No choice, really. I hated leaving them behind, but Finn and the others were safe enough for now. The other hostages had been properly cowed, and I doubted anyone else would be stupid enough to try anything. Yes, Phillip was seriously injured, but Finn and Roslyn would slow the bleeding and help him as much as they could. Given his above-human strength and muscled body, the bullet probably hadn’t gone quite as deep and done quite as much damage as it would have to a normal person. That probably meant he had at least a few hours left.

On the upside, Clementine had just split up some of her men, which meant that she’d also split her attention, energy, and resources. She couldn’t be everywhere at once, and she’d already done the dividing for me. All I had to do now was conquer, or, rather, kill. One on one, I had a chance against the giants.

More than a chance as the Spider.

I scooted back across the floor toward the doorway. When I was sure I was out of sight of everyone below, I stood up, grabbed my shoes, and eased down the stairs to the first level. The chill of the marble had sunk into my skin from lying on the floor for so long, and it felt good to move, even though I could still hear the worried whispers of the stones and the sharp stings from the gunfire that had already seeped into them. I pushed these things from my mind.

A soft, familiar mechanical whirring sounded. I looked up and realized that a security camera was mounted above the staircase entrance. I hadn’t paid any attention to the cameras when I’d rushed out of the bathroom earlier. Clearly, nobody had spotted me running toward the rotunda on the feed because nobody had come charging onto the balcony after me. Besides, the crew had been focused on the hostages then, not the possibility that one lone woman had somehow escaped their sticky web. But now that Clementine and her giants had taken control of things, I didn’t want to give myself away by barreling down the hallways in plain view of all the cameras.

The camera moved in a slow, steady arc, so it was easy enough for me to dart past just outside of its line of sight when the lens turned in the opposite direction. I stared down the hallway at the next camera mounted on the wall, but it likewise moved in the same slow half-circular pattern and was just as simple to dodge.