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  “Chaos. Pure bullshit, utter chaos.” The second guard had a sheen of panic sweat coating her upper lip and neck, and a makeshift bandage hiding her hairline. She began to zip-tie the prisoners’ hands. “One minute they’re eating breakfast, then bam. Anarchy.”

  I used my own cable tie to secure the melter-villain’s wrists, palm to palm. “Are all the waiters okay? The other guards?”

  “No way to tell. They knocked out communications.”

  That sounded suspiciously organized to be done by most Detmer inmates. “Any idea what their goal could be? Because if they’re pushing for free HBO, I’m pretty sure you’ve already got that,” I said.

  “As far as we can tell, it’s a good old-fashioned prison break,” the third guard said. “We’ll get these four to secondary containment. The other guards could use a hand more.”

  “Got it. It started in the dining room?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s up that way, make a left and—”

  “I know where it is,” I said, already jogging off.

  I made it fifteen feet before a high-pitched whine filled the air. Everything smelled briefly, sharply, overwhelmingly like the dusty fuzz of a dandelion clock.

  Giant vines ruptured the floorboards, breaking through and thrashing around like giant tentacles. I clipped my shin on a vine, tripped, and dropped into a roll, then popped back to my feet. A second wave of giant green and puce vines erupted from the walls and splashed out of the stream, whipping through the air as they tried to grab me. One grazed my wrist and left four bright red marks across my arm.

  I’d seen all of this before. “Venus!” I said, sprinting forward to hurtle over new vine eruptions. “Knock it off!”

  A green-topped head popped around the corner of the hallway. “Girl? Is that you?”

  “Yes, and I’m a little short on time right now, so cut the vegetation sideshow horror, will you?”

  Venus von Trapp stepped up to the mouth of the hallway. Her body language didn’t read as threatening. More baffled than anything else. She seemed skinny, but I knew it was all lean muscle that came from a diet entirely made up of red meat and other animal proteins. She preferred to play with her vegetables rather than eat them. “When did you get back in? I thought you served your sentence,” she said.

  “I came to help.” No need to tell her which side. I shook my injured hand, which was already beginning to tingle. “What’s even going on? Why the riot? C’mon, you guys love this place.”

  “Orders.” Venus shrugged.

  “Whose orders? It wasn’t Tamara Diesel, was it?”

  Venus laughed. “Tamara? Please.”

  “Then who—”

  “Hey!” Venus looked beyond me, down the hallway to where the guards had been unobtrusively trying to drag the inmates out. “Hey! What are you doing? Where are you going with them? I will chop you up for compost so fast—”

  She stormed at the guards. The vines raced ahead of her down the hallway, splintering bamboo and flinging chunks of concrete as they sped toward the guards. Before she could pass me, I fired off two stun bolts at her.

  The first shot ricocheted off a vine she raised in front of her face. The second bounced off the wall behind her. She screamed, face twisting into betrayal. “You’re on their side!”

  “I said I was here to help. I didn’t mean you,” I said as I took another shot, which she knocked away.

  The hallway began to feel like a jungle, and everything in that jungle immediately swiveled to try and kill me. I dodged, ducked, and kicked out at Venus. A vine ensnared my left wrist; I chopped it away with my combat knife.

  Venus let out an agonized shriek. “Stop hurting my babies!”

  “No!” I’d had better comebacks, but I was a bit busy trying to wrestle a vine that had wrapped itself around my hips. I dug my boots in and tried to run. If I could get up even a little speed, I could phase free. Why the hell hadn’t I gotten out of her jungle hellpit before attacking?

  Venus’s eyes turned a brighter red. She took a step for me, fangs bared. My boots scrabbled for purchase on the tile. If I couldn’t get out of the trap, I was seriously screwed.

  Something loud clanged.

  Instantly, everything went eerily still in the hallway, not a single leaf twitching. Venus’s eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed in a pile on the ground, revealing the woman who had sneaked up behind her.

  Reflex made me drop into a fighting stance. I relaxed just as quickly when I saw my ally’s face.

  “You looked like you could use an assist,” Brooklyn Gianelli said, twirling a frying pan.

