“I’ll watch them,” Sveta said. “Kill them if I have to.”

“You,” my mom said. She pointed at Sveta. “I’m not impressed.”

“What the hell?”

“It’s fine,” Sveta said.

“What the hell?” I whispered.

“It’s fine. Go. Rain needs you. We’ll do what we have to. They’ll notice two of theirs are missing as soon as they do a head count.”

I looked between her and my mom, and I saw something weird and dark in my mom’s expression. Like she was bothered.

She went ball form before I could study it any further.

My cue to go back to Rain. Before I was even there, I heard more of a commotion inside.

I reached the window, supporting Rain’s balance, and peered past the frost.

The Lumberjack had been mangled. Red stood over his body. The other two members of her group that I’d deemed scary, plus one more, had all risen to their feet, standing spread out. Nobody was stopping them, helping them, or intervening.

“I have to wonder, and this feels shitty and scary to articulate—” Rain said the words through grit teeth, emotional.

“Shh,” I urged him. Did he have zero volume control? That had almost been speaking level.

The skinny guy with the knife pointed it at Red. The one guy I hadn’t expected to be in that mix, because he’d been so quiet, said something.

Red acted. A movement, which immediately saw two members of the group drawing their weapons. Too late. The splashes occurred around them. Small splash, medium splash, giant drill spearing out of the ground, catching a guy in one butt cheek and shredding everything from there to cranium. One had backed out of the way of a tightly arranged set of metal rollers, but missed the piston that struck a roller and, accelerated, speared the ceiling. The piston splashed, and it became a hydraulic hammer, slamming from the high ceiling to the floor. Pulp.

The last guy, the quiet guy, hadn’t drawn a gun. He was thrust into the air by an uneven set of pistons, so he flipped head over heel. He landed on one shoulder, and collapsed in a way that didn’t let him fall flat—his feet were left above him for two or so seconds, before he twisted and flopped into a more or less relaxed position.

The machinery around him receded. As it did, metal machinery splashed up and out, with white hot metal in the midst of it. About a half-full bathtub’s worth of hot metal landed on or in the immediate vicinity of the third guy.

He thrashed and screamed, his clothes igniting from the heat alone, while Red sat back down. She said something, and a lot of heads shook, in her squad in particular.

“Jesus Christ,” Rain muttered.

He’d been using a lot more religious swears since waking up.