I flew to keep up. I had to be ready to protect Harris if—

He was already backing up, hands up, when the thinkers arrived at the door to the hallway. He’d dragged Crested from the cell and shoved the food that had been left on the captain’s desk into Crested’s face.

“Are you stupid?” Bitter Pill asked.

“Did you eat it?” Bluestocking asked.

“He ate enough,” Bitter Pill said, sounding pissed.

“Your call,” I told her. “You can travel with someone that’s going to go monster and either wreck everything or refuse to budge… or you can let them stay in this cell here. We’ll wait for our reinforcements, see if they come…”

“Shut up,” Bluestocking said.

“Or you can accept my terms, and we’ll keep this easy for you.”

There was a long pause.

My team was standing beside me. I could see Bitter Pill holding a bottle so the cap was between her index and middle fingers, ready to drop it.

I wondered if Sveta would be able to catch it.

She hadn’t let herself be surrounded without a trick up her sleeve. The question was whether she’d throw all sense to the wind and go with that, or if she’d take the other route.

It was Bluestocking who responded. “Reduced terms.”

“Let’s talk,” I said. “We give you passage with your prisoners, no fight, no hassle, we’ll hold them and turn them over… you fix the wounded, you pay—”

“—Not the full price. Two thousand.”

“Pretty paltry. Twenty thousand minimum.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“They’re your teammates. You risked all of this for them. Are you now saying they aren’t worth ten thousand each?”

“We’re not teammates,” Etna said.

“You’ll fucking do a few jobs with us if we break you out, okay?” Bluestocking snarled.

“Okay,” Etna replied.

“Three day break from all activity,” I said.

“One day. Twenty thousand. We fix the injured. And you fucking pretend we don’t exist while we wait for the steroid soldier drug to run its course.”

I didn’t reply, letting the others take that in.

“Yeah, probably,” Byron said. I saw Sveta and Rain nod.

“Then fucking leave us alone, and if you try anything we’ll bring hell down on your heads,” Bluestocking said. “Bitter has stuff.”

“I do. For a rainy day.”

“It’s a fucking rainy day when—”

We backed off, leaving them to bicker.

Harris looked more resigned than victorious when he emerged. When I put out my hand, he gripped it firm.

The hole in the wall meant that the snow and moisture were getting in. The water that Byron had created had frozen so the very top layer formed a paper-thin sheet.

The members of the Patrol squads emerged.

“We need help,” I told the instructor. “We need boots on the ground, not just heroes. It’s bad right now.”