The Quimby Hotel

━ 12: Picking Up What's Left

The next day there were many things to agonize over but Cairo was only thinking of one: the reason he'd come here in the first place. So much had transpired over the last few days that it was tempting to lose sight of it, to get distracted.

"I just don't understand," he muttered. "After everything that's happened, even knowing the exacerbated risk, he doesn't see fit to tell me what's going on."

Tokyo picked up her coffee and stirred it, glances darting occasionally to the barren doors. He had joined her at the front desk for a considerable while now, but no one had come in. Three murders and a lobby full of policemen had to be hurting their word-of-mouth reputation.

"Don't feel so bad," she said, kicking her feet up. Her attitude had eased since the threat of the spy-who-wasn't-so-much-a-spy had been eliminated, or perhaps it was Rome's pantsing that had relaxed her—or, hell, maybe that apology for telling him to walk off a balcony had been genuine after all. "Father doesn't tell any of us anything unless it's absolutely necessary. Things break and he tries to handle it himself for days before bringing Berlin in. It's like he finds it humiliating to need our help." Blue prowled by, nagging at Tokyo's lace-up boots. She tore off a piece of the donut resting on the napkin in front of her and tossed it on the floor in Blue's reach to satiate her.

Cairo sighed. "That makes enough sense, I guess." They were his children, after all. But when everyone's lives were in danger? He kept seeing Vienna's viselike grip on control in him.

"And really," she went on, "if you're too stupid to figure things out yourself, perhaps you don't deserve to know."

He shot her a disdainful look.

"I mean, you did go and get a quirk ripped from your face. Doesn't speak terribly well of you."

He shifted, glancing at the cat before averting his eye and turning to her. "You do realize how fragile our magic is? If someone were to chop off your fingers, you wouldn't be able to spark anymore. Mother wouldn't be able to heal without her hands."

Tokyo grimaced, turning over her hands and flicking them, watching her fingertips illuminate a glowing reddish color. She looked back at him. "Do you miss it?"

"I hated it." Only a partial truth. It felt half-hearted and disingenuous. The resentment wasn't quite so strong now, anyhow.

She clearly didn't buy the line. "You must feel naked."

"I feel perfectly clothed, thank you."

Losing the quirk hadn't bothered him so much after the initial shock of the incident. The eye he could deal with. The migraines were a nightmare.

"So what can you do now?" Tokyo counted on her fingers. "Extinguish fires. Whatever that thing is you do with memories."

"And survive drowning," Cairo finished for her. "Certainly useful everyday skills."

"Most quirks aren't useful most of the time. You're just whiny."

"Shanghai walks through mirrors!" he protested. She conceded the point, flicking hot sparks towards him that he barely dodged.

"That's true."

Cairo rubbed his shoulder, which had been healed by his mother but still yielded some mild phantom pain from the events of the day before. "I have to be missing something—some crucial piece of the puzzle is eluding me. Where have I not searched?" he mumbled, tearing through his hair and mainly speaking to himself.

Tokyo frowned. "Searched for...?"

"This—thing that's so important to Father that he insists I cannot know about it. He's keeping something, but I have no idea what."