Maybe I should think about the strands of the multiverse as loops instead of threads, since the same things keep happening over and over again. Collisions seem to knock us off course until we swing back around to see histories repeating. That militia storming the Compound, this army storming the hotel, me and Yusuf barreling down hallways that might as well be the same. A lazy palette swap by the Art Department since they were crunched for time.

I grabbed Figueiredo’s gun.

I had to take charge since Yusuf was numb, again, for the first minutes of panic—sprinting to the hotel restaurant and yelling at the wolf pack to follow us. Someone flicked the lights on after last call at their superhero disco with the dazed way they looked around, all oh, you’re who I’ve been necking for the past hour. Only Logan followed a straight path—oddly calm through the swirl of curtain capes as everyone careened around him—to the glass sliding door that led to the pool deck. The last I saw of him was the back of his body as he stepped out into the frigid night.

The pack scrambled through the hotel lobby behind us, sobered up by the panic, with Yusuf back in his body and leading us in a full-out sprint. My lungs ached for air as I ran, my feet matching the machine-gun pace of my heart. In the corner of my eye, blurred shapes darted just beyond the revolving glass door of the hotel entrance. Of course Kaori and Figueiredo were smart enough to have teams at all of the entrances, and somewhere behind me, glass exploded and booted feet slammed on the marble. Another squad poured down a stairway from the other floors. The first rattle of bullets hit so hard I thought I was bleeding. Just the screams and the boots and one of the invaders in their faceplates screaming, “Get the fuck down!”

Caped wolves crumpled to the ground around us, tackled by men in body armor. I fired a few shots from Figueiredo’s gun into the fray. A smoke grenade fizzed past us when we ducked into a stairwell to get to the lower tunnels. One of Kaori and Figueiredo’s marines pounced at us from around a corner and I spun away, only to knock into a wall and lose my grip on Figueiredo’s gun. The thing clattered to the floor, kicked by guys in the pack. No matter. Still, me and Yusuf ran.

A stitch in my side—the loop of the outdoor track at the Compound when we had just met—and somehow, somehow we slammed to a stop at the first door of the airlock with the Envisioner just beyond and a dozen of the wolf pack with us. The invaders on our heels twenty feet back.