Barbara waited, listening to the hum of the projector and feeling its warmth on her face. “I agree with you, Ms. Baden, if reluctantly,” Jayewardene said finally. He stood. “You will have that approval within the hour, Ms. Baden. I will secure it now. I hope you are right. I hope that for all our sakes.”

With that, Jayewardene gave everyone a brief nod of acknowledgment and left the room.

“That went well, Mizz B,” Juliet said. “I think.”

“Should we get ready, Ms. Baden?” Toad Man asked, looking at the others.

“Yes!” Barbara said, then realized how loudly she’d spoken. They were all staring at her. She closed her eyes, taking a long breath. “Yes,” she said again, feigning a calm she didn’t feel. Barbara turned to Juliet. “Get Ray on the phone for me. We need his help.”

The Angel found flying slow and painful. She wobbled and wandered like a stoned butterfly and although she tried to maintain a straight flight path, she constantly found herself fluttering off course and expending vital energy.

Below her Talas was a devastated hellscape smothered in sickly green mist. Vague forms moved on the ground below her and she frequently heard muffled screams and cries and gunshots and explosions, but could make no sense of anything. She knew that she had to fly lower, despite the danger that entailed.

Familiar terrain, and a line of unmoving vehicles spotted below her, forced her hand. She swooped down low, recognizing the line of vehicles they’d driven into the city the night before. A quick reconnaissance showed her that they were silent and still. Nothing moved around them except for the tendrils of fog. Gingerly, she alighted on the lead tank.

She looked around the eerily silent cityscape; she cupped her hands and raised them to her mouth.

“Lohengrin!” she shouted. “Lohengrin!”

Her cries echoed back creepily and from somewhere, maybe everywhere, came maniacal shrieking laughter, inhuman in scale and volume, that devolved into insane tittering. Screams came from off in the thick mist. They almost sounded human, but bubbled away as if choked off by gobbets of flowing blood. She would have gone toward them, but she couldn’t tell where they originated. Some things, she thought, were playing with her.

She tried again, though she realized that it was hopeless. “Omweer! Earth Witch!”

From behind her came the sound of cracking concrete and collapsing buildings. She whirled, staring. Someone had answered her call, after all.

Earth Witch stood atop a hill of naked dirt, fifty or sixty feet away. Her clothes were caked with it. It was smeared all over her horribly immobile face except for the two runnels down her cheeks cleansed by the tears that streamed constantly from her staring eyes.

“Ana!” the Angel screamed.

The young woman’s arms were outstretched beseechingly and her lips moved constantly, but the Angel could not hear what she said, if anything. The Angel rose into the air with a single beat of her wings, but even as she moved, so did Ana.