Sveta had covered the general layout when we’d been looking into raiding Teacher’s headquarters. She’d studied the entire structure when the Irregulars had been planning the attack.

We headed toward the dungeon. The cells. Where thousands of lives had been stolen away and kept. The elevator box was large enough to fit a car in, but we were the only occupants.

It jolted and then began descending. If it had been the size of an ordinary elevator, the ceiling would have hit my head before I remembered I needed to fly down.

I shifted orientation, lying against the ceiling so my back was flat against it, and I pulled out my phone. I navigated to Vista, and I sent her a quick message.

Busy fighting.

I told her to check in with Byron regardless. He’d probably need it.

I looked down at my mom from above as the elevator, then descended, moving down a bit faster than the elevator did, to return to ordinary height.

“You’re planning—” my mother started.

But I put my arms around her, hugging her from the side.

She was hesitant, but she returned the hug.

“What’s this about?” she asked.

“I love you. I saw stuff in the crystal, I felt the need to reaffirm that.”

“This feels like a goodbye,” she told me.

“It’s not.”

I broke the hug as the elevator came to a stop.

“Would you mind if I leaned on you?” my mother asked me. “I’m still unsteady.”

I floated down until my two feet, now uninjured, were on the ground.

She leaned on me. We walked down the hall, and we rounded a corner.

These weren’t the cells where the prisoners had been held captive, but it was close. The ceiling was high, supported by pillars, and the rooms were solid and blocked off, in much the same way the apartments on the upper floors were. The difference was that each structure was its own building, contained within one floor of a larger building. It wasn’t warm in the slightest, owing in large part to the spacing of the lighting. It made me think this was a defensive position, and some of the evidence of cleanup efforts told me I wasn’t wrong.

I felt trepidation. I’d made internal resolutions and I wasn’t sure I’d abandoned them.

Wayne was sitting outside one building. He stood as he saw us.

Aunt Sarah took over supporting my mom. I flew over.

The building he was beside—she was in there. Not quite a cell, but… a solid concrete structure paneled in white tile, reinforced doors and windows… it wasn’t not like a cell.

“Thank you for doing this,” I told him.

“There are ten different things wrong with this,” he said. “Conflict of interest, the timing, the seriousness of it…”

“Were you able to talk to her?”

He nodded.

“Can I talk to her?” I asked him.