At the end of the driveway, a man that wore a heavy raincoat was talking on the phone.

“They know. They had safeguards in place,” I spoke my realization aloud. “They’re onto us.”

‘Onto us’ meant that cars were already approaching. One stopped in front of the house. People got out, and they wore a hodgepodge assortment of gear over white, simple masks on their faces.

Teacher’s thralls.

More cars were arriving—they had to have been parked in nearby driveways or a side road. They kept stopping and getting out, their lack of parking jobs meant not solely to hold them back, but to obstruct traffic.

Obstruct emergency services.

There were people in one car who were working as a team to get something big from one of the trunks. When the group moved, this long case in their possession, they did it with at least twelve people protecting the case.

The destination: the same house the woman from the prison clinic lived in.

“I’ll try to help,” Withdrawal said.

A spray of laser shots flew through the trees. Trunks splintered, and whole sheaths of brittle mark were cast off, sent flipping through the air.

I could see the alarm on the Malfunctions’ faces.

“They keep adding more,” Finale said. “I can’t do anything if they just endlessly add more.”

“We’re okay,” I said. “Run if you need to. They should let you. They don’t want the casualties it could involve.”

More laser shots now. More damaged trees. What a shame.

Goddess had outlined a way that her enemies would pin her and defeat her. Coordinated groups, seemingly endless numbers, a sharp offense coordinated by thinkers. There was no information that they didn’t potentially have, no problem we could pose that would fatigue this intelligent morass of humans.

“Is there any way to get a message across on the secure line?” I asked. “The one we’re not supposed to have?”

“I’ll try,” Byron said. “Figure out what they’re up to! We stop and interfere, but the information is key.”

He was the one in charge, with the protocols. I took off. “Be safe, Malfunctions. Be safe, Byron.”

The enemy numbers kept increasing.

Against thinkers, take them out ASAP. Distract, stress, befuddle. Mental and psychological strain, when it can be applied, should be used, as they have an ironic tendency to have their minds be their weak points.

I used my aura, hard, and probably disturbed some ordinary residents in the neighborhood in the process. Someone fell, losing their bag, and I grabbed it. I hurled the bag at the largest cluster of thralls.

There had to be thirty of them. Three to five to a car—six cars. What had been an orderly suburb was chaos, drowned in freezing rain, a thin film of ice crusting anything that was getting rained on.