Indigo stood in front of me; I couldn’t see his face, but his spine bent like a great weight had been placed across it.

“Come back,” One commanded, collar-light glowing like a void.

He laid his hand on his collar-light and flashed a word at her, two sharp spikes of ultraviolet black, like the two blades she wore. “Kora,” Indigo said, softly, her name; spoken like a word in another language that meant no.

Their poised stillness shattered like a lightning strike; One’s other blade leapt into her free hand and Indigo shoved me back and down. “Stay by the Stone!” he commanded, and shifted his weight just in time to meet her swift hard swing.

Number One wouldn’t dare to risk damaging the Philosopher Stone, I realized; so long as I was near the computer, I was sheltered. A nice safe corner for me to hide in.

I looked around for something, anything, to use as a weapon, just as I saw a figure step into the doorway Indigo and I had used, barely illuminated by a thin flashlight beam.

I’d know that way of walking anywhere. It was Benny.

“Benny, not now,” I warned him, as he took in the battling Ministers trapped in their own little world, and then the Philosopher Stone and me, unarmed, sitting beside it.

He walked towards me.

“God damn it,” I said, and stood up between him and the Philosopher Stone.

Metal crashed on the other side of the room, swords shrieking across the walls, and Benny said, “Get out of my way, Sean.”

“Not a chance,” I said, and when he swung the little scalpel at me I made Tamara Gupta proud and dodged.

Metal crashed and light flashed on the other side of the room as I ducked under Benny’s arm, then surged forward to knock him off his feet, carrying us both to the floor. He slammed the little blade into my back; it hurt like a bitch but the blade itself wasn’t long enough to do real damage, and I felt the nanomachines stirring in my blood anyway. I wasn’t sure how many of them I had left, though, and I couldn’t exactly let Benny stab me with impunity, so I twisted on top of him to grab at his arm, wrestling him for control of the knife. I was taller than he was but he’d always been a better fighter, and he twisted beneath me, driving a knee hard into my gut.

My breath left me and I fell onto my side, releasing him from beneath me. That little knife of his stabbed into my side, stopped on my ribs. The pain roused me from my breathlessness and I slapped at him, driving him back a little, and then surged forward as crashing sounds resounded from the battle on the other side of the room.

I managed to pin his wrist, the knife pressed uselessly against the ground, and got my knee up onto his hip. “Benny, stop!” I shouted at him, and had to rear my head back when he tried to headbutt me.