What else, then? Tackling the army so we could get close and do something more effective? The glowing light shining between flesh made me think of my dad. Of my mom. It was uncomfortable to think of the glowing, widespread tangle of horror and associate it with my own time in the hospital. Which of course led me back to the non-solution that was my sister.

I didn’t want to get trapped in circular thinking, that panic-space like a nightmare that had persisted from my first nights out that hadn’t ended in wins. Trying to save someone who’d fallen from a high place. I’d fly after, grab their hand, only to find it so slick with blood that it slipped out like a wet bar of soap. Again and again, as they fell impossibly far. Or like the nightmares that had been the hospital room, where all I’d had had been my mind, and that mind hadn’t had enough stimulation. No place to go but in circles.

I turned my eyes away from the scene and turned my thoughts out and away from the circle. One deep breath. I focused on the tangible, instead. The chill air that was trapped inside the bubble that was the Wretch with me. The smell of oxygen, for lack of a better word, of earth and trees and the lack of the city smell. It had been the first things I’d trained in doing when I had panic attacks.

What as I supposed to do? Something. Anything. Non-action was the only thing that wasn’t allowed here. The wall I was running into was just that—a wall. An egg I couldn’t penetrate without hurting innocents or allies.

I hugged the roof, dodging the flashlight of the patrol that had settled at one corner, and flew to the opposite end of the building. Sveta.

“That you?” she asked.

“It me.”

“I could grab it. It’s huge but it’s hollow. Pretty sure I could do it,” Sveta murmured.

I considered that option.

“There are a lot of things about that option I’m not sure about,” she confessed.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What if I can’t?”

“Yeah. That’s an issue—if you can’t budge it and everything goes out the window. And even if you can, where do we take it? No exits big enough, so I have to tear a hole in the wall,” I said.

“And if you’re in a position to do that then we could be doing other things. Yeah. It was the best I could think of,” Sveta said. “Those poor people in there. Is that Moonsong’s group? Byron’s ex?”

“I think. At least some of them. Some of our group.”

“Ashley’s foot. Tristan’s middle.”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“He’s buying time.”