorable type. She'd put Trinity through some pretty twisted stuff, but she wasn't one for mind games. Radiance was the type of woman who always kept her word.
Which meant something had to be very, very wrong.
Trinity thought back to the conversation Radiance had been having with The Peregrine. It had been short, but seemed to have caused Radiance to have a complete change of heart. Why? Trinity tried to recall what had been said.
"Radiance," she said slowly, "what did The Peregrine mean by 'doing it her way'?"
Radiance stiffened visibly. "She meant the right way," she replied, in a mechanical tone of voice.
Trinity frowned. This was just getting more and more confusing.
She knew The Peregrine, but only by reputation. That wasn't saying much, of course. Everyone knew The Peregrine by reputation. Radiance was almost certainly the most famous hero in Future City, but The Peregrine was a close enough second to introduce a little doubt into the mix. Trinity counted herself lucky that she'd never crossed paths with her. The Peregrine was all gadgets and smarts, with no apparent superpowers to speak of, but that didn't stop her from being scary as shit. She had a certain level of infamy, among the city's villains.
The Peregrine was ruthless. Sometimes deadly ruthless. One way or another, if she was on your trail, that was it. You were finished.
Fortunately, she usually restricted her patrols to the ritzy parts of the city, and spent most of her time focusing on high-profile villains with more dark powers than brain cells. Which, of course, just made her interest in Trinity's comparatively low-grade heist all the more suspicious.
"Does she have something on you?" Trinity asked slowly. "Some dirt? Or you owe her a favor, maybe?"
It was nothing more than a shot in the dark, but Trinity didn't have any other ideas.
Radiance shook her head at once. "The Peregrine is a hero," she insisted. "She's the kind of hero this city needs. She knows what's right. She knows what needs to be done, and how to do it."
Trinity couldn't help but notice the way the Radiance sounded like she was reciting lines from a book. Her voice was stiff and robotic - unnaturally so. Clearly, something extremely weird was going on. Unfortunately, when Radiance was stonewalling her this hard, knowing that didn't help Trinity much. She decided to concentrate on, as usual, saving her own skin. She was this close to getting out from under Radiance's thumb. All she needed to do was make the hero doubt herself long enough for Trinity to slip away and disappear. Permanently.
What did she care what was going on with the hero? She shouldn't. She shouldn't care. Trinity kept trying to tell herself that.
"Look, Radiance - Vi," Trinity pleaded, "you know why I wanted that money in the first place?"
Radiance didn't respond.
"So I could get the fuck out of here!" Trinity cried. "I'm not trying to fuck anybody over, alright? I'm not trying to hire a private army of mercenaries. I'm not trying to build a stupid fucking apocalypse machine, or whatever. I'm just trying to leave. I'm trying to get enough money to start over someplace else. A new life, one where I'm not always on the bottom fucking rung, having to deal with ceaseless bullshit from someone who thinks they own me. That's all I want. Is that so wrong?"
Radiance folded her arms.
"So... so why won't you just let me go already?" Trinity pleaded. "You want to. You know you want to. You told me that much! Don't you owe me this?" Radiance seemed immovable. It was like talking to a brick wall. Trinity grasped around desperately for something she could say. "I... I'm not going to hurt anyone, OK? I promise. I've learned my lesson. Is that what you want to hear?"
This time, Radiance twitched strangely, and Trinity thought she might have gotten through to her. A moment later, her hopes were dashed.
"You're a villain," Radiance said mechanically. "Villains have to be punished. You stole. You need to give back what you stole. It's as simple as that."
"Fuck!" Trinity hissed. She hated that the way Radiance was treating her was making tears well up in her eyes. She'd been starting to like her. She'd been starting to wonder. Now, all she wanted to do was be anywhere else. Trinity was seriously considering making a break for the door; only the knowledge that it was completely futile stopped her.
"So. Where is it?" Radiance demanded. The hero's eyes were unreadable.
"The money?" Trinity started to laugh hysterically. Why the hell was Radiance so hung up on this? It was beyond absurd. "I don't know! You think it goes to my Cash App or something? Of course not."
"You must know," Radiance said, with an air of forced patience. "Apparently, the woman you mind-controlled wired the money to a dummy account, offshore, which was immediately emptied."
"No shit," Trinity spat. "I wasn't born yesterday. I know how to run a heist."
Radiance scowled at her. Trinity sighed.
"It goes to a friend of mine, alright?" Trinity crossed her arms. "She holds onto it. So I don't have it."
"I see." Radiance rolled one of her shoulders like she was limbering up. "Then, let's go see your friend."
Trinity stared her dead in the face, balled her hands into fists, and drew herself up as tall as she could.
"Not. On. Your. Fucking. Life."
Radiance sighed, and looked at her evenly. "Come on, Trinity. This is the last hurdle. Just tell me where I can find your friend, and you can go."
"I'm not a fucking snitch," Trinity snarled furiously.
"Come on, Shimmer." Radiance made a threatening gesture that Trinity knew all too well. "You know I can just make you."
"You can try."
Trinity had no desire to suffer Radiance's mind control again, nor was she under any illusions about her ability to resist it. But she'd be damned if she wasn't going to try. It didn't matter if Radiance let her go or not; if she betrayed a friend without a fight, she'd never forgive herself. But she was hoping it wouldn't come to that. Surely, after all that they'd been talking about, Radiance wasn't going to use that thing on her again. There was no way. Trinity wanted to believe in her that much, at least.
