Melanie swore as I finished explaining what had happened and immediately began relaying orders to people nearby. I couldn’t quite make out everything she said, but I managed to hear ‘evacuate’ and ‘sewer,’ so it wasn’t difficult to conclude she was arranging for the building to be discreetly evacuated. Elle and I shivered as a crisp breeze blew over the roof and huddled closer for warmth. This high up we were more exposed to the elements, but this wasn’t exactly the kind of conversation one could have in a public setting where anyone might chance by.

“Meteor,” she abruptly said, her attention once more on the phone call. Silence followed for a moment—hesitation. I couldn’t blame her. This situation was fucked six ways to Sunday, and I had no idea what to do. “This is a drastic escalation, but it’s also a very delicate situation. Until we can get a handle on it and turn things our way, you’ll have to play along.”

“Play along,” I repeated, feeling faintly sick. “Join that bastard after everything he’s done?”

“If it means keeping your cousin safe? Yes. That’s the price you’re going to have to pay for now.”

Elle squeezed my hand and glanced at her phone. “Twenty-five minutes.”

Twenty-five minutes. I’d been given thirty, and already five were gone. We hadn’t really moved anywhere either, and I needed to get… wherever the fuck that cross-street even was. An abandoned factory probably meant the Trainyard, which was firmly ABB territory, and that was halfway across the city at the north end. Fuck. I didn’t want to give Lung the satisfaction of even an apparent win, and I didn’t understand how pretending to join would help. How could I win? How could I get Masuyo away from those sons of bitches and stop Bakuda from blowing up Palanquin?

“Meteor,” Melanie said. “Meteor.” I latched onto her voice like someone drowning would a lifesaver. Providence, Bay General, Philadelphia—she had never failed to devise a winning strategy. “We don’t have a lot of time. I need you to listen to me—to trust me. Until we can figure out where they’ve stashed Masuyo, you have to play along. Once you know that and have a safe opportunity to get the two of you out safely, take it.”

It hurt to think about what happened at UPenn—for more than one reason—and some things I was still fuzzy on what happened. But I remembered standing in a tree with Elle and facing down Melanie. Facing down Faultline. I remembered that—not knowing what was wrong, only that something I couldn’t comprehend was wrong.

And I remembered placing my trust in her.

“Okay,” I replied, my voice coming out far steadier than I felt. “Okay. Play along, find Masuyo, get us out when I can. I can do that… I can do that.”

“That’s right. You can.” She sounded so certain, so confident that I could manage it. “We’ll be doing everything we can on our end. Stay strong, and good luck.”

The line died, and I hated that I hadn’t gotten to end the call on my terms. That in the face of being forced to accept this lack of control, albeit a hopefully temporary one, I hadn’t been allowed agency over this last moment. I pulled the phone away and stared unseeing at the home screen of my phone for a moment, but eventually my eyes unconsciously flicked up to the time.

Twenty-three minutes. Fuck.

No, stop it! You can do this, June. You have to! Masuyo is counting on you! “Okay. I’ve… First, um… I need to…?”

“Get a scarf,” Elle supplied, looking conflicted. It was obvious she was no happier about this than I was. “As a mask, I mean. I know they know who you are, but…”

She trailed off, but my blood was suddenly pumping. “Yeah. Yes. I’ve gotta get to the Boardwalk.”

“What? The Boardwalk?” she asked. I was already grabbing the remnants of the dumpster from the alley that I had used to move us here. I had shed the exterior to eliminate the smell, but some of it must have permeated deeper because the smell faintly lingered.

“I need my mask,” I explained as I wrapped us up, and a moment later, we were flying at speed to the north. I had stolen my mask from a boutique on the Boardwalk the night I fought Lung and Oni Lee, and I had never been in a fight as Meteor without it. Every part of this was out of my control right now, and I couldn’t stop the memories of my brief stint in the Eight from welling up to the surface of my thoughts. I needed this mask. I had to do this, but I was at least going to do it as me.

Palanquin wasn’t that far south from the Boardwalk, and we weren’t that far west of the club. I pushed us higher up to avoid notice before I made my move, and in just a couple minutes we were high above the people traversing the wooden walkway below. I didn’t need to look at my phone to know I had no time for subtlety, but Melanie would skin me alive if I stole anything else, much less in broad daylight.

Nothing for it but to get it over with. I looked to Elle and asked, “Uh, how much cash do you have on you?”

That startled a strangled laugh out of her. “Uh. Maybe a hundred? A bit more, I think.”

“May I borrow it? Tell Melanie, and she can get you that back from my account. No, wait. Take it all. Y’know, just… just in case.”

