“Hey! Hey!” Tod shouted. “Wait. If you’d step over there—”

Over there, apparently, was the security desk. A man in a Patrol uniform stood by a scanner.

She walked over to the scanner, and handed over her kit before standing with her arms at her sides.

The man in uniform hesitated, holding the wand that would detect metal on her person. “That’s it?”

“That’s everything I could hand over,” she told him.

“You’re a tinker.”

“I’m not going to bring a full kit when turning myself in. That’s how you get shot.”

And getting shot and not dying because my organs are in maille sheaths and my body can keep going with thirty percent of its usual blood volume… it makes people freak out. Freak outs are inconvenient.

She waited as he scanned her. The wand passed over the sheaths, over her leg, but she’d embedded some scrambler cysts in her flesh at regular intervals. The wand didn’t beep.

It was theater, and as used as she was to theater, she couldn’t help but roll her eyes as they had her walk through the scanner. She was a biotinker. Her body had fifty different weapons and one weapon of mass destruction crammed into it. Short of cutting her open, they wouldn’t find one.

They began to pat her down and search her pockets with excessive care, a gun trained on her at all times.

The lesser Wardens at the portal had pointed her here, told her the back area had been reinforced and was being used as a kind of jail. A temporary holding area until they could be put somewhere else.

She had nowhere to go, she didn’t know anything or anyone that could give her better directions.

They kept searching her, going back to the wand. Like they weren’t sure what to do with her, they weren’t willing to let her go, but nobody was on their way.

Maybe if they’d declared it an emergency or a prison break, people would flock here, but it was a weird situation. Every situation she was in was a weird situation.

“Can I go?” she asked. “I’ll be good, I promise. You have my tools.”

The two men hesitated, exchanging glances.

Fucking… the frustration boiled inside of her. As her heart rate rose, so did the flurry of blueprint-like inspiration, crawling through the open space of the lobby.

“Stay put,” the uniformed man with the gun said.

Tod, meanwhile, hurried back to his desk, making calls.

The first capes arrived. Wardens, by the look of them.

“Riley Davis?” a man in red with luminescent sunglasses asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re turning yourself in?”

“I’m supposed to be in the Wardens’ custody.”

“You have a cell?”

“I’d hope so, if I’m in their custody.”

The cape gave her a strange look.