The order she had been planning to give fled her mind as she saw a figure scrambling up a section of floor.

He found his footing, backed up, until he was nearer the hostages. He turned his full focus to her, glowing eyes peering at her, and there was no connection, aside from a vague buzz of technology that her power reached into. She had no way into his eyes.

He was supposed to be one of hers. He had been one of the ones to get away, as Sunflower had, but his escape had been late.

The one who was slicing up the supporting walls—

The ground rumbled, the floor twisted, the house-sized turbine in the center of the room lost some of its foundation, and the fans it managed that drew in air from the outside and pumped it into ventilation shifted in kind.

The fans still turned, but the turns were torturous, metal against metal. A continuous screech.

“Rain,” she called out, her voice high and ethereal, disappearing into and emerging from the screech.

He clenched his hands.

But as much as she called his name and invited a response, Rain wasn’t her focus. When she looked at him, she imagined one of her Fallen. The Fallen he should have and could have been.

She projected that image into the eyes of Chevalier’s capes, injured, cuffed, and free. She brought Sunflower into the scene, put this image of Rain there, his hand at her throat, her legs kicking and failing to scrape the ground and find footing. She made his fingertips so tight at her throat that they dug in and drew blood, the small mechanical arm that extended from his elbow with clawed fingertips having raked the flesh of the phantom Sunflower’s arm.

She watched with satisfaction as the first cape turned against the Fallen Rain to save the teenage heroine. A punch into the air, that produced a phantom fist that traveled until it struck Rain from behind.

You walk up to them as if you think they’re your allies, that you have their back and they have yours. But you’re alone, child. You will always be alone, unless you’re with me.

The second cape lashed out. A pulse from the cape who had separated hostage from hostage taker, hers from theirs. Rain was cast aside.

The ground rumbled again. A section of the room at the end furthest from Christine collapsed.

“Give me my reinforcements, Teacher,” Christine said. “Now.”

⊙

Teacher blinked.

“Five squadrons should converge on Christine’s position at Turbine Four.”

“I’ll arrange it,” his soldier said.

He looked at the numbers.

97.7% in red. The number steadily climbed, dropped, then climbed again.

67.0% in white. The number climbed with a glacial slowness.

13% of his facility’s systems were compromised, and that number, at least, was going down.

Dangerous, but not so close that he had to change his plan.

⊙