“I became less convinced of what I was saying before I finished saying it,” I said. “I don’t know, Precipice. If you’ve got to break stuff to save people, then that’s fine. I think those things out there are dangerous, and I don’t think people would hold it against us.”

“Don’t underestimate people’s ability to blame others,” Byron said.

“Yeah,” I said. We’re here right now, aren’t we? “You can put holes in the ceiling, Precipice. I think they’ll accept it.”

He looked around. The smaller length of arm that was attached to his elbow touched a nearby table. “I was thinking floor.”

“Go for it,” I told him.

I picked up a desk, sliding it over to where the damage was worst. After a moment’s consideration, I flipped it over, so the legs and struts were pointing up. It crashed as it landed there.

Sveta and others joined me.

“Why upside-down?” someone asked.

“They’re strong but they aren’t balanced or coordinated,” I said. “Tripping is better than putting something heavy in their way.”

“What are these blue lights?” a girl in a Patrol uniform asked.

“A water gun,” Byron said.

“Are they safe to walk through?”

“They’re safe.”

The pounding continued. I could see the spread of cracks.

This was going to be bad.

“Do these guys have a firehose, containment foam, nets? Anything like that?” I asked.

“No,” Instructor Harris said. He sounded pretty grim, and he looked anxious. More annoyingly, he wasn’t really helping.

“You sound pretty sure for someone who doesn’t work here,” Rain said.

“It’s the same building layout as the one we operate out of,” Harris answered. “Except instead of the cells we have a shower room.”

Made sense. Many of the buildings were prefabricated, arriving on trucks and put together like assemble-it-yourself furniture.

“Besides,” he said. “Water pressure here isn’t all that.”

“I wasn’t asking for the water. I was asking because it’d be tough for them to tear, and I could tie them up.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. He was watching the cracks expand. Concrete was coming out of the widening cracks in dribbles and tufts.

“Where were you a squaddie?” I asked, as I used a burst of my strength to send a desk skidding across the floor.

“I wasn’t,” he said. “I was admin in a PRT office. Beartown.”

A paper pusher? The distinction between an office and a department was a pretty big one. The office would be the kind of place that serviced a town like the one Ashley had come from. The department was the kind of place that served Brockton Bay, New York, and any other cities that were large enough or in dire need. There had been sixty-five or so at the time the world had ended.