“Juliette’s here,” Byron told me. “Tattletale’s over there. Swansong and Lookout are in the other room, they were the last ones brought in. I didn’t want to break in in case they noticed and saw me. I thought we needed someone mobile.”

I couldn’t even move, with Darlene hanging on me. She shifted position as I tried, and I saw where one of her legs terminated at the knee.

“Sveta?” I asked.

“They broke her suit. She’s staying at the end of the hall.”

It took doing, especially when I was sore, but I could use flight to help. I lifted Darlene, and immediately she started fighting me.

“I need to be with Chicken Little,” she said. “We can communicate some with my power, but being connected means he hurts more. I don’t know what I’m supposed—”

“Shh,” I said, easing her down.

“I check in now and then.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s good. Can you stay for a second?”

Her hand clutched at my leg. Like she didn’t want me to go.

She couldn’t leave Aiden and she wouldn’t let me go.

“One minute, okay?” I asked. “One minute, you can count the seconds. Can you count?”

She nodded. Without speaking, she mouthed the words.

Sixty seconds to see how bad it was.

“Let’s get Swansong and Lookout out,” I said.

I hesitated as I saw damaged equipment. Something not all that dissimilar to Love Lost’s whip claw, but it had a handle, and it was broader. Split in two.

“The device we’d need to undo the damage,” Byron said.

I flinched, looking away.

“You should know. They severed pieces of Swansong and Lookout,” he told me.

I nodded. I was almost numb now.

I only had a minute, then I had to go back.

Juliette was lying on a table. As hurt as anyone, with a burn at her side that had damaged her clothes.

And on the ground, half of Tattletale. One arm, one leg, no head.

Some of our team was here, I realized, with a sick feeling. That’s how Love Lost put it.

“Everyone’s accounted for?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Byron said. “But…”

He didn’t finish the statement.

Everyone is accounted for… but only some of our team is here.

They took the rest hostage.

Blinding 11.12

“I’m back,” I told Darlene. “That wasn’t a minute, was it?”

She shook her head.

I had Juliette with me, her arm around my shoulder. She had a wedge missing from her side, and some horrific damage to her shoulder I couldn’t parse with the blood and the way her hair matted into the wound.

She pulled away as soon as there was a bookshelf in reach to lean on. Hand over hand, with one arm barely functional, she crawled along the wall to the nook by the door, where she slowly eased herself down. Still hand over hand.