You’re humanizing her again, Victoria.

We needed to do more damage. To do that we needed Dinah. To get Dinah, we needed into the darkness… and Grue wasn’t there to dismiss it. Rachel was supposedly in there. Where the fuck was Rachel?

This screaming in my head. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

We were running out of time.

Sveta laid a hand against my shoulder. I jumped. I felt the surface of her hand shifting. Tendrils sliding over tendrils.

Rachel was with Dinah. Rachel would have her dogs with. One was still with Tattletale and the others, shielding them. She hadn’t called it. She had others.

“Rachel and Rachel’s dog were with her,” I said.

“No way,” Sveta said.

Off to our left, Bloodplay flew out of the darkness. She set her eyes on her. When Sveta reached out, Bloodplay ducked back into the darkness.

The darkness covered the back half of the room. Had Dinah fallen into the hole after all? A bloody smear, lying next to my sister, who had a chunk of rubble on top of her?

Or had she jumped?

I flew into the darkness. Sveta followed, one hand still touching my arm. On my left side. It tugged momentarily on the shoulder, which was attached in turn to my aching ribs and my collarbone. I could feel hot blood down my front, soaking into and beneath my belt-line. Whatever fights followed from this, I wasn’t sure I had it in me to participate.

Which was insane when put together with the fact I was planning on executing a massive number of people, many of them faces I knew, many more were people who wouldn’t accept it without complaint.

No, they’d fight and I’d have to stand my ground.

But that was after.

I found the hole, grazing the floor with the fingers at the end of my good arm. I went beneath, hooked around the hole, and skimmed the ceiling.

Until I was in a hallway, a floor beneath the massive room, Teacher’s panopticon of propaganda.

Not here.

I took another route, moving between floors, my search made harder by the fact the darkness on the floor above us was pouring down into the hole, so I couldn’t even stand in one hallway and look past to see the hallway on the other side.

But it forced the Simurgh to make her plays blind too.

I kept searching, aware every second counted.

Every minute, the thought crossed my mind. I wasn’t sure who it belonged to. Running out of time. She’s about to leave, and we haven’t done damage.

“Let me,” Sveta said.

“If you can.”

She unfurled, her entire body breaking down into tendrils. Clothes were shed, as was armor.

As a mass, she flung herself into the center of the darkness. I saw a hand reach out, another, another.

Reaching blindly as she fell.