  “Yeah, thanks.” I grunted and hacked ineffectually at the vine still around my hips. “I appreciate it, I really do, but aren’t you supposed to side with your fellow prisoners?”

  Brook scowled. It seemed like her time in Detmer had done her good: she looked far more rested than the last time I’d seen her, and she’d finally put on a little weight. Since she’d spent the better part of a decade as a science experiment, it felt like a victory. “Two weeks left in this dump and now’s when she decides to lead a fucking uprising. I’m officially team no side here.”

  I tensed out of habit when she raised her hand toward me, but Brook only scoffed. A green and yellow ray burst out of a hole in her palm and cut cleanly through the vine. It tickled wherever it hit my skin.

  “Who’s leading an uprising?” I asked.

  Brook gave me a dark look. “Who do you think?”

  Understanding hit, and the temperature of the entire room plummeted. “Rita? This is Rita’s doing?”

  “Yup,” Brook said. “That’s why I’m getting the hell out of here, and you’d be wise to do the same.”

  “What the hell? Rita’s lived here peacefully for years! What changed?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care.” Brook’s career in supervillainy, compared to most people in Detmer, was pretty short-lived. She hadn’t even had a cool name. She’d gone by Chelsea, of all things, and her pink-and-white uniform hadn’t exactly cried supreme evil. Hell, mostly she’d only wanted to get back at her ex for abandoning her to the aforementioned lab experiments, and since I, too, thought that her ex was an ass, I didn’t wholly blame her.

  She looked around us at the mess of twitching vines, made a disgusted face, and hopped into the air, hovering in place with only minimal bobbing. She gave me a look. “You coming?”

  The sensible thing to do would be to run. But . . . “There are guards in danger still. I can’t.”

  “Suit yourself. Stay away from Rita. She’s on the warpath and she knows far too much about the you-know-what.” She tapped her temple.

  Why not just say Mobium? “Gotcha,” I said. “Thanks again for helping with the . . .” I gestured at Venus’s prone body.

  “No sweat.”

  “Hey, if you’re going that way anyway, mind dropping her off near the other containment unit?”

  “Ugh,” Brook said, but she scooped up the villain and flew off, the vines twitching in her wake.

  That was oddly helpful of her.

  Brook’s warning weighed on my mind as I moved, deeper into the belly of the prison. Save the guards, subdue the inmates, wait for help to arrive. Avoid Rita. Should be a piece of cake, right?

  I knew better than to think so.

  Which was why, two skirmishes later, I rounded a corner and sighed to myself. Standing there, right in the middle of the hallway: Rita Detmer in the flesh.

  Maybe I’d get lucky and she wouldn’t recognize me.

  “Oh, it’s you!” she said. From anybody else, it would have sounded cheerful. In fact, she seemed like an old lady I’d have been tempted to help cross the street at some point. Short, shoulders bowed with age, unkempt silver hair pulled back into a simple ponytail. In all my time as her roommate, getting the bloody daylights beaten out of me every day, I’d never landed a punch that seemed to hurt her at all. She’d never even winced.

  My heart beat a noticeable tattoo in my ears. I dro
pped into a fight stance, but all of Jessie’s training seemed to have vanished. All I could taste was the coppery tang of terror in the back of my throat. I swallowed. “I’m here to tell you to stop the riot,” I said.

  Rita eyed me up and down. She’d once trained me, singled me out for combat lessons to suit her purposes, but I wasn’t under any illusions: the woman now saw me as an enemy. Any assistance I’d inadvertently offered had been completely wiped from the slate. “Well, then, let’s get on with it. I don’t have all night.”

  Facing off against Rita? I didn’t have all night either. I probably didn’t even have the next five minutes.

  Sure enough, Rita shrugged and flew at me.

  Chapter 8

  Rita blurred from a complete standstill into furious flight, bulleting at me. I kicked off the wall and phased beyond her, but she passed so close I felt actual turbulence in her wake.

  She stopped easily. We’d traded places in the hallway so that now I had my back to the open foyer beyond. More room to maneuver, but she could also fly, so better for her. If I moved forward in the corridor, she could also choke me off. If I ran away, she’d no doubt chase me down.

