The road was dirt, but dirt wasn’t useful.

The building itself? No. If things got that far, he was out of reach.

I could see the artificial speed bump in the road. A hump of dirt, painted yellow.

My eye fixed on that. Yellow paint where the dirt sloped up against sidewalk, to mark the rise, to let people know to watch their step, and—

I retreated, flying over the cars. The tinker broke away from Sveta, saw me heading one way, and started to take the long way around, the front door in his sights.

I dove for the ground, and I had the Wretch dig its hands into the earth. I couldn’t rely on it to do as I wanted, but I could do something else. Faced with a second me that reached out and lashed out mindlessly, I could deny it, I could allow it to work…

Or I could at least make it lash out in a predictable way. I could lean on the fact that the Wretch outlasted a sustained hurt better than it outlasted a sudden, sharp kind of hurt.

I spun. Each outstretched arm swiped at the earth. A sustained battering, spread out across the Wretch’s limbs.

I carved my way a few feet into the ground near the speed bump, drove my hand into the fissure that cracked the hard earth there, and found my prize.

The tinker had escaped Sveta, and he had escaped Rain. He found his orientation, and he lunged.

I lunged too. Wretch active, I tore the flexible pipe out of the ground, flying along it, so the Wretch skimmed along its length, raising it up. The hump wasn’t just a speed bump, but earth covering the pipe that had been set in a shallow trench and then covered. Water or power to the Lyme Center.

A tripwire for my quarry.

The tinker grazed the pipe, and the tinker conducted across it, stretching out ten or fifteen feet to the left, and an equal distance to the right. I knew Shadow Stalker had trouble with electricity running through walls, with rain and even things as simple as smoke thick in the air. I knew Velocity had his own issues, a reduced ability to affect the world, to the point that mundane obstacles and barriers like closed doors could hamper him. Other breakers had their difficulties. The uncommon hazards.

I dropped the Wretch, which let me easily drop the pipe. While he was disoriented, I was free to fly in. I smacked into his midpoint, and the Wretch helped to scatter him again.

Inside the building, the power flickered and died. All was black for a long moment, the only real light was cast by the tinker.

I reached out and the Wretch found a grip at one of the arm-rings. I let the Wretch break it, and the tinker’s arm snapped back into reality, with ripple effects of real-self tinker appearing across his body.