But it was their dynamic. I wasn’t going to correct it. For one thing, I couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t all turn on me.

Love Lost and Fume Hood emerged from the other room, wisps of gas still clinging to them and taking a while to dissipate.

We were done. All three rooms cleared, two of them had been guarded. This area wasn’t residential, and it was a rec room, training hall, and briefing room for guards. There would be more of the same nearby, if it held to the assumed pattern.

“Victoria,” Capricorn said. “Big room off to the side.”

“Storage?”

He shook his head, at the same time as Sveta nodded behind him.

“Show me.”

After clearing the room, and checking the terminals they’d gone to the door. The terminals now showed images of Lookout’s mask. As for the door, Rain was there, crouching. He’d taken out an eye thing and pushed it through the door before plugging his phone in. He showed me what was on the other side, using the phone as a screen.

It was supposed to be our route. Our plotted path had numerous points which were suggested as low-threat and high-supply. Places we were supposed to establish as base camps if we got far enough in, as we besieged this city-sized complex.

Except low-threat hadn’t been low-threat. The area had been renovated and repurposed in the renovations, because of different needs or because Teacher was a different person.

And this wasn’t storage of the kind we could fall back on and use. Not food, not water, nothing medical.

Imp pushed closer, and I turned to check. The other squads were behind us, all ready.

“They’re not there,” Samuel said.

“What?” I asked.

He pointed into the room. “Nothing there, emotion-wise.”

“You have friends,” Roman told Juliette.

She shrugged.

“I mean… I don’t think there’s anything there, even outside of emotions.”

“Yeah. I’m not getting a buzz telling me my power is working,” Imp said, which startled me a bit. She was standing in the open doorway.

Then, not using her power, she walked out into the space where hundreds of people sat on benches and on, for lack of a better word, shelves. Ambulatory people walked between them, stiff and joyless, and gave each water, then food. One was collecting people, taking them away in groups.

None were aware enough to see us.

Hundreds of people, in an area as long as a soccer field.

Hostages for Teacher, or people he could potentially wake up to send after us. We couldn’t move forward with this behind us.

Love Lost’s claws clicked as she walked on the floor. Fume Hood followed a few steps behind, as we fanned out a bit, staying within arm’s reach of one another.