Love Lost traps

"Careful," Foil said, as Precipice opened one laptop. "Tinker means traps."

"It's true," I said.

"I can scan," he said. "No guarantees, but it might turn up something."

*****

He slid the laptop closer to me, pulling out his phone. He attached the bulky scanner over the open socket where the camera had been torn out.

He swept it over the computer. I watched as he went over the entire room, periodically going back to Love Lost's gauntlet. He typed something out, then held out the phone. It beeped as it swept over the gauntlet.

"How do you distinguish a trap from regular tech?" I asked.

"She's working from a similar starting place to me," Precipice said. "If I see something like what she makes, it should stand out like… a word in English in a jumble of random characters."

"Traps can be mundane," Foil said. She used a dart to penetrate a locked cabinet that was part of the desk, then stood as far away as possible, using her sword to open it.

Empty.

She approached the area with the laptop. Precipice put out a hand.

He brought his phone to the computer. As he did, it beeped.

He rummaged for a bit before finding an attachment at the side. A fake side panel. When he pulled it away, needles spilled out. I wasn't sure exactly how it was supposed to work, but it looked ominous. They were barbed.

*****

There were, I noted, three traps. Two had the barbed needles. The other had something like a spring-coiled version of the claw-lash that Precipice had stolen. All three had been demolished. Foil's power, it looked like, stabbed through and fusing to the internal components, before the shelf or drawer was removed.

*****

I heard a beep. Foil moved Precipice's phone in front of cabinets, trying to figure out where the trap was.

"Careful," Precipice said.

Foil raised her rapier, then pointed it at the cabinet. She let Precipice take his phone and move it around. When he'd confirmed her target was in the right location, she thrust her sword through.

Five spikes punched through the wood of the cabinet, each a foot long.

Foil's sword shimmered slightly as she tugged it free. With a few short swipes up and down, left and right, she demolished the trap. Spikes that were four feet long tumbled to the counter, then the ground.