“Miei amici!” Luca yells from inside. “Run! Do not—”

“Shut up!” barks another voice, followed by an ugly smack.

“Leave my husband alone!” Ophelia shouts.

“HEY!” I yell. “HEY, LI, LISTEN TO ME! Or don’t you want the credit for capturing me alive?”

There’s a tense exchange of words among the guards. Apparently, this scenario was not covered in their senior-project playbook.

One of them shouts, “Open the door slowly. Show us your hands.”

Gem meets my eyes and nods. It’s not because he heard the guard. Unlike me, Gem has first-aid cotton balls stuffed in his ears, so he can’t hear much of anything. But enough time should have gone by for our commando dragonflies to get into position.

“Okay, I’m opening the door!” I yell to the guards. “Don’t kill me! I’m no good to you dead!”

This is the tricky part. Well…the whole thing is tricky, but I want the guards focused on my grand entrance, not on the hostages. I grip the door handle. I turn it slowly and start to pull the door toward me.

“I’m going to show you my hands now!” I lie. “Chiudete gli occhi!”

I say this in the same tone as everything else, so it sounds like just another concession I’m about to make. Even if the LI guards speak Italian, I’m gambling that the order Close your eyes won’t make any sense to them in context, but Luca might get the message. And the robo-bugs will hear our agreed-upon code phrase.

It happens fast. From inside, I hear the plunk, plunk of two metal objects hitting the floor, followed by a confused “WHAT THE—?” because grenades do not normally fall from ventilation ducts. Then a tsunami of color and sound blasts from the dining room.

I think I’m mentally prepared for the alt-tech flash-bang, but I’m really not. Even shielded by a half-closed door, I feel like a three-day psychedelic music festival is being stuffed down my ears over the course of a millisecond. Fluorescent jellyfish dance in my eyes. I have just enough presence of mind to stagger out of the way as Gem pushes past me and bursts into the dining room, his guns blazing.

I stumble in after him, my Leyden pistol raised, but there’s no one left to shoot at.

Our friends are still alive, though they’ve looked better. They’re curled on their sides now, groaning and squinting. Luca has a black eye. Ophelia has a busted lip. Blood trickles from Tia’s left ear. Franklin has just finished throwing up.

All four hostiles are out cold, spread-eagled on the floor, goofy grins frozen on their faces like they really enjoyed that millisecond concert before Gem shot them in the heads with rubber bullets. Their Leyden harpoon guns are all burning and smoking.

“Well, that worked,” I note.

“WHAT?” Gem asks.