I looked over at Chastity, who hugged herself a bit. She said something to Juliette, who nodded. The disconnect suggested Imp wasn’t being straight with me, which made me suspicious.

Chastity saw me looking.

“Cassie’s not here, right?” Chastity asked, her tone brighter, her expression not so serious.

“Not that I saw,” I said.

“Good. I wouldn’t want this mess for her.”

Then she moved on, leaving me suspicious, still.

This group, Imp’s team, it was so hard to deal with. They never approached anything straight-on. Always an angle, roundabout, teasing, or ambushing.

There was another room of evacuated thralls off to the one side. All wore white, still, but the white was stained, dirty. They’d done indoor farming, animal care, shipping and loading, and the outfits were made more rugged for the purpose. Now they sat, hands on knees, backs straight, being tended to by caretakers and patrolling observers.

We didn’t have to go through that room. The map indicated a route.

From there, another set of stairs. A door—Lookout was kind enough to open it for us, with no alarms sounding.

And then the rows of cells. Most of the doors were empty.

Hairs tickled the back of my neck as I looked down the corridor.

Capricorn started forward. Sveta put out a hand.

“Don’t,” she said. “Remember the briefings.”

The briefings.

I felt the hair at one side of my face tickle me.

“We don’t make it to the end of the hallway without—”

A force slammed her into the wall. Her body dissolved into tendrils, blunting the impact, but part of it was her forehead striking metal, and her face couldn’t break up into tendrils.

The Custodian.

Just a step behind me, Ashley slammed into the corner of a security door. She didn’t have the benefit of being able to dissolve.

I lunged forward, flying, and something hit me, so continuous it didn’t knock my forcefield out right away. I brought my arms and hands up to protect my face, changing my direction to fly into the doorway of an empty cell, my foot down to block the door from closing.

We had a strategy. Sveta had briefed us on the same things the Irregulars had needed to learn and plan for before attacking Cauldron.

Reduce the avenues of attack. Smaller confines made the Custodian smaller. Being in the doorway meant she could only really attack me from the front.

Using powers like my forcefield, Rain’s power, and Capricorn’s ability to see what worked—

Didn’t matter. She attacked the ceiling instead, pulling down electrical. The wires were live in a way I’d never seen before, like there was tinkertech to the place, or they’d made it to be dangerous if the walls were breached.