My original plan—to get through the far door first, lock it against the Republicans, and lure the Ministers away—was shot. Time to improvise. I took a deep breath and held out my hand, palm-up. Forcing some nanomachines from under my skin was difficult this time, like squeezing the last bit of toothpaste from the tube. I wasn’t totally out, not yet, but I was running low.

Protect me, I willed, and, hoping that the little Dreamer-bots could turn aside a bullet, I stood up from my sheltered spot and strode towards the door that had admitted the Ministers.

When I’d crossed the threshold of the door, mouth dry and coated with the dust that floated around the flashing, gunsmoke-reeking air, I turned back around.

“NUMBER ONE!” I shouted, as loudly as I could.

In the midst of the smoke and dust, gleaming a violet so dark it was nearly black, the Ultraviolet Minister turned around and saw me.

Time for stage two of the new, improvised plan, which was, simply, run like hell.

I ran.

“SEAN!” I thought I heard someone scream over the gunpowder and shouting, sounding equal parts frightened and furious. Goodbye, Lantern-Eyes.

They caught up with me two rooms away. I was almost surprised it was not a blade that caught me, but a hand, grabbing me around the arm and spinning me to the floor. I landed hard on my back and saw Green standing over me, curly hair shading a face lit verdant by her collar light.

Hidden beneath my back, I opened my palm. “There’s a bomb about to go off at that far door,” I warned her, as nanomachines crawled out of my palm like ants.

Indigo arrived at Green’s side in time to hear me speak. He sucked in a breath, then turned back around and bellowed, “BOMB! At the far door!”

Weird to hear him shouting aloud instead of in Light, but perhaps it was too chaotic in the battle for a message in Light to be seen and clearly understood. I heard the shout taken up in the far room, by Republican voices; heard the clamor of retreat.

An eternity later, my little Dreamer-bots reconnected the bomb that they and the Republic had disarmed. The explosion, after the thunder and lightning of the battle in the break room, was curiously small. I’d instructed my nanomachines to control it as much as they could. I wanted the door turned into an impenetrable mass of rubble, not the soldiers wiped out, but at this point I was afraid that nothing short of collapsing the ceiling was going to separate the two warring armies.

Green didn’t even flinch at the explosion, preternaturally serene face gazing down at me. Indigo looked down at me over her shoulder, and his expression was afraid.

General on Kystrom, huh? I wondered if he’d been afraid at all then. Certainly Brigid had been afraid, before he’d killed her. My parents too.

A whisper of movement, lights shifting. Green dropped her gaze and stepped to the side. Black-violet light filled the spot where she had stood, and a slender, androgynous figure stepped forward to gaze down at me with owl-eyes.