  “You’ve gotten better,” Rita said. “And you seem less whiny.”

  If she’d been able to read my thoughts, I doubt she would’ve said that. Rita flew at me again; once more, I dodged, but she anticipated me. Her arm swept across my chest and knocked me backward. She snatched the front of my armor; instantly, I went from falling to flying as she threw me like a softball.

  I landed and rolled, only to slam up against the toes of Rita’s boots, as she’d raced around me. I tried to roll back out of the way, but she grabbed my armor again. I heard it creak under the pressure of her fingers and thought, oh, no.

  She tossed me again, harder and faster. By the time I saw the wall, it was too late.

  My body hit the wall in a gigantic, painful belly flop that reverberated through my core. Bright red sunbursts of pain exploded behind my eyelids as I landed. Agony sang through my torso in particular. I’d definitely cracked at least one rib. Healing that was going to suck.

  “Shit!” I scrambled to my feet just as Rita’s fist plowed into the tiles where my head had been, leaving a massive dent in the ground.

  I scurried backward as she swiveled. Good god, her eyes held no expression. It was like facing down a robot, one with the ability to crush me into tiny pieces. No wonder they called her Fearless. I had to do something, anything besides let her toss me around like a rag doll.

  When she dive-bombed me from the air, I snatched a page from her playbook. I phased and sidestepped, grabbing bunches of her shirt and twirling on the spot. Using the momentum, I threw her with all of my might. She hurtled ten feet through the air before slowing to a stop, but by that time, I’d crossed the foyer. Two steps and I phased as hard as I could, throwing all of my momentum into the punch. I missed her, but the unleashed force dented the wall panel.

  Though I whipped about, ready for another attack, I found her hovering in midair. She narrowed her eyes, still empty of all emotion, like I was something to be studied and dissected. “That was a handy trick. You’ve certainly mastered more of your abilities,” she said.

  I held my stun gun up, aimed at her chest. “Rita, do you really want to break out of here?” I asked. “Look at how this place treats you. You’re a queen here.”

  “I’m a queen everywhere,” she said dismissively.

  “Why now? What’s got you so anxious to be on the outside? Come on, Rita, can we please not do this? Call off the riot. You can finish serving the last six hundred and eighty-five years of your sentence in peace.”

  “You’ve progressed better than I would expect.” Rita turned her attention to the wall, but I knew better than to try and knock her out with a stun bolt. My broken rib shouted insistently at me with every breath. “I do believe that you’re almost a threat, actually.”

  “Thanks?”

  “One I don’t have time for at the moment. And if I kill you, my granddaughter would no doubt pump you with more of that Mobium to bring you back to life. That fool always did dote on her.”

  It took my pain-fogged brain a second to follow her train of thought. Mobius, I realized, she was talking about Mobius and Kiki. She didn’t know Kiki had used the last of the Mobium to spare Angélica’s life, and that Mobius refused to make any more. But telling a woman capable of shredding me into tiny pieces that there actually wasn’t a way to resurrect me seemed a little self-destructive. I kept my face blank, though I’d begun a countdown in the back of my head to when help might arrive.

  God bless Villain Syndrome and its soliloquy side effect, honestly.

  “Luckily,” Rita said, “there are other ways of dealing with you.”

  And then she pounced. I shot three times at her with the stun gun, but she feinted and snatched me up by the middle. It was like pouring gasoline straight onto my rib cage and hitting me with a flamethrower. I screamed and struck out, trying to fight her off as she hauled me up and took off so hard my head snapped back on my neck.

  When I tried to elbow her, she pinned my other arm to my side and squeezed. I saw white. My rib cage actually creaked. The white at the edges of my vision went gray and the room telescoped into a tunnel—

  No, wait, that was an actual tunnel. I’d been here before. I struggled harder—and felt a distinct snap in my midsection, right where Rita pinned my arm to my side.

  My scream echoed against the cinder blocks. Black swarmed my vision. When Rita abruptly stopped in midair, I screamed again and dangled helplessly, too hurt to struggle. She swiveled, kicked open a door, and threw me inside.

