I worried I’d have to haul it shut. I didn’t. The shutter’s own weight brought it down, with my destruction of the mechanism serving much the same function as hauling down on any release lever or pressing any button would have. It was built like a garage door, but it was heavier, double or three times the thickness, and it was raucous, metal striking against the metal seat with a sound that would be heard next door. Most likely the intent.

Capricorn materialized his power, bringing down the other shutter, rock cracking as the metal moved and the individual slats bent. The impact wasn’t as much of a metal on metal sound as it came down to its housing. He glanced at my shutter, then stood straighter for a better view. Orange lights began to move along the shutters, covering each surface.

Sveta. I flew down to the window, to check that she was fine. She was already at the window, peeking out.

“It’s fine,” Goddess said.

I extended a hand for Sveta to take. Too late, as her prosthetic hands seized my wrist, I realized it was the burned one. It hurt, but I ignored it, pushing through it, as I helped pull her through. She found the positioning for her legs after they were through.

My arm buzzed and prickled with the pain even after Sveta let go.

Stupid mistake, and a mistake that bad could get us hurt. Focus, Victoria!

Goddess pushed down the additional barriers and barred walls that we would have had to be buzzed through. The group fell into step around her, the staff in the two side hallways effectively bunkered in. Capricorn made a gesture of his hand for effect. The orange motes became an additional wall of stone, flush against the metal shutters. It was very possible that it would make the shutters impossible to open until…

Until after.

It was a cold shock to think about how we had to handle the after. We’d just interfered with law enforcement, and the law was supposed to be one of my go-tos.

Follow the law, if that wasn’t possible, do what was right. If that wasn’t possible, we were supposed to reach out.

If I set that law aside—and I didn’t want to, but the situation was complicated, then I had other laws. In the morass of doubts and concerns, I had to get centered and focus again. I needed to put the events of twenty minutes ago behind me. Now that we were here, I couldn’t be numb and unthinking like I’d been on the flight in.

Black and white text. Protocols. Rules to be followed. Take all of the feelings and bottle them up, except those warm feelings of Dean, that give those protocols and stark letters their life.