Llewellyn left me to my hot chocolate while he made a call to the police.
We had Detective Byrne's contact from the last time she dealt with Gran's bomb scare, so it made sense to just call her. I'd meant to call her myself, but it was true that they'd likely be less fussy with Llewellyn; and anyway, the main point was to tell them that I was alive and unharmed and that we'd decided not to stick around for safety reasons, since I'd likely been targeted.
In the end, they still wanted me to go to the police station to give my statement, which was annoying.
Llewellyn offered to come with me. I told him he didn't have to, but he gave me a look that shut down the argument before it started.
We teleported to the station entrance, Penguin wrapped around my wrist in his wristwatch form.
A desk officer waved us through after checking our IDs, and we were led to a small room with a table, three chairs, and a few bottles of water.
Detective Byrne arrived five minutes later, carrying a tablet and looking like she'd had very little sleep.
"Mr. Haewell," she said, sitting across from me. Her eyes flicked to Llewellyn, who'd taken the chair next to mine, and she nodded in recognition. "Thank you both for coming in."
"Hello," I said.
She tapped something on her tablet. "Can you walk me through what happened?"
I gave her the rundown. What time I'd gotten home, that I'd spent some time in my flat before the System alerted me to evacuate, how it gave me about ninety seconds to grab what I could, that then the System relocated me at a safe distance outside just before the flat exploded.
She seemed surprised by the System's behavior.
"Did you notice anything unusual before the alert?" Byrne asked.
"No."
"Any suspicious packages? Strange activity in the building?"
"I'd been out for a few days," I said. "I didn't see anyone."
She made a note. "And did the System specify the nature of the threat?"
"Emergency relocation. That was it."
Byrne nodded, tapping something else into her tablet. "We're reviewing footage from the area. So far, we've identified two individuals entering the building earlier today, neither of whom were residents. We're working on identification. Do you have any suspicions about who might be behind this? Have you received any direct threats recently? Messages, calls?"
I hesitated.
I thought of Baugh, but… after the accident with Penguin, we definitely couldn't bring him up here.
"Someone attacked me during that Distorted Realm in France," I said after a moment. "Tried to strangle me. He had an Innishaean accent and seemed to have been part of the System Access Alliance. Unfortunately, he managed to escape. You know about the previous fake bomb sent to my Gran. Then, during that auction at Hyunshore Hotel, the Alliance members there tried to use the chaos of the fight to kill Llewellyn."
Detective Byrne paled a little. "I… see," she said. "Are you absolutely sure they were from the All—"
"Yes," I said, before she could finish. "I believe the ones at the auction were handed off to KARMA. You're free to check with them. And the one in France said something like…" I tried to remember the exact words. "You think it's fair you have what we can't have? We can't even see the System's interface, how is that fair?"
She noted that down.
"Can you describe him?"
"He was a man in his 30s or early 40s, very strong. In the moment, I assumed he had military training, but I might be wrong. He couldn't use Magic or the System, but had some weird devices with him that allowed him to teleport. He managed to vanish when Llewellyn came to my aid."
She noted that down too.
"Anything else?"
I thought about RightSideofHistory, the endless online hate, the doxxing…
I sighed.
"Online harassment. Someone online tried to doxx me, but last time I checked they only knew I lived in Haneve; my full address had not been leaked. I suppose this might have changed since, or the person responsible for the leak might have sold the information."
"Did you keep records?"
"My PR manager can coordinate that, if needed," Llewellyn said. "I can tell her to be in touch."
Detective Byrne nodded. "Good. Please do. We'll be in touch if we need additional information."
"Was anyone in the neighborhood injured?" I asked.
"No, they all seemed to have been teleported out, both awakened and unawakened people, and even pets. This is a first, as far as we're aware. No one else mentioned a countdown that allowed them to take anything with them though. Do you have somewhere safe to stay?"
"Yes," I said. "I'm sorted."
"Good. In the meantime, I'd recommend you stay vigilant."
"Noted," I said.
I sighed. Well, at least that had been over quickly.
***
…I had no idea why Llewellyn had decided to tag along for my trip to the mall too.
I'd tried to convince him to leave me to it and go do his thing, since I'd meant to go and see Gran first anyway, but… Llewellyn just came along to visit her too.
