“Something that happens regularly,” I elaborated. “If she isn’t mindful about it.”

Sveta nodded. “Maybe Contessa gets stronger when she can build up plans over days and weeks, and she was just woken up when we met her and she didn’t have a backbone of pre-existing plans and safeguards in place. So she took the cutthroat route. And maybe it gave her an added two seconds of confusion for Teacher if she killed someone she had worked with for decades. I think that would be okay in her books. That’s why I think she’s awful.”

Golem looked at me, then at Tristan and Rain.

“…I’ll pass that on.”

“I’m biased,” Sveta said. “But I don’t think I’m wrong.”

He nodded.

I could see the staff and the general effect that surrounded one of the portals in and out of this place.

Kenzie had her coat over her arm, and pulled it on, wrapping her scarf around her neck. I still had my coat on, and made sure to button it up.

Fuck. I wasn’t even going to get to put on my costume.

“Here,” Golem said. He indicated the portal. It was the same rip-in-reality style that Kenzie’s cube made, rather than the electricity-framed doorway that Teacher’s tech tended to produce, or the three-dimensional-hole style that Faultline’s group and Khepri had made.

I did have to wonder if putting more actual fucking holes in the glass or the cracked ice wasn’t a really questionable idea.

But they had to have thought of the same thing. They’d have taken precautions, especially if they had Teacher’s tech for tracking all of this stuff.

Golem’s word was enough to get us through the checkpoints. It put us in the city.

He walked with us right up to the tear.

“What you said about that two seconds of confusion? It might line up. Some of our thinkers were there in the room before he ran. They reported he was distracted.”

“Makes sense. We were pressuring him,” Tristan answered.

“They also reported that your group showing up was part of what made him decide to shut down. You, specifically, Antares.”

I frowned.

“I don’t know why and I don’t know what it means, but I figured you’d want to know,” Golem said.

“I have no clue,” I said.

“The guns,” Sveta said. “You picked up six guns, using your forcefield.”

I looked through the portal at the distorted picture beyond it. I thought of the rising anger, the frustration at Byron’s condition and not fucking knowing. Then the black mood that had settled in, as Kenzie had reported that Swansong was dead.

In the midst of that mood, the Wretch hadn’t moved how I’d wanted it to.

I’d moved like it wanted.

“Thanks, Golem,” I said. “You’re the best.”