‹Yes, it would. Wait, what kind of doodle?› Smudge squirmed in his cage, anxious and glowing red. ‹I’m at Babs’ office. My fire-spider has a bad feeling about this.› I peeked through the doorway. ‹Aw, crap.›

‹What is it?›

Babs was seated at her desk. Russell Potts stood looking over her shoulder at something on the computer screen. Behind them, toward the corner of the room, Kiyoko held a pistol to a seated, handcuffed woman I guessed was Darlene Jackson-Palmer. Her eyes were red, and she wore a magic-damping amulet.

Darlene’s left eye was puffed like a pair of leeches. Blood dripped from her split lower lip. The knuckles of Kiyoko’s left hand were swollen and bloody.

‹Kiyoko’s here. She’s been torturing Darlene Jackson-Palmer to force Babs to cooperate. Darlene’s wearing a magic-damper. I can’t reach them without losing my speed, and I don’t think I could take Kiyoko in a fair fight.› I considered shooting a pebble at Kiyoko’s gun, or at Kiyoko herself, but in either case I risked the gun discharging and killing Darlene. I studied the effects of the pearl more closely. ‹They’ve modified the magic-damper. The effects aren’t radiating out from the pearl. It’s generating a spherical shield. Anything passing through gets nullified, but inside the sphere, Kiyoko’s still hooked up to her clones.›

‹Can you tear it down?›

‹I think—wait, no. Damn, that’s clever. If I’m reading this right, the pearl is held in some kind of stasis. It’s in the process of exploding. That shield is the magical shock wave. If I break it, the physical shock wave kills Darlene, Kiyoko, and possibly everyone else in the room.›

‹Who the hell came up with that?›

‹Babs, probably.› I edged around the desk to see what she’d been working on. ‹Double-crap. They know we’re here.›

‹How?›

‹It looks like they set up a wider perimeter outside New Millennium, an invisible infrared fence or some such, and we tripped it. As soon as you’re back to normal operating speed, let Bi Wei know she might be getting company.›

Heavy-duty headphones hung around Babs’ neck. Potts clutched a matching pair in one hand. I studied the other windows on Babs’ computer. ‹She’s got a sound-editing program running and a microphone plugged into her system.›

‹Is it IAS?›

‹Doesn’t look like it.›

The audio clip was a jagged graph on the screen, one minute and four seconds long. I sorted through the notes on her desk until I found what looked like a script. ‹It’s voice masking software. They’re prepping a speech, claiming this is retribution from Vanguard, the Porters, and all oppressed creatures who feel it’s time to rise up against humanity.›

‹What are you going to do?›