“Drop your weapons!” The command was followed by a burst of gunfire. I flattened myself against the wall, but they weren’t shooting into the server room.

There was a noise like a baseball bat hitting a coconut. I heard one body drop, and the gunfire died. Someone else started to swear, a sound that cut off abruptly with the crack of oak against flesh.

“Your girlfriend’s back,” Deb commented.

I glanced through the hole in the door. Two men were down, one unconscious and the other likely wishing he was, judging from the obviously broken legs and his pained whimpering. Lena hurled a third guard into the wall like he weighed nothing.

The cold efficiency with which she tore through the guards frightened even me. I searched for any magic that might be influencing her emotions, fueling her rage, but there was nothing. She backfisted another guard. The jagged, fresh-cracked stubs of broken branches protruding from her knuckles cut deep gashes along the side of his face.

Bullets had torn at least three holes in Lena’s shirt and jacket. Judging from her bulk, she’d grown her wooden skin at least an inch thick. It slowed her movements, preventing her from reaching one of the remaining guards as he raised his pistol. Two more bullets thudded into her side.

She strode toward him and struck the side of his head with her bokken. She’d blunted the edges, thankfully. Gun and guard both fell.

Lena spun in a quick circle, making sure everyone was down, then approached the door. “The cell block’s sealed off. If you’re finished here, I could use a hand getting through.”

Lena marched us into the north wing of the prison. We passed three more unconscious guards, as well as a supply room that had been sealed shut. It looked like Lena had stabbed a branch into the doorframe and broken it off, leaving it to grow and grip both door and wall. Someone pounded the door from the inside, but the oak bulged more than an inch to either side of the crack. They’d need a chainsaw to cut their way out.

The door blocking Lena’s progress wasn’t quite as heavy-duty as the one into the server room, but it was a close second. Lena had grown additional saplings here, probably trying to pry the door free of its hinges, but the steel hadn’t budged.

“Are the sirens back here?” I asked.

She picked a bullet fragment out of her wooden stomach. “I don’t know.”

“Lena—”

“I can’t worry about the sirens until I deal with this, Isaac. With him.” She slammed a fist into the wall hard enough to splinter the stubs on her knuckles. She grimaced and shook her hand.