“Can we move her closer to Precipice? Chicken’s watching him and—”

“Can’t move her,” Tristan said.

“Okay.”

“Sveta,” Tristan said.

Sveta lurched to her feet.

“Eyes on the sky, Kenz. Same rule we gave to Chicken. If it comes for you guys, you run. Leave the wounded behind.”

Kenzie looked down at me, her eyes large in the gloom.

I nodded.

“I mean it,” Tristan said, sounding as intense and almost angry at Kenzie as I’d ever heard. “You run.”

“I’ll run,” Kenzie said. “If you start running now. The sooner the better.”

“Look after Victoria, Kenz. Tattletale, look after these guys?”

“I will.”

“Love Lost? Colt?”

I heard Love Lost’s footsteps. Obviously, she wasn’t one to reply.

“I’ll stay,” Colt said. “I’m too slow like this.”

“Okay. Damsel!” Tristan called out, his voice booming. “Want to help kill an asshole!? Might end this!”

The thing was moving, and all I could do was lay there, focusing on breathing, while Kenzie crept closer.

Darlene and Candy kept even more of a distance. Candy had both of her hands pressed to the side of her head, and Darlene had one hand pressed there as well. They hunkered down by a shelf, hiding, their position apparently chosen to keep an eye on me and Kenzie, and on Chicken Little and Rain.

I could see the blood that streaked down Candy’s arms, into her sleeves and to her elbows, seeping through the cloth in blobs.

Darlene looked hurt too. Her ear and eye were bleeding, the eye closed, but she was using her hands for Candy’s sake. She might have been hit by shrapnel at one point.

“Put pressure on that,” I said, too quiet for them to hear.

“Are you putting enough pressure on it?” Kenzie asked.

“Yeah,” Darlene said.

The thing made its next move. Arms were augmented with metal and glass now, and when arm plunged like a thrown spear, the impact site where it penetrated was a dozen arms of metal and glass. The glass exploded, and the arms ripped and tore.

The resulting cloud of dust concealed the scene. Shards of the glass glinted in the dim light. I had to imagine it’d be nigh-impassable. Blocking the other group’s path.

God, my arm hurt. Like the bone, muscle, and everything else was being crushed endlessly, but never actually broke.

Tattletale walked over to stand over Darlene and Candy, pulling medical stuff from her bag. She looked over at me.

We’d seen each other’s worst moments, or interpretations of those moments. That… it kicked down doors. More boundaries gone.

Three more arms plunged into different points in Cradle’s territory. The first arm receded. The remainder were working on maneuvering the large body closer, so more arms could reach.