That sobered up the mood real quick. She somberly handed over a thin stack of twenties that I took with an expression mirroring hers. I ended up needing to move us further down the strip because I had undershot our arrival, but a half minute later I dropped to the ground while I left her suspended in the air by my power. Claustrophobia tried to rear its head as I wrapped the bottom half of my face with liquid metal, but I ruthlessly suppressed it. I couldn’t afford it right now.

My arrival didn’t go unnoticed. Enforcers were already moving towards me, easily identified in contrast to the bystanders who didn’t move beyond pulling out phones to take videos, so I wasted no time crossing the short distance to the door. My heart plummeted briefly when I didn’t see the right scarf in the window, but I forced myself to slip inside anyway. They still might be selling it, and it just wasn’t on display anymore. It was a simple matter to hold the metal frame around the glass door in place, and if the absence of breaking glass as I stalked towards the cashier stations was anything to judge by, the Enforcers were hesitating at the prospect of damaging property to get to me. The people who had been in line to checkout practically tripped over themselves to get out of my way, and a moment later, I was standing before the trembling cashier.

There was probably some elegant way to go about this, but fuck if I knew how to. Blunt honesty would just have to do. I slapped the bills on the counter and said, “You used to sell a metallic silver scarf here—just a couple months ago. I need one, and I’ll pay for it.”

“W-We don’t h-h-have it anymore,” she stuttered with wide, panicked eyes. She looked like she might faint from fear. I imagined she was afraid I would hurt her if I didn’t get what I wanted.

The customer facing display of the cash register had the time on it—nineteen minutes to go. Did those always show the time? I had never seen it before, but neither had I ever noticed with such acuteness how many people around me were wearing watches. I could practically hear the seconds ticking away.

“Please,” I begged as I felt one of the Enforcers by the entrance raised a phone to his face. “It’s… It’s important. Is there any chance you have one in a back room or something? I’m not exaggerating when I say someone’s life is on the line.” I shuddered, the pressure beginning to overwhelm me. “I don’t know if I can save her… but I have to try. I… I need this.”

She shook her head and tremulously whispered, “We d-don’t. G-G-Got rid of them a-after…”

She couldn’t finish, but she didn’t need to. I could put two and two together. Of course they had stopped carrying them after I robbed them for one.

“I see,” I dejectedly said as I retrieved the bills from the counter and drifted back towards the entrance. The Enforcers tensed as I approached, and once I was at the door, I raised my voice to be heard. “I was just here to buy something. I need to leave, so please don’t make this complicated.”

There were three of them outside the door, and when they initially didn’t move, I thought really would have to force my way out, compounding the failure of not getting the scarf I had come for. Thankfully they slowly backed away after a few beats of silence, and I exited the boutique, wary of being jumped by the Enforcers. Whether out of self preservation or because I really hadn’t anything wrong, they thankfully left me alone.

I walked a few feet away from the door and was just about to take back to the skies when someone called out, “Uh, excuse Ms… Cape person? I think I have something you need?”

I had almost flown off, thinking the speaker was going to do something inane like ask for a selfie, but I froze mid-motion at the end of their statement and looked over to my right where it had come from. Someone in a drab, worn hoodie was carefully slipping past a cluster of gawkers. One of them had their phone out and recording, but the speaker had their hood pulled up, and the sun was high above us, casting a shadow down over most of their face. A small instrument case was clutched in their left hand, and in their right hand, which they held out towards me, was a shiny silver scarf that looked almost exactly like my own back at Palanquin. I stared, completely dumbfounded, and not just because someone had literally walked up with exactly what I needed.

I could feel the scarf.

“Where did you get that?” I breathed out, my mind racing as I tried to make sense of what on earth was happening.

They shrugged. “Don’t you have more important things to worry about right now?”

I was torn. I wanted this scarf badly, but everything about this screamed suspicious. My hesitation was obvious, and with an annoyed grunt, she stepped forward and shoved the scarf into my hands. I almost stopped them, but the movement made the name tag on the instrument case jiggle. The sight of the bendable plastic tube and the old leather name tag jogged my memory, causing me to start.

“You’re that flute girl!” I blurted, barely registering the scarf in my hands.

“What gave me away?” she deadpanned.

“No, I mean…” I stopped and shook my head. I didn’t have time to go down this rabbit hole. I’d have to figure this out later. “Thank you.”

“Sure,” she said, already walking away. “Go do whatever it is you’re going to do with that thing.”

I had almost shot into the air when she abruptly called out, “Oh, and have fun playing with dolls.”

I watched her back as she slipped away into the still gawking crowd, completely disconcerted. Off in the bay, the bridge of light from the Protectorate’s oil rig headquarters began to arc towards the land. The last thing I needed was to deal with them right now, so I shot into the air to retrieve Elle. I had a date at the Trainyard.

Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why she had been carrying around an empty flute case.

I glared at the dilapidated building as I flew down and hung in the air over the abandoned parking lot. The asphalt was cracked and crumbling everywhere with only trace remnants of paint left behind to indicate where the parking spots had once been. There weren’t any vehicles in sight, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise. Lung couldn’t fly, unless rumors about how far his transformation could go were actually true, but in either case his main form of transportation would obviously be an automobile of some sort. Still, he didn’t seem the type to advertise his presence either, so he had probably driven straight into the warehouse to stay out of sight. I could feel several large vans inside, which served to confirm my suspicion.

Most of the garage entrances were closed, damaged, and covered in rust, but one towards the middle of the row of doors was partially open at least high enough for a truck to drive into. I couldn’t feel any metal that seemed likely to be on somebody’s person, and Oni Lee hadn’t exactly been specific about where I should go once I got here, so the open door seemed as good a place as any to start.

I tightened the wrap of my strange new mask around my face, flew over the treacherous terrain of the parking lot, and forced myself to proceed into the darkness with feigned confidence. The last thing I wanted to do was show these bastards a hint of weakness. I had no doubt they would pounce on it like wolves on an injured lamb. I had seen some windows outside, so there should have been some natural light pouring in. Despite that, the inside was completely devoid of light, so the windows must be blacked out on the inside.

“I’m here!” I called out into the darkness as I squinted to try and make anything out. “What have you done with her?”

“Let’s get this show started,” a mechanical, monotone voice responded as whatever mechanism was holding the door behind me open released, sending it falling down.

I caught it before it could smash into the ground, leaving a thin band of light from the outside still shining through the gap. “I think it’s dark enough in here already, thanks,” I snarked. “Now where is she?”

“You’ve got two choices,” the artificial voice hissed. “Either you drop the goddamn door so we can get on with this, or else I show you exactly where she is by killing her horrifically. Your move, metal bitch.”

I didn’t know for sure who the voice belonged to, but my money was on it being Bakuda, the bomb Tinker from New York. I had seen firsthand the kind of awful death she could inflict, so I grit my teeth and lowered the door to the ground behind me. Light fixtures immediately flared to life everywhere in the building, and I unconsciously brought my hand up to shield my eyes from the sudden influx of light. I swore under my breath. Not even a minute in, and already the image I wanted to project was showing cracks.

It took my eyes several long seconds to adjust to the new light levels, but once I could pull my hand away, I was shocked to see there were far more people in the building than I had expected. Somewhere around twenty gangers armed with baseball bats were loitering around the room, every single one of them dressed in the usual red and green attire of ABB members but with no metal buttons or studs for jeans in my range. Some wore sweatpants, some had khakis with what looked like plastic buttons, and a small number of them were wearing what looked like hospital scrubs.

Far more important than some gangers was Masuyo, who was in the middle of the room, bound and gagged on her knees next to some guy in the same dire straits. Over them both were four capes, and up in the rafters of the building, a myriad of long, serpentine creatures were swimming through the air.

Lung and Oni Lee I easily recognized from my previous experiences with them. Lung was seated in an upholstered chair on top of a multi-tiered dais that he somehow managed to make look imposing. He leaned forward, gazing down at me with what I could only imagine was an expression of superiority hidden behind his mask, which looked like metal but was invisible to my power. Oni Lee was likewise a complete ghost to my power still, and despite the synthetic voice she spoke with, Bakuda’s red goggled bomber mask, the bundle of wires running over her shoulder, and her seemingly armored outfit were completely devoid of metal. The fourth cape, who I presumed was behind the creatures up in the rafters, continued the trend. To be fair in this one’s case though, I wasn’t sure whether their kabuki-esque outfit and fox mask would have ordinarily had metal components on it. The strange string instrument he had begun strumming idly might have—the few guitar players I had passed before all used metal strings—but it looked archaic, so I couldn’t be sure.

It seemed impossible. If there was one thing I had learned since I triggered, it was that metal was everywhere. Clothes, shoes, purses, hair clips—everything had some metal components, even if they were minimal. Had they really gone to extremes to remove all metal from their persons? Or had Bakuda managed to develop something outside her bomb specialty that masked my power from reaching metal in a certain radius? I had to hope it was the former. The latter would be far more difficult to work around, and the thought of something negating my power altogether made me uneasy to even think about.

“Bakuda,” Lung rumbled, his deep voice carrying across the building and cutting through the silence like a hot knife through butter. “Demonstration.”

