She looked at her daughter. She saw an expression—

Hurt. Betrayal. The little girl as the aggrieved party, now.

The moment was silent, the look unmoving, but the entire shopping mall shuddered.

“Let’s go.”

They walked, one of the girls taking her leave to rejoin her parents. The blonde girl, Everlyn, and the woman.

A boom rattled the building.

People immediately began running. The noise in the background became reality. And without crossing the distance between, the woman was against the wall, in an alcove by folded tables for events, all stacked up. Holding her daughter as best as she could while people ran past. They skinned her fingers with the force they scraped by, too numerous, in too small a space.

She tried to bring her daughter closer, and she failed.

There was too much noise and chaos for anything she said to be heard.

With herculean effort, she pulled her daughter into her arms, hugging her for a moment.

There was a moment of quiet, a brief opportunity to utter a few words.

“I get it now.”

And then her daughter was torn from her arms by the pressure of bodies. She leaned hard on the stack of tables—the tables collapsed. The result was explosive, like a mousetrap snapping closed, Everlyn’s head coming down, striking a metal bar. Lip split, eyes pointing in different directions.

No light in those eyes.

The woman screamed.

⊙

“Don’t move!”

They opened their eyes.

“Don’t move from where you are!”

Gilpatrick followed the instructions, raising only his head, surveying the area.

Patchwork, a gridwork of concrete, concrete, grass, pavement. A mosaic—

He frowned, looking over.

The person was… had it been Valentin? Narrow, slender, with hair in a messy pompadour.

Except his body was painted in stripes, pale, paler, and dark, hair alternating black, blond, and brown. His clothes made no sense, and the patch of room he was in was… a mess. Jumbled things piled atop one another.

Gilpatrick’s, by contrast… it looked like a parking lot, including two yellow lines. He felt like he could feel moisture in the air. From the lake. From the ocean.

Because he’d been thinking of L.B. earlier? Or because of Victoria, and the time he’d told her she couldn’t be with the Patrol anymore? They’d been close to the water then, too.

No, couldn’t get distracted.

Threat assessment, he thought, checking the other end of the room.

The ‘monster’ that had been described was slender, tall, like a blade cut in the shape of a wolf, with a gradation between blue and red, with white at the main body. It prowled, and as it did, its shape seemed to change by rules Gilpatrick couldn’t understand.

“Stay put!” Rain called out again. “Stand but don’t leave your section! If you can’t tell where your section starts and stops, just stay where you are!”

Gilpatrick surveyed the room.