But again, I was anthropomorphizing. Yes, she had hands, but I was ascribing manipulation, will, and motives to the Simurgh by thinking of it that way.

“Anyone have updated numbers? Above a seven? Below a five?” I asked my team.

“Nothing changed except I feel demoralized after that fight,” Rain said.

“We almost had her,” Sveta said.

“And she wants us to feel demoralized,” I said. I moved my gun right, left, right again, as shadows moved in the dark, unlit patches, the golden scribbles and labels struggling to keep up as the lighting changed.

“If anything’s making me feel like I’m going crazy,” Sveta remarked, “it’s you, Victoria.”

I looked down at her.

“Where are you at?” she asked. “One to ten.”

“Eight?” I asked.

“That’s worrying,” Byron said.

“Eight is good. I feel okay. Better than okay.”

“Didn’t you say six, earlier?” he asked.

The lights went out, then came back on. In the time they’d been out, a person had moved into the center of the hallway. They wore a costume that was in the post-Gold Morning style, clothing mixed with costume, mostly red. The red was mottled with blood, to the extent I couldn’t tell what was pattern and what was costume.

Open up, I thought. Hatch me out…

I floated to the side, placing the gun on the stairs before crouching on the underside of the gun.

The woman looked at us with eyes that were red from corner to corner. Thousand yard stare.

I didn’t recognize her.

As she met my eyes, the scream in my head seemed to escalate, until everything I was seeing seemed to vibrate. I glanced away, to break the effect, and she bolted into motion.

I remained where I was, but the Fragile One was ready, jumping forward to grab the woman by the wrists. The woman jerked, partway into a pounce down the extended set of stairs that acted as the backbone of the facility, her arms stuck behind her.

She screamed, raw and full of rage. The scream joined the screaming in my head, and a noise that would have been bad enough to make me wince before became a hundred times worse because of the context.

“Calm down,” Cryptid growled.

“Is that you?” Sveta asked, looking at me. “Holding her?”

The lights went out. The outlines that were drawn out in gold momentarily traced the Fragile One, naked and many-armed, with a chest splayed open. Then, like the cameras in our eyes remembered that they weren’t supposed to be capable of seeing the Fragile One, they stopped tracing her.

“Yeah,” I said. “I dunno if you saw her in the night vision lens, but…”

“I saw her,” Sveta said.

The woman screamed again.

“Anyone have something to tie her up?” Rain asked.