  The landing hurt so bad that I stopped trying to hold down my breakfast. Hazily, I lifted my head. She’d thrown me in what looked like some kind of medical lab. From the smell alone, the janitorial staff had taken a decade or two off. A single dentist chair with wrist and leg manacles sat under a harsh spotlight in the middle of the room.

  Rita filled the doorway. “I had them build this room for Ms. Gianelli,” she said. “Mobius gave me a few tips in case you lot ever got uppity.”

  “You consider this uppity?” I asked, breathing through my clenched teeth. “I haven’t even gotten started. This is, like, barely even cheeky.”

  Rita simply stepped back and closed the door.

  I stumbled to my feet and hobbled over, tugging on the handle. The metal barely even budged. I pounded on the door with a fist, breathing through the spikes of pain through my midsection. “Let me out. I really don’t have time for this! You think you’re the only supervillain I’m dealing with this week? Hell, you’re not even in my top five!”

  No answer. Wincing, my side on fire, I turned to study my prison. Four concrete walls, a door, no windows since I figured we were at least two subbasements down. Trying to battering ram my way out of there probably wouldn’t work, not with my injury. Desperate, I pulled myself up on the chair to study where the light met the ceiling.

  As I climbed, a low hum echoed through the room. The back of my neck itched. My stomach hurt, but that could have been simple trauma. The hum grew louder. This was bad. This was horrendously bad. The noise increased exponentially rather than slowly, ticking upward in volume. I clapped my hands over my ears and tried to climb down from the chair.

  The hum abruptly crescendoed, striking me all over. It was like hitting a wall again, but faster and more brutal. Agony, blunt and never ending, assaulted every molecule of my body. I was only half-aware of falling, landing awkwardly on the chair, and finally clattering to the cold floor. Make it stop, make it stop, my brain demanded, but the noise only grew louder, the vibration hitting me in waves. I opened my mouth to scream, but it never reached my ears.

  The sound grew until it was inside and outside and my body began to spasm.

  The air began to turn colors, vibrant greens and reds and blues of the electromagnetic spectrum arcing overhead like a rainbow.

  The floor moved under
me. My pulse stopped in my ears, overwhelmed by the volume of the hum. This, some part of me realized, must be my new existence forever. There was no escape, and clearly no mercy.

  So I did the only thing I could: with what remaining strength I could muster, I raised both hands. I wrapped my hand around my fist, took a deep breath—it hurt, oh, god it hurt—and drove my hands as hard as I could right over my broken rib. It poured kerosene on the fire of pain raging over me. I let out a scream I couldn’t hear.

  And the promised blackness finally, finally came and carried me off.

  I came around to alarm bells, not unusual for me. For a second, it was almost peaceful. Just me, the ground, and the comforting cadence of the fire alarm.

  Reality kicked its way in. I opened my eyes and blinked several times. Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. I was lying on the floor in some kind of torture room with a single light swaying overhead. They hadn’t strapped me to the chair, for some reason. Or I’d escaped already and had no memory of it. Either way, I was on the floor, and that sucked.

  Everything felt weird and alien, like somebody had taken apart the world and had replaced it with Jessie’s nanobots. Details felt too sharp and too blurry at the same time, like I’d forgotten how to use my eyes. My skull seemed to have shrunk three sizes, squeezing my brain into a miserable paste. Hunger, so unfamiliar after months of barely needing sustenance, clawed its way through my middle, sharp and shouting for attention. My body felt like I’d been dropped from the third story onto gravel.

  But my rib cage didn’t hurt. I lifted my head to look down and check—I very distinctly remembered the rigid snap of at least one rib breaking—but the world swam, and the walls tilted so that the ceiling became the floor and vice versa. I moaned.

  The fire alarm blared louder. I shut my eyes. Why were there alarms? How had I wound up here? Everything felt blank. Through sheer force of will, I managed to roll onto my side and onto my hands and knees, while the room tilted like a demented carnival ride. Details flickered in. I remembered a distress call. Detmer. Prisoners escaping. Had I seen Brook? I felt like I had, and that I was missing gigantic chunks of memory.