Juliette turned around, freezing him. Which released Sidepiece, who shrieked like she was being burned alive.

Which… fair.

Darlene stared down at the woman, watched her thrash. Seeing her get on hands and knees, trying to rise, Darlene kicked, heel toward head.

Sidepiece ducked her head low, the heel hitting the back of her head, but not seeming to do much. She’d hoped it would put Sidepiece back in the fire.

“You’re so fucked. I’m going to fuck you up, you little fucking fucker!” Sidepiece shouted, her voice raw. She was trying to pat out the flame.

The birds harassed her, pecking and swooping. One got her ear, tearing at it.

And in the background, the others weren’t catching up.

No, because Lionwing and Cretan were catching up. And the Case Fifty-Threes. The group had tried to go one way and they’d stopped. They started to come her way, and Cretan used his power.

It was a wave, a pulse that rippled over everything. Where it passed, things were bent. Rows of lockers now turned at right angles, ground bent up, requiring climbing up a two-and-a-half-foot ledge, and off to Darlene’s left, a hole in the wall showed a tunnel, with a tiny version of Cretan upside down on the far side.

That tiny Cretan turned toward her, then began charging down the tunnel, swiftly growing larger.

No no no…

Water gushed, aimed down the complete wrong direction, and yet somehow it passed into the tunnel, gushing in spirals and throwing the bull-costume mercenary around inside the confined space. Some water sloshed out on Darlene’s side.

“—clidean space,” Tattletale was saying.

“Come!” Darlene shouted.

In the tunnel, there was a splash, as Cretan brought his fist down on the ceiling of the tunnel.

Another pulse. Another ripple.

This time, there were walls and bends that obscured Darlene’s view of her team. She could feel them, though. They felt a normal distance away, even if her last glimpse of them seemed to put them in weird places.

Leaving her alone. Separating her from them. From Sidepiece, thankfully. From the birds. She could only hear the shouts and the chaos.

She turned around.

A man in red, with a white handprint on his mask. He held a knife.

She wished she wasn’t wearing her own mask. Maybe if she wasn’t, she could say or do something, pretend to be innocent.

The man threw a pair of handcuffs her way. They slid on the floor, traveling in a straight line until they hit a weird bend, then slid left a short distance.

She bent down to pick them up.

“Cuff yourself to that bench. If you use a power, I cut you where it hurts,” the man in red said.

She opened the cuff, looking at the serrated metal edge that allowed for the handcuff’s adjustments.

“I can’t stand being tied up,” she said. “It makes me want to barf.”