Her mother wouldn’t like seeing her like that, Mitzi thought then mentally slapped herself. She doesn’t have a mother. Not anymore.

“Captain?” Skye whispered. Mitzi had drawn even with her and could see Skye’s eyes through the helmet, wide and frightened. She was waiting for Mitzi to make the first move, but for all of the certainty she’d felt in the Teal Riot when she’d instructed her crew to never hesitate, she wasn’t sure she could pull the trigger. Her hands were shaking too much to hold the gun steady.

Then the doors along the hallway opened, and the girl became the least of Mitzi’s worries.

People filed into the hallway. There were all ages, from children to the elderly. Some towered above Mitzi, while others looked as though an over-enthusiastic hug could have broken them. Dark skin mingled amongst pale skin, and long hair with short crops. And yet, somehow, they all looked incredibly similar.

It took Mitzi a second to work out why. They all wore identical expressions: bland, with a faint smile tugging at the corners of their lips. It was uncanny enough to make the hairs across the back of Mitzi’s arms rise.

“Mitzi? Doll, answer me!” The voice in her headset finally made its way into her brain. Nic had been talking for at least half a minute, Mitzi realised, but she hadn’t caught anything he’d said. “Mitz, there are red spots everywhere. Can you hear me? They’re everywhere.”

“Yeah, I see them,” Mitzi murmured. It felt surreal, as if she’d slipped into a disturbed dream and was just waiting for it to get bizarre enough to wake her up.

The girl finally turned, rotating slowly to show Mitzi her dark unblinking eyes. Her face held the same bland, faintly smug expression as the others. The front of her dress was stained with dried blood; it bloomed across her chest, and Mitzi knew the girl must have collapsed facedown for it to have pooled like that.

Mitzi had let the flamethrower droop during her stupor, but she raised it again and replaced her finger over the trigger.

The girl’s face was changing. She was grinning, her smile unnaturally wide and stretching her face in ways it was never supposed to bend. The girl’s smile held none of the sweetness Mitzi would have expected to see in a child’s; hers held only dark, deep maliciousness. Then her face started splitting. A crack ran from her hairline down the centre of her nose and across that maniacally grinning mouth then disappeared below the neckline of her dress. The skin peeled apart like a banana, and inside was the horrific black substance that writhed and stretched outwards, grasping for her.

Mitzi pulled the trigger, even as she realised it was too late. The flames engulfed the girl as her friends around her changed, rushing forward and reaching past the pluming flame.

“Back, back!” Mitzi yelled, staggering backwards herself as three streams of flame joined her own.

“They’re behind us,” Mir shrieked, and Mitzi risked a glanced over her shoulder. The Cymics from the stairwell had crawled out of their shelter to block the team’s retreat.