“I would too!” Chicken Little piped up. “I didn’t get to say anything earlier tonight but I really didn’t mean things I said and I want to make it up to you.”

He yelped at an impact. A sweep of a hand, crashing through a metal shelf, mostly sheet metal. The crash spread the living metal and living glass, with reaching arms that tore at other cabinets. I peeked around the corner and I could see another two shelves get torn to pieces.

It reached all the way back toward the concrete, the hand in question hovering, then picked up a broken piece of slab. It threw it in our general direction, bowling through a few more shelves.

Gonna be a minute now.

“Yeah,” Candy said. “I’m sorry if we didn’t get that far. I would’ve wanted sleepovers and adventures and for-real visits to Aunt Rachel’s until you were sick of us.”

“That’s not possible,” Kenzie said. Ms. Talkative, reduced to three and a half words.

I gave her hand a squeeze.

I didn’t have it in me to stand, let alone fight. No flight, no powers, no connection to the shard. Just me.

I heard a distant shout. An instruction.

A female voice.

Someone in that group was okay. And they were… way over there. Trying to communicate with us. Too far away, muffled.

I sat up, and immediately regretted it because it meant my senses were on full alert as a hand swept through an empty glass display. Loud as shit.

Something had happened, or they were doing something.

“Help me up,” I grunted.

“I don’t think you’re in any shape to get up,” Kenzie whispered.

I could feel my heart now, but it was in the nauseous imminent-heart-attack sense. Adrenaline surged, giving me the energy to perk up, pay attention to my surroundings.

“Go,” I whispered. “Run. Toward the others. If they’re safe and it’s not after them, you need to figure out why. Go.”

She held my hand, and I could remember the scene I’d seen in the dream.

She wasn’t about to let go.

“Darlene! Candy! Chicken! Tattletale! Colt! Take Kenzie and run! Someone’s still alive over there, go to them!”

Kenzie gripped my hand.

But Candy and Darlene, leaning on each other, were there in a flash. Chicken Little stood at the end of the haphazard aisle, looking.

“We won’t make it,” he said, looking up.

“We will,” Tattletale said.

The Heartbroken girls hauled on Kenzie’s arm. Tattletale hauled on Chicken Little.

Colt lingered, looking back toward Rain.

“Antares—Precipice!” Kenzie called out.

“No goodbyes,” Tattletale said. “I should have drawn the line earlier. No goodbyes. Run.”

The hands came down. Between them and their destination. Through shelves.