This was it.

The odds were getting slim. Robb really did hate his luck, especially now. He remembered back to the Wicked Luck game with that cheating bastard. Mellifare had a card up her sleeve, he had a feeling, but doing nothing was worse than waiting to see what trump card she’d play.

“Okay, Captain,” he told Siege, voicing the consensus of the group, “we’ll get you to the door. Just be ready to knock.”

In reply, the captain pulled back the hammer of her Metroid. “They’ll hear me.”

Di

The exit door was melted shut.

A critical warning blinked in the back of his head, and his chest burned like someone had poured lava onto his ribs. The fight with Mellifare had made him expend so much of his energy. Another stunt like that—even as much as feeding energy into anything—would overload his hardware.

It would kill him.

Mellifare gave a feral cry, and he heard her prowling toward them in the darkness, pushing the pews out of the way as if they were made of paper. “I know you have the heart. I will find you!”

He and Ana ducked behind one of the pillars, and they pressed against each other in the dark. Without the candles, they could barely see anything—only the hint of smoke rising from the wicks, and the outline of the windows high above them, shedding light from the misty city outside. There were footsteps to their left, but were they just echoing from the right?

He could not tell.

“Ana,” he said softly, “you need to get out of here.”

“Not without you.”

“I will distract her. What matters now is the heart.”

She gave a start. “Are you sure?”

“I will be fine,” he replied, but he could feel his eyes flicker again.

“No,” Ana replied, and his face hardened. “I won’t. I won’t make you do that.”

“I am asking—”

His chest sparked again, and he gave a groan, doubling over. Warning flared in his head. CRITICAL MALFUNCTION, it read. He pressed his hand against the wound, his eyesight glitching.

Distantly, he heard Ana calling his name, and then it was—

“Di, look! It’s your name!” Nicholii laughed, flourishing his hand at the ancient stone wall. They were in the ruins near the Academy, waiting for Mercer to fix their skysailer. It had broken just outside the ruins, and no matter how many times he kicked at it, the damned thing just would not start. Nicholii had found a piece of charcoal in the glove compartment of the sailer and got to work alleviating his boredom.

Di was not amused. “Could you stop desecrating the ruins?” he asked, looking up from his holo-pad in annoynace. “You’re the prince, for Goddess’s sake.”

Nicholii gave him a pointed look and, after DI, added IS A SPOILSPORT on the wall, and both Mercer and Selena Valerio fell back in peals of laughter. “Oh, whoops, now you’re immortalized as a dick!”

Di rolled his eyes and glanced back at Mercer. “Honestly, can’t you just call Cynthia and ask her to come get us?”