Natalie. I flew toward the building, finding Natalie while I was on my way. Lights were few and far between, so the entire group of staff was huddled beneath a lip of rock, one light shared by a hundred people. Natalie was fairly close to the front, near the assistant warden, her fingers pressed together and to her mouth for warmth.

Nothing I could do. I’d tried to create an opportunity.

Ratcatcher was easier to find again, since she was mounted on one of the trucks in a group that was being used to produce light, headlights cutting through the mist of freezing rain, people’s breath, and people’s body heat.

She saw me, and then she looked away, the rain-soggy cone of her paper mask making the direction she was facing abundantly clear. Similar to what I’d seen with Cryptid, with Chris.

A rebuke?

No, this wasn’t a rebuke. I saw the nose move as she angled her head to check where I was in the sky, looking askew at me, then the nose moved again.

Pointing. A staff building.

I changed direction.

She’d done something before getting caught. What? I didn’t even know her power for sure. Rodent control? It was supposed to be thinker.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. My heart had been frozen in my chest for what felt like fifteen or twenty minutes, and now it pounded. The building interior was dark, with many lights burned out or broken, and the contents of offices, of trash cans, and the papers that had topped desks were now strewn everywhere.

“Hello!?” I called out.

She’d been in the tunnel, and she’d run. She’d gone through the vents and… she’d come here? A small building with offices and files.

Chairs, a bench, plants. No animals to be seen—no rodents.

I shivered.

Paperwork, file folders, filing cabinets, with drawers pulled out and thrown into walls with enough force to make dents and holes. Nothing about or in the dents or holes, that I could see.

More benches for sitting and waiting, with metal loops embedded in the walls for prisoners to be handcuffed to. Paperwork, more paperwork, another potted plant, a vending machine that had been raided, the chips and candies that hadn’t been eaten now piled on the ground beneath the shattered glass pane. A few feet away, there was blood. Not from the vending machine.

The blood was part of a trail of splatters leading to a dead guard, one of the metal loops for handcuffing prisoners now embedded in his chest cavity. I felt for a pulse, and I knew there wasn’t one.

My heart pounded harder than before, feeling the lack of a pulse.

What could he have told me?