There were another twenty-five of us here. Twenty of them jerked, shifting posture, jumping, looking startled as they felt what I was feeling. All looked to be capes who hadn’t been part of the fighting, though many might have been like Juliette and Chastity, capable of keeping their shit together and doing something to subdue the ‘reds’—the capes and civilians who had been pushed over the edge by the Simurgh.

I could feel her grip, taking hold of my hood, the ends of the spikes at my shoulder, the ends of my coat. Parts of my outfit that weren’t close enough to my skin to be considered an extension of me. I tried to fly and I couldn’t. I could use my strength and try to tear free of my costume, but I couldn’t get my hands to where I could grab it. My forcefield—

—couldn’t. As she expanded around me, she started at my costume. Her own body blocked her ability to claw off my costume.

Open! I told her. Cocoon! Reach in—

Too late. The Simurgh flung me. Us. Everything. Directly away from her.

Flight let me reduce how fast I was flung, if only a bit. My forcefield reached out, fingernails scraping against the floor, hands reaching out for the wall. Hands reached into the open mouth, to cradle my head and neck, grab me.

It still felt like I imagined being in a car wreck would feel.

It was hard to shake the feelings of responsibility. Like there’d been something I could do. I felt like the driver of that car that had wrecked, and with no scream from the Simurgh and no sounds from the people around me as they were flung, there was just a series of hard-wet noises as bodies crunched into the wall, some at angles so violent that I couldn’t make sense of the shape of them post-impact.

I shook as I placed my feet on the ground, one leg wrapped from toe to knee to keep the tattered costume in place and to keep me sufficiently warm outdoors. I ached in more places than I could count, and the cushioning of the forcefield hands might have kept me from snapping my neck or getting whiplash, but I knew I’d have some awful bruises if I lived to see tomorrow.

I stumbled with the first two steps, because of sprains and the injured parts that would soon sprout bruises. There were pillars all around us, stabbing up from what had used to be Teacher’s propaganda units. The area still had piles of debris, all bulldozered into neat sections so the floor would be clean. It hadn’t seen any use except as an extensive conference room for the thinkers.

I focused on keeping the pillar between myself and Mama Mathers while I got my bearings. Syringe—I still had it, capped and stuck between my breastplate and my chest.