And when I opened my ghostly eyes, I could see the hallway through which we walked with perfect clarity, as plainly as if the long-dead fluorescents overhead had been humming along at full glow.

A quick, pleased laugh escaped me. Now I could see in the dark. “Just like… uhhh… I can’t think of an X-Man who I’m sure could see in the dark. Or was that a Nightcrawler thing…? Whatever. It’s still another superpower. There is no spoon. I am completely spoonless over here.”

Fitz stopped in his tracks, turning suddenly, and lifted the camping light in my direction, his eyes wide. He suddenly sucked in a deep breath.

I stopped and blinked at him.

Everyone around Fitz had gone quiet and completely still, reacting to his obvious fear with the instant, instinctive stillness of someone who had good reason to fear predators. Fitz stared down the hall uncertainly, moving the light as if it might help him see a few inches farther.

“Hell’s bells,” I said. “Hey, kid. Can you hear me?”

Fitz reacted, his body twitching a little, his head cocked to one side, then the other, as if trying to trace a faint whisper of sound.

“Fitz?” whispered the little kid with the knife.

“Quiet,” Fitz said, still staring.

I cupped my hands over my mouth and shouted. “Hey! Kid! Can you hear me?”

The color had already drained out of his face, but the second call to him got another reaction. He licked his lips, turned away quickly, and said, “Thought I heard something, that’s all. It’s nothing. Come on.”

Interestinger and interestinger. I stuck my hands in the pockets of my duster and paced along beside Fitz, studying him.

He was maybe an inch under six feet tall, but taller than all the others with him. He couldn’t have been seventeen, but his eyes were decades older. He must have been surviving on his own for a while to have had so much composure at his age. And he’d known at least a little about the way a practitioner could use blood to send all kinds of mischief and mayhem at his enemies.

He had scars at the corner of his left eye, like a boxer—except boxers collected them on both eyes, and they were spread out, scattered around. These were all in a relatively tiny space. Someone right-handed had punched him in the same spot irregularly, repeatedly. I’d seen Fitz’s speed. He hadn’t tried to get out of the way.

Hell’s bells. We’d just been hit by Oliver Twist.

It took Fitz and the gang about five minutes to make it to what had once been a shop floor. It was open to the thirty-foot ceiling. There were skylights—translucent panels on the roof, really—and the place looked like something out of an apocalypse movie.

Equipment sat neglected everywhere. The motorized assembly line was still. Cobwebs stretched out, covering everything, coated in dust. Empty racks and shelves gave no clue as to what was made there, but several steel half barrels were scattered around an open area halfway down the shop floor. They had been filled with flammable scraps, mostly doors, trim, and shelves that must have been scavenged from other parts of the building. Ragged old sleeping bags were scattered among the fire sources, along with trash sacks of what I guessed were meager personal belongings.