I could bust up the syringes, but I couldn’t bust up the syringes and then tackle the areas with more syringes. Our attacker was staying out of sight now, but I’d glimpsed her a minute ago. Tall, possibly breaker class, a slim, ghostly silhouette similar to Caryatid’s, with red eyes, a surgical mask over the lower face, a white covering from the neck down, so tight at the legs that it looked like she couldn’t walk, and feet impaled by the bristling syringes, points sticking out and through bare flesh. When she’d moved, it had been on that moving ‘cushion’, syringes appearing and disappearing to stab her feet and back repeatedly while buoying her away at a runner’s speed, her body twisting and arching with each set of impacts.

Breaker class, but shaker in practice. With a sweep of her arm, she caused syringes to spring out from the ground, walls, and ceiling like a crashing wave. All loaded to bear, apparently, with stuff that would guarantee we died a few months or years from now.

She moved away like she considered us dealt with, and in reality, I wasn’t positive we weren’t. Crashing through the syringes with the Wretch would disable the Wretch and impale the Victoria. Caryatid couldn’t move without losing her invulnerability. Withdrawal had a great deal of movement and a lot of gaps in his defenses, which were a bad combination in this environment, where moving in the wrong way would get us pricked.

I’d thrown myself into this side of the fight to help the C-team and now I was in over my head. I hit a cluster of syringes, clearing some of the way, putting myself in the midst of them while waiting for the Wretch to return. Then I let it do its thing. Reaching out, clawing, destroying. A swathe of destruction around me.

Putting the Wretch aside for a moment, I grabbed a fire extinguisher that was mounted on a wall, and I swung it full-bodied in Caryatid’s direction. It arced through the air, and it crashed through the syringes, giving her some ability to move. When she did move, it was in sharp, careful movements that cleared more of her way.

Even with the cacophony of noise nearby, I didn’t miss the small, frantic sound from her while she was human and not in her breaker form, reaching down for the fire extinguisher, then using it as a bludgeon.

“Cary!” Withdrawal called out. “Stay calm! It can’t hurt you unless you let it!”

The Wretch swiped, tore, and crushed the syringes in my way. The ground was a carpet of broken glass, broken plastic, needles, and fluids in noxious colors.

“I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t stand this. I have bad dreams that aren’t as bad as this.”