Now only a hand and parts of two legs remained. The rest was a blood spatter, half covering Swansong, the other half smeared across the warrior angel’s front.

Swansong looked stunned.

I get it, I thought. I really do. We’ve never talked about it, but we both walked too close to that line.

I never wanted to kill, because the resolution to be better and to avert my course from the one Glory Girl had been on had been the one thing that was untainted. Killing under orders, in a necessary situation, a teammate telling me that was what I should do? I could make peace with that.

Swansong had her own demons in that department. She had gone to jail for it.

The winged angel pulled back, rising up, and as I’d noted a humanity in the formation earlier, I could sense an anger now. The rise, the indignation.

But it wasn’t in fighting shape. The smoke shrouded it now, less than before, but still significant.

I saw it twist, turning, looking behind it.

There was a flash, a deep dark blue mingled with a sky blue, rippling through the air, forming a bubble.

Within that bubble, I saw metal mend, the damage undoing itself, lights growing brighter, where I hadn’t even noticed they’d dimmed as consistently as they had.

Things outside the bubble remained in disrepair, but that was one foot, the ends of both wings.

And its ventilation was clean. The gunk at the chest and face were gone.

He had his backup.

There were more efforts. A beam extending toward the haloed angel. The bubble appeared where the beam made contact, until Love Lost intercepted it, throwing herself in the way.

It didn’t matter. Gravity had its hold on her, and the interruption was momentary.

Another rewinding of the clock, a reversal of time. The halo flared with light, and the beams immediately began firing on us. On Imp’s team, on Swansong—

I put myself in the way, nearly being shoved out of the air as the force that was the haloed angel moved past me, antigrav pushing me down, turbines thrusting me to the side.

But it wasn’t trying to fight. It was a retreat. A hand lowered for the member of the Speedrunners. Prancer’s old group, the time-manipulating tinkers who had defected to Fallen, and then defected again to Teacher.

“They’re waiting for us now,” Sveta said.

I looked at Swansong, who had dropped to her knees, hands at her injury.

“We need first aid,” I said. “We help the others, assist the trapped and injured back there. Be prepared for a second attack while we’re on the back foot. That took too much out of us.”

I had Kenzie’s tech that I’d stuck into the computer line earlier. I dropped into the blood spattered cockpit and connected it to the system.

“Not disagreeing,” Imp said.