I imagined I looked a little feral, pacing as I was, trying to track them with my other senses, being unable to make eye contact.

I moved my hand experimentally. I hit the wall.

I couldn’t point at them, then. I couldn’t hit them, based on my earlier issue.

“What do they feed you shits?” Blindside asked. “You get thrown from a bus mid-impact and you have it in you to pull this? I’m impressed.”

The dreamy blur was disappearing, the way in closing behind Nursery and Snag. The background humming and chiming was fading.

I hoped the others were retreating, finding a place in the building they could hunker down until help came.

“Listen,” Blindside said. “I don’t want trouble. I don’t want to hurt a civilian. I’m keeping to the rules. Lie down, put your hands on your head, let me take the gun. I’ll give it back when I’m done.”

“You’re going to kidnap Fume Hood. I can’t stand by and let that happen.”

“You can’t do anything about it,” Blindside said. “We’re going to borrow them, then we’ll be on our way.”

“Borrow? You’re giving her back after? Unharmed?”

“Yep. Mostly unharmed. The woman who lost her kid wants to have words with her. Shout at her, make her feel bad. She and some others paid a lot of money to make it happen. Then we drop her back off somewhere near here and drive off.”

“For that, you drive a truck into a building and traumatize a crowd?”

“Intel said we were good to hit the building there, use that as our entry point. Scaring her was part of the deal, so was fucking her over,” Blindside said. “Stirring up the crowd, it doesn’t affect us much. We live in one of the corners. For her, it keeps her from finding any success.”

“For the sake of the woman who lost her child?”

“Yeah.”

“And she’s personally going to shout at Fume Hood there?”

“Fume Hood, Bad Apple, Horse Apple, Apple Cider, whatever you want to call her. Yeah.”

I nodded slowly.

“Just lie down. Let it be. Give up the gun, stop fighting, we do our cape shit and you carry on with your day. Police are under our control, nearest capes are half an hour away. This is the way it is sometimes.”

“The files I got when I accepted this job said the woman in question died,” I said. “The pregnant lady who lost her child.”

“Really?”

I nodded, my eyes still fixed on the ground, as close to Blindside as I could get. If they moved into my field of vision, a forced movement of my eye and head would let me know.