“Go,” I told Rain and Foil. “Get to safety.”

“You can’t,” Foil said. “She shouldn’t, she can’t, but—too many guns.”

Had to.

Had to like I’d had to risk arm and leg, might still lose arm and leg, depending on how this acid worked, to save Foil. Had to like Sveta was probably telling herself she had to do this.

It wasn’t a bullet I had to worry about. I was flying, thinking I was safe, when lines began to appear. Silvery, but crisp, like slices in reality, reaching well over the building.

Not meant for me, but dangerous all the same. I flew past one, and the Wretch had a limb extended. I felt the Wretch get sliced, felt the dim sensation that was the Wretch’s extended being part. The forcefield didn’t collapse. It cut.

A gaping hole in my forcefield, now, where there had been a bit of torso and shoulder.

I saw Sveta flinch in pain as one tendril passed through a line. Her head recoiled back, and the rest of her reacted. Her head flicked up, nervous, reactionary, an she saw me.

Tendrils snapped out, cracking almost like whips in their efforts to reach me.

Calm down. Let me near.

She didn’t calm down, but she did shift her attention away from me. Again, she bobbed her head, waved, and stabbed into the building with tendrils. They hit the floating space that was afire with the orange sparks, and it was like she’d hit cement, the tendrils corkscrewing as they hit a hard resistance. She forced them through, reaching.

“Sveta!”

“Get away from here!”

“Not without you, you numbskull! What are you trying to do!?”

“I’m trying to save them!”

“Who?”

“All of them!”

A severed tendril, noticeable for its endpoint because it didn’t taper down from pencil thin to hair-thin, stabbed in the direction of the hand-mech and the still half-formed, now double-layered orb of interlocked body parts.

The mech was moving now, hands gripping a surface. Cradle was elbow deep in the guts of the machine, even while it moved, not jarring or jostling as the thing moved, reaching up to grab the damaged section of roof, pulling it down.

Another volley of shots shot across the open field, striking the front face of the building. Something groaned, then fell, striking with a thud.

I saw Cradle turn his head sharply to the one side. A hand let go of the roof, instead moving to form a shield. The next volley passed through the opening in the building, striking different points inside. Two grenades hit the flat of the giant mech hand, raised as a shield.

He turned and he looked up at me.

Sveta tried again. Again, she hit the invisible momentum-cutting barrier. Like punching a wall of mud. More silvery lines criss-crossed, filling the space, silvery stitches, closing off the gap of the roof itself.

Two capes had somehow closed the distance to the treeline. I could hear Ashley and Damsel’s blasts, each audibly distinct because of what they were, and I could see more trees toppling.