“Right then. Before you go getting any funny ideas, you should know that any attempts at a rescue are gonna get messy. See, I’ve installed one of my bombs in her head. You try to grab her and run? Boom. Try to kill any of us? Kablooie. If you so much as look at me funny, you won’t even be able to identify the body.”

She kicked the man next to Masuyo in the back hard, sending him crashing forward face first into the ground a few feet forward. A moment later, a wave of something burst out of his head. The diameter of the effect was short, perhaps a couple feet wide, but wherever it passed through, all his flesh, muscles, and organs shriveled into a black, dessicated mass that looked like something right out of a horror movie.

“I hope your situation is crystal clear, ‘cause I’m not gonna repeat myself.”

Fuck. Fuck! How the fuck was I supposed to get around that? Melanie had told me to play along until I could get us out, but this meant I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t even feel the bomb this psychopathic bitch had used to murder this guy in front of me, and I still didn’t know if that was because she had cobbled together some bullshit Tinker bomb made of fucking plastic or if she really was blocking me out.

Lung took my silence as an answer. “You see now that there is nothing you can do. There has never been any choice other than joining me. Now, come forward.”

Play along. I’ve got to play along until I can figure this shit out. I had no idea how the hell I would manage that, but I wasn’t alone in this. I’d have to play it by ear.

I lifted off the ground to float forward, but he snarled out, “No. Walk and be thankful I do not make you crawl on your hands and knees.”

I immediately dropped to the ground, wary of provoking him or Bakuda. “Okay.” I worried my lip between my teeth for a moment, debating whether I should apologize, but decided it was safest to do only what he asked me to for now. I carefully walked forward, taking care to not trip or stumble, and as I neared the dais, I steered clear of the corpse and studiously kept my eyes off it as well.

“Stop,” he commanded, and I froze, still a few feet from where Masuyo was still kneeling and watching me with worried eyes. He stood, and between his natural height and the artificial height of the dais, he veritably towered over me. “Kneel before me.”

It wasn’t as difficult to swallow my pride as I thought it would be. It might have been that at this distance I had zero doubt Lung could bathe me in fire before I could do a damn thing to stop him, or it might have been that I was close enough to Masuyo that the bomb in her head could kill us both in an instant if it didn’t have a limit on it like the one in the dead guy on the floor. I hoped it was because I knew it was necessary if Masuyo and I were going to get out of this alive and healthy in the end. Regardless of why, I knelt and did my best to keep off my face how thankful I was that I was wearing leggings under my relatively short shirt dress.

“Declare your allegiance to me.”

I bowed my head, my eyes sliding closed unconsciously. “I am… yours to command, Lung.”

The sound of footsteps stomping down the dais reached my ears, and my eyes flew open as my head snapped up. Lung was already upon me, and he grabbed my throat in one large hand and hauled me up into the air. I kicked and flailed futilely as I struggled to breathe, and uncaring, Lung raised me up to eye level and glared at me with eyes that burned like lit coals. “If you betray me, then make no mistake: Your death will not be swift, it will not be kind, and I will take great pleasure in inflicting it upon you myself.”

Memories of choking on water, unable to breathe were flooding my mind, and black was already creeping in at the edges of my vision.

“Is this clear?!” he bellowed, having crescendoed to a roar that reverberated throughout the nearly empty warehouse.

It took every bit of focus I could muster to push past the fear to speak, and even then, I only just barely managed to croak out, “Yes.”

He dropped me next to Masuyo like a sack of potatoes and demanded, “I could not hear you. I said, is this clear?”

I greedily gulped in air and nodded frantically, hoarsely saying, “Yes! Yes, I understand!”

I couldn’t see his expressions behind his mask, but I could hear the sneer in his voice as he said, “If you had submitted yourself to me from the start, this lesson would not have been necessary. Take care to do better in the future and not keep me waiting for what is mine.”

He turned and stalked back up the dais, and batted aside the chair, sending it crashing down to the floor. “Today we strike back against the so-called ‘Empire’ for their audacity in attacking us! We are stronger than ever before, and they will be taught a lesson they will never forget!”

The gangers didn’t cheer like I expected. Instead, they all listened with a quiet attentiveness and a gleam in their eyes. Exhilaration? Fear? Both? I didn’t know, but what I did recognize was the fear in Masuyo’s eyes, which I had no doubt was mirrored in my own.

The kabuki cape stepped forward towards Masuyo and me, and one of the serpents up in the air arced down to meet him. Now that one was closer, I could see it clearly wasn’t natural or even alive. It looked like a bundle of white ropey substance that had come to life, and once it was upon us, it expelled a bundle of clothes on the floor next to me.

“Get dressed, kid. It’s almost showtime.”