Roland was a bit embarrassed that it had taken him this long to piece it together. That’s why the guards had been so accommodating of Dr. Brandt’s unusual request. It’s why they’d smelled so nervous. Somehow, the rescue attempt had been spotted before it had gone down. The soldiers of the Heavenly Kingdom must have assumed the doctor was a traitor too.

Roland stood up.

He knew that violence would need to happen here. There were too many decent people’s lives at stake for anything else. The instant his forebrain made that decision, his hindbrain started pouring adrenaline and battle drugs into his synapses. He felt the electric crackle of chemical glee start deep in the back of his neck. It spread out to his shoulders, down his arms, to the tip of his fingers. Roland fought back against the building euphoria while he analyzed the situation.

The world slowed down around him. He had plenty of time to watch as the guards started to reach for their sidearms. The word “ambush” had keyed them in. But it didn’t matter: they still moved too slow to affect anything. His hindbrain calculated that Manny and Sasha were relatively safe. No one had a gun on them, just now. The prisoners were his priority then. They were exposed, both to the door that enemy reinforcements would soon rush through, and to the guards already in the room. Dr. Brandt was a tertiary responsibility: he seemed like a decent enough guy, in spite of it all.

Alexander and his men are two-point-oh-four seconds from the door. Maybe faster, if they dropped into a dead sprint.

Roland stepped forward, into the lead guard. He grabbed the man by the hair, lifted him into the air, and slammed his skull hard into the second guard’s face. Bone cracked. 16.3 percent and 28.7 percent chances of a fatal hemorrhage, respectively. Roland dropped the first man and plunged his fingers into the third guard’s eyes. He gouged deep, stopped just short of the man’s brain, and then pulled his hand free.

That man staggered back, opened his mouth, and started to scream. A surge of battle drugs hit Roland’s synapses at just that moment and, in a fit of gleeful pique, he grabbed the man by the jaw and pulled. His intent had been to yank the man’s head into his knee. But he pulled a little too hard and ripped the whole jaw free. The man fell back, gurgled, bled.

“Huh. My bad,” Roland said to no one in particular.

He shoved the jaw into his front pocket, figuring it might make a useful weapon when the reinforcements showed up. In the meantime, he set to work ripping the prisoner’s manacle chains apart. It’d have taken too long to remove the manacles. But at least with the chains free they’d all be able to move with–

“What are you… Oh my GOD!

“Roland wh–”