“My gun only has one bullet.”

“Then what—”

“We fight,” Lantern-Eyes said, and something extraordinary happened. All the fear crumbled from her expression, and left nothing but determination behind. It was horrible and hopeless. Like watching flesh peel away from bone.

We were going to die here. I reached towards my side, where my four stolen bombs weighted down my pocket, just as the manikins lunged.

They moved like Indigo, almost too fast to see. My flashlight beam caught one full in the face and it recoiled like the brightness pained it, stumbling back into the shadows, but the others moved low and fast. Lantern-Eyes swung her club furiously at the manikins. But they dodged her blow as fluidly as currents of the air, circling around her, around me.

I turned to follow the motion of the monsters, bomb in one hand, flashlight in the other, trying to find a good target to aim at. The manikins evaded my flashlight beam like the cockroaches had, and it was so much more unnerving to hear them and know they were there but not be able to see them when I looked. My back bumped Lantern-Eyes’, the two of us pressed close by the circling monsters.

I had to just throw the bomb, pick a place and trust that there would be manikins nearby. I opened my mouth to warn Lantern-Eyes that a flash was coming, then a manikin slammed into my side like a battering ram.

My head bounced off the floor with a flash of light like I’d accidentally set off my stolen bomb. The weight of the monster pressed down on me, and something dug into my ribs, right about where the wound had been on that ribcage I’d stepped into a few hours back. My hand clenched on empty air—flashlight and bomb had been knocked from my grip.

Blue light flared up suddenly out of the dark, and the manikin shrieked, rearing back. Metal rang against metal and I realized it was scrabbling frantically at a sword embedded into its back—a sword with Indigo on the other end, face expressionless in the storm-blue glow.

He’d turned his collar-light off for stealth, but they knew he was there now, and mobbed him. They weren’t stupid, I thought; the manikins knew he was the biggest threat. I stumbled back, out of the way, fumbling for my weapons. I couldn’t find the dropped bomb in the dark, but I found the heavy flashlight, still shining brightly from the floor. The lieutenant took advantage of the manikin’s distraction to catch one of them with the edge of her club, knocking it aside. She advanced on the fallen manikin, snarling at her from the floor, and slammed her club into it again and again.

Indigo moved like lightning through clouds, dodging between the creatures. I saw one fall, then another, not dead but bloodied. Lantern-Eyes, her single opponent put down, reached into the fray surrounding Indigo and wrapped her forearm around the throat of one of the surviving creatures, dragging it heavily to the floor.