He cradled the box to his chest, carried it back across the circle, and offered it to Umar. “Take the thing.” Cold spread from the metal into his arms.

“Not now,” Umar said. “Follow.”

He ran. So did Corbin.

The sub-basement blurred around them, lockers and cages and unconscious guard, bare-piped basement and concrete steps. Then they were out in the yard, running under a coal-black sky tangled with ropes of green-purple light like sailors said they saw far north. But those were supposed to be soft lights, while these were hard like thorns, and rainbow blood flowed where they stuck. Umar climbed the fence first, held out his hands. Corbin tossed the box to him and followed. Chain links rattled beneath his weight like they hadn’t under Umar’s.

As he crested the fence, he heard a nightmare voice.

Stop.

Shit.

He fell hard. His ankle twisted. He felt no pain, from his ankle or from his torn soles—he was too scared for pain. Umar sprinted for the alley. Corbin’s legs wouldn’t do as he asked. A Blacksuit chased them. Only one, the rest on patrol or doing gods knew what, but one was enough.

Corbin ran into the alley, into Umar. Who had stopped.

“We cannot outrun it,” Umar said, and set the box down.

Light quaked monochrome again, leaving serrated patches of light and dark. Umar’s face looked like saws fucking.

Corbin tried to speak but made no sound.

Experience broke to key frames robbed of movement, like woodcuts in a children’s book. Umar looking up. Corbin turning. The Blacksuit frozen in midleap (it was a woman, under the Suit). Umar, dodging to strike the Suit’s face with his fist. The Suit fell, recovered. Hit Umar in the gut. Knocked him into the wall. Umar hit the Suit in the jaw with the heel of his hand. No effect. Suited fingers reached for his neck. Umar’s mouth snapped open. Glass wires flicked from between his teeth and caught the Suit, and pierced and peeled. The Suit staggered. She fell beside the box, silver pooling reflective from her skin to leave her human.

Motion returned, and color, the loud bark of those silent seconds’ sound released at once. Umar panted. Cuts around his mouth bled black. Corbin stared at the fallen Blacksuit. She lay still, but breathing.

Umar lifted the box. “Come.” His voice sounded less human now.

Corbin hobbled after him. With every turn and every block he expected Blacksuits to descend. Maybe Justice was distracted? Maybe whatever Umar did, or whatever the thing inside Umar did, broke the Suit’s tie to its Lady? But to think such a thing—to attack Justice herself, to fight her messengers and win—was to frame a world gone mad.