“STOP!” Ana cried.

In the ruins of crushed benches, Di struggled to his feet, slipping on a piece of splintered wood. His moonlit eyes flickered, the wound in his chest sizzling. He was overheating again, and Mellifare looked barely winded as she jerked her gaze up to Ana, a smile curving across her lips.

Ana held up the box. “I—I have it. I’ll give it to you. Just let us go.”

The Great Dark clucked her tongue to the roof of her mouth and outstretched her hand to Di again. “Oh no,” she purred as he tried to stumble away, and a blast pinned him up against the pillar. He cried out in pain. “You will hand it to me, and perhaps I will spare him.”

“No,” Di forced out. “Ana—d-do not.” He pushed himself off the pillar, but it was clear he needed it to stand. His fingertips were blackened, burned up to his first knuckles. She resisted the urge to run to him, to make sure he was okay, to tell him to destroy the heart so Mellifare could never get it—

But Mellifare wasn’t going to let her do that, so she had to improvise.

She walked up to the Great Dark, even though with every step her skin crawled at the nearness, and offered out the box. “I think this is yours.”

The Great Dark looked down at the lockbox for a moment, as if not quite certain it was hers. Then the monster reached with trembling fingers and gently took the box. Ana retreated back to Di and quickly pulled his arm over her shoulder. The wound in his chest looked worse up close, a slice right through the center of it.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, his voice scratchy, like nails across metal. It reminded her of the voice he’d had in his old body. “Why did you give it to her?”

“Trust me, okay?” She subtly took his other hand and pressed it against her pocket. To the cube shape there. The heart. “Di—overload the memory core in the box.”

“The what?”

“I swapped them—your old one is in the box.” She led him, stumbling, toward the back exit, and he nodded and twisted his hand back toward the box. His fingers shook. Mellifare broke open the lockbox with her bare hands. At first there was delight as she stared into the box, but then it quickly dropped to rage—

She grabbed the memory core inside.

“What is this? Whose is—”

Di’s fingertips sparked.

The memory core exploded in her grip, swirling outward in a bloom. It rattled the rafters and filled the shrine with smoke. The shock wave swept up the walls, snuffed out all the candles, and plunged the Iron Shrine into darkness. She hauled Di to the side exit where they had escaped once before—in pursuit of Robb and the coordinates to the Tsarina—and pushed on the door.

Robb

Viera attacked with a sweep of her lightsword.

Lenda deflected with the butt of her pistol and rolled away from her. Robb watched helplessly, his hand gravitating toward the lightsword at his hip. Lenda had terrible odds, but she was keeping Viera occupied. Somehow.