The nearest agent raised a black stem and squeezed its trigger. Flames

spouted in a curving blade and danced through the skeletal branches of another tree-turned-torch. Yaya froze until the spitfire faded and then charged at him.

She’d held scissors to Doc’s neck, blood pumping half this hard, and Doc meant something. This gas mask-wearing creep in a yellow jumpsuit? He was nothing. He didn’t even have a face.

One fleshy coil shot out from beneath the hem of Yaya’s clothes and twisted around the agent’s neck. Another grasped the weapon’s stem, but then wrenched back at Yaya’s yowling. Its touch burned Magenta’s flesh, one cursed nervous system to share between them.

“This is your goddamn fault!” Yaya shouted. She hugged against the agent and began punching his throat. The hazard suit material dented at each blow.

“You Frankensteins injected me with this shit. Don’t do the mad science if you don’t want Magenta!”

Her captive buckled against her. The flamethrower’s shaft clacked against pavement. She wanted to grab it, wield it against the other agents as they gathered around her, but her captive fell onto it. There wasn’t time to dig it out.

Within a few steps, the encroaching semi-circle of agents would block her in, pinning her to the nearest wall.

“You did this to me, and now I got Sibs,” Yaya said. “Just let me die in peace.”

She couldn’t tell if she heard the gunshot before she felt it snap through her shoulder. The bullet was a seed, and it dug painful roots bone-deep. She doubled over, shrieking, but she couldn’t out-shout a gun.

All gas masks turned toward the line of cops and their tanks. One agent raised an open palm, while another pressed two fingers to the side of the gas mask and grumbled something Yaya couldn’t discern.

The distraction was enough. She gripped her aching shoulder and staggered toward an apartment building’s front alcove, breaking line of sight with cops and agents alike. The agents didn’t mind dishing out friendly fire, but they refused to take it. Maybe both forces would fight each other and give Yaya an out.

Escape seemed unlikely. She doubted she could retreat safely from this alcove, let alone up the street. A few more steps, and the agents would see her.

Their death machine could create a clear shot if the agents wished.

Her suit was truly ruined now. She wasn’t sure why that mattered, but the thought occurred to her and wouldn’t let go. Tentacles flailed from the hole in her sleeve, out her collar, and from beneath her jacket. Hard to believe they had lovingly held Doc just this morning.

Their touch hurts, Magenta hummed.

“Bullets do that,” Yaya said. Her curls caught in the blood and stuck there.