Much to Gran's delight, actually, so maybe that was a win. She'd asked me to bring Llewellyn along after all.
However, she did visibly pale when I told her my flat had gone up in flames.
"You're alright?" she asked, scanning me. "Not hurt?"
"I'm fine. See? Penguin, too. We were teleported well away and are completely unharmed."
Penguin chirped and waddled over to Gran as if to prove he was okay too.
"Where are you staying now?" Gran asked, cuddling Penguin immediately. "I have an extra room here, if you need it."
"He's staying with me," Llewellyn said with a cough. His ears had gone red. He eyed me for a moment, then through the bond he asked, "Is this fine? How much do you want to tell her?"
Um. Well, Gran was going to find out anyway.
"You can tell her everything," I said back. "It's fine."
Llewellyn hesitated.
"I… asked him to move in," Llewellyn said a moment later, choosing his words carefully. "It's also safer this way."
I'd been sure Gran was going to tease us and was bracing for it, but she just visibly relaxed. Then she got up to cut us another slice of cake each. A moment later, she also went back to get more whipped cream too.
"Would you also like more tea?" she asked, so happily it almost sounded like chittering.
Well!
While Llewellyn and Gran chatted about tea brands, I checked my phone.
It had been blowing up all day and was still going strong with my team's messages. Apparently the explosion had reached both the Internet and the news, and Niamh, Altan, and Opal had all pieced together that that had been my flat.
"I'm okay," I texted back quickly. "The System teleported me out a few seconds before it exploded. I'm completely unharmed."
Opal: A FEW SECONDS????
Altan: Man, that's fucked up
Niamh: STAY SAFE. We'll try to figure out if there was something online that might have hinted at this.
Uh, on that note—
Ryo: Emma might reach out about that actually. One of the police detectives might want to look into the doxxing.
Niamh: Ah! Thank you for the heads up. We'll immediately start compiling what we have, so it'll be ready if she reaches out.
Could she even allocate agency resources like that without an official request from Emma?
Though knowing Niamh, she might just spend unpaid hours on this herself.
Ryo: No need to do extra work, it's fine to wait until you get an official request.
Niamh: I got this, don't worry!
I sighed and focused on Gran and Penguin again, while Llewellyn eyed the rest of the cake and asked for the recipe.
***
Anyway, after that Llewellyn tagged along to the mall too.
"You know this is not necessary, right?" I told him, while making sure our concealment artifacts were on and working properly.
"Someone just blew up your flat," Llewellyn said, eyes narrowing. "I'm not letting you out of my sight."
Ah, anyway.
The good thing was that we could leave Penguin with her for a bit while we took care of this.
I followed Llewellyn into Baekhaven's biggest mall, which was packed with people taking advantage of the festival week, the concealment artifacts keeping us from drawing stares.
I looked around to take in the shiny environment and at the escalators going up and down. Man, I hadn't been here in ages.
"Any preference?" Llewellyn asked.
I mean… I wasn't even sure the shop I used to buy most of my clothes at was still there.
Anyway, any would do. I'd been planning to just grab some basics and leave.
"First floor, I think," I said.
We actually found the shop I had in mind on the first floor and navigated toward the men's section.
Thankfully, the concealment worked great; I'd been wondering whether we could pull this off. Besides, the other good thing about concealment was that I could…
I walked over, cupped Llewellyn's head, and kissed him.
"Wha—" Llewellyn said, startled, but caught on immediately, and kissed me back.
Yeah, amazing.
"There are probably cameras here," Llewellyn said a moment later when I pulled back slightly, though he was still nuzzling me a bit.
"Mmh. Do you care? We're wearing concealment."
"It often just makes the footage blurry, as you know," Llewellyn said. "If someone looks at the feed expecting to see us, they'll probably recognize us." But then he just cupped my head and kissed me again. "That said—no, I don't care."
I didn't care either. Besides, people knew now, and anyway… I wanted to kiss him.
This was amazing. I couldn't believe I could pull the world's most famous hero into a kiss next to a rack of shirts and he wanted more too.
I pulled back, trying not to stare at his mouth too much. "We should move before someone walks into us," I said.
Llewellyn pressed a kiss under my ear then stepped aside. "What do you need?"