‘Here’ was a clearing he marked with light blue motes.

I half-placed, half-threw the tech, letting it skid to the middle of the designated area.

Capes were diving into the Machine Army situation, here. I waited to make sure the gun was secure. Byron let the light blue motes become mist, and where the mist touched, they left layers of ice.

He buried it in ice, while still drawing out the other shape.

I threw myself into the mist.

Spin, I thought. Forcefield whirling around me, extra limbs extended. To move the dust away.

Drones were revealed, not even twenty feet from where my team was.

My hand found a handhold in the rim around the lens that served as its eye, then the forcefield of that hand expanded out, more hands reaching out from that point, to find every bit of leverage.

The drone was torn in half. I used the one half to smash the second drone, then the other half fanned at the mist, with force that only enhanced strength could provide.

The onslaught was constant. Flying drones above—I flew up, reached for them, wincing as laser cutters raked along the side of my forcefield, straining it. I was able to destroy them before the forcefield gave out.

A grappling hook snapped out, clinging to my breastplate.

I flew straight to the source, kicking it before my forcefield was even back up.

Forcefield teeth severed the wire. Forcefield hands pulled drones apart.

Finally, I found the source.

Surrounded by eight other lesser drones, there was a drone that was low and flat to the ground, with long legs that extended more out than up and down. The low, flat portion was bowl-shaped, and held a blur of dark gray with too-sharp edges demarcating its edges.

That blur distorted, becoming square, as a drone materialized, climbing through it.

We got a report about them getting access to portal technology.

She brought a portal with her. The army emerged from the portal.

Grappling hooks fired out, striking at my forcefield, destroying it, then caught onto the metal of my costume.

I flew forward, wincing with every impact, forceful enough when they hit my breastplate to make me stop midway through exhaling or inhaling. The impacts at my wrist or shin made pain jolt from the end of the limb to the other, my fingers or feet briefly going numb.

The forcefield came back, and I tore my way free.

But in shaking ten of the grappling hooks free, flying twenty feet forward, I found myself facing another twenty latching claws.

The portal drone waddled away, as I faced more and more resistance.

“Sveta!” I called.

Machines echoed me, repeating the sounds and sound fragments in a digital, radio-static squeal.

“Already here!” I heard.

I shook my way free of the grappling claws. More came—and this time Sveta grabbed them out of the air.