Chicken Little called out a warning about a bombardment from above, and Sveta and Tristan split, moving in opposite directions as fresh tinkertech was unleashed. Sveta went deeper in, Tristan backed up to the nearest cover, adjusting his grip on Byron.

I saw Sveta look up and see the sky I saw, all darkness, pale arms, and glowing points of light. I saw as it dawned on her, the nigh-impossibility of getting through this forest of limbs and now almost-continual bombardment.

I saw Sveta look at me, my burned self, and seem to despair more over that than anything.

Tattletale fired with thought behind each shot. One bullet for a given device, not every device got a bullet. It might have been only the ones she thought she could break, and most of them broke.

She wouldn’t have access to her power, I was pretty sure. I thought of the girl in her trigger event.

You’re not dumb, I thought. You know what to do.

Rain, Tattletale, and Love Lost passed beneath the granite slabs, guiding and shielding the kids. Cradle loomed above, unmolested, still watching. I opened my mouth to shout a warning, and the air in my lungs tasted burnt, my lips split, and the effort dizzied me. The pain was coming back, but it was simultaneously profound and disparate, touching some parts of my upper body and leaving others entirely numb.

A casual two-handed throw of a piece of rubble.

Rain was sheltering the kids with his body. In the end, it meant that when the rubble came down, it struck both him and Candy.

He stared down at us with scuffed glasses, saw Tattletale taking aim, and ducked down, hiding in his portion of the room.

Sveta started my way, but the ground between us was suddenly riddled with phantom handprints, forceful enough to turn the granular into something solid. She shied back behind the wreckage of empty shelving units in what I presumed had been Snag’s area. Writ large with the spatial distortion that came with being directly under this thing. This guard dog.

Long seconds passed, and was feeling colder and colder with every heartbeat.

The bombardment was slowing. The thing was drawing back into itself.

“Why did you go ahead?” Sveta asked. Asked me.

My throat felt impossibly dry. I’d inhaled air that was too hot, maybe. “Needed to distract,” I said, intending to say ‘it’, and getting only a mouth movement with no air instead.

“You did that. You followed through,” she said. “Gave us that opening we needed.”

Tattletale and Love Lost worked together to carry a partially caved-in Rain, Tattletale with a gun in her hand, her eyes on the concrete above her.

Darlene, Chicken Little, and Kenzie carried an injured Candy. Rain had apparently absorbed most of the blow.

“Essalated,” I managed. “Esc—”

“Escalated,” Sveta said.

“It did. Like an Endbringer.”

I pointed, using my less burned arm.

It was escalating even now.