Us being okay this far felt like it was a bit tenuous. This was the prelude, the calm as our enemy organized and did their best to recover from the shock of an entire section of the facility collapsing. Dust hung heavy enough in the air that every light, glowing fourteen-year-old, and shot from a tinker gun had their own nimbus. That dust had nowhere to go, because we were still indoors, and whenever rubble belatedly collapsed or a shot from a gun hit something it would kick more dust into the air.

It didn’t feel like we were the major players in this, though.

No, that would be Contessa, who took no cover. It would be the capes, who were coming at us from one direction. I made note of the capes who wore white costumes, not the one-size-fits-all white tunics and slacks that the rest of the thralls were decked out in, which gave them cleaner, meaner silhouettes. One of the capes was giving them the ability to float down to the ground, riding on pieces of rubble.

There were others. Capes who wore costumes that weren’t generic white. With the dust and distractions, I couldn’t do a lot of figuring out in the moment. The Speedrunners were definitely among them. There was a woman in a short skirt. There were others.

“Decision!” Contessa raised her voice. She threw a chunk of debris she had picked up. A bullet struck it, that might have been on course to hit a member of Breakthrough. Either the bullet or a fragment of the debris hit another projectile in the air, prompting a mid-air detonation.

Fuck me. It could have been that she had done it to save two lives or prevent two injuries with one throw. It could have been that she casually did it to punctuate her statement.

I flew down to the others, where they were using Ashey’s furrow to gather together. Rachel caught up, but her dogs were big enough they couldn’t use the same pile of debris as cover. The whistles and orders to get them into just the right position were constant, over the course of what felt like a minute and was probably closer to fifteen seconds.

Enemy capes are marching or flying our way. More gunmen are gathering at the flanks.

Chastity coughed violently. Byron passed her a Capricorn-made water bottle he still had on him, threaded to his belt with a wire. She drank some, then splashed more water into her face, rinsing dust out of her eyes.

I huddled a little closer to the others. My hood was up and by clustering together we could shield one another from the dust around us.

“We wrote it down on papers,” Byron said. “Do we show them to one another all at once, tally them up?”

“B,” Rachel said.

B had been the vote to let hundreds of thousands of citizens die. They included people close to us.