There was an explosion, off to forcefield cape’s side. Her forcefield came up too slow, a glittering wall cutting through a mid-air detonation. It threw us out of formation.

We assembled, found a new formation, ready to retaliate if this attack would be repeated. It wasn’t. Stray fire from one of Teacher’s.

But again, that eerie sensation, like something didn’t add up, or that it added up too neatly.

I looked over the scene, saw more of our capes retreating to a part of the open room we could collectively defend. And I saw Teacher’s thralls. We’d demolished Teacher’s goons, knocked out cover emplacements, forced retreats.

And they reinforced, they came in through other doors, and they whittled us down.

“There was a cape back when I was recruiting for teams,” I said.

“Less chat, go to your team.”

“They were Fallen. They teleported people in. In a way that made it hard to realize they were bolstering numbers.”

“We’ll keep it in mind,” Balk said. Zero patience, zero tolerance.

It made sense to me, crystallized some of that eerie feeling that we could win every battle and lose the war. It’d be something Teacher had in reserve, that he might pull out here.

And it did absolutely nothing to quell that uneasy, uncanny feeling that gripped me.

I flew down to my team. Balk and his little team found its own formation, staying close to the right side of the room, so the forcefield cape could throw up her glittering walls, return fire, and there was no need to defend the right side because there was only wall there. Balk continued his angry, aggressive me-first fighting and did just well enough I couldn’t condemn him for it.

I released a breath I hadn’t been holding.

“Everyone okay?” I asked, not taking my eyes off of things.

“More or less,” Capricorn said.

“What’s wrong?” Sveta asked.

I shook my head, still watching. Seeing how they flew. The formation.

Nostalgic. In a fight as messy as this, the air choked with dust and the smell of ozone, I felt a weird, happy nostalgia.

My eyes settled on the culprit. The forcefield cape. The feeling crystallized as I caught her looking back at me with those eerie eyes.

Aunt Sarah.

Dying 15.3

“Did you encounter three capes when you came down this way? Two teens, boy and girl, and a woman?”

“Only if they were wearing Teacher outfits and brainwashed,” Sveta said.

“No. We sent our own that way to scout,” Gong said. Prong was just a short distance away. Both were the kind of dirty that came with the really extended combats, where sweat ran over your entire body, then smoke and then dust got caked into it.

“Annihilated,” Prong muttered.

“Don’t you dare say that,” Gong warned.