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Mia was hunkered down behind the ventilation machinery, Ripley gripping her arm tight.  The boy wasn’t far away, and from what little Mia could see in the diffuse light that leaked past the plastic sheeting, looked badly like he wanted a hug, but to do that, Mia would have had to make Ripley let go and crawl past her.  Logistically and emotionally difficult.

“I want to go,” Ripley whispered.

“So do I.  But right this minute, patience is our best asset.”

Ripley looked like she wanted to disagree.  But that was based purely on the emotional.

Fear and pain and other things etched Ripley’s face, giving it lines and a kind of gauntness an eleven year old’s face shouldn’t have, with skin drawn tighter against bone.  It broke Mia’s heart in new ways every few seconds, when Ripley would move, or her eyes would fall on Mia, or someone else, or stare off into space while she was thinking, but she wouldn’t give that heartbreak up for anything, because her daughter was here, in her arms.

“I thought you’d send the police,” Ripley whispered.  “And they’d storm the place, and I could come out a bit after I heard the sirens.”

“The police aren’t trustworthy,” Mia whispered back.

“Because you’re a criminal?”

Ripley curled up a bit as she asked that, her head angled so the top of her head was pointed at Mia’s face, very much avoiding eye contact.  Still hugging tight.

“Because the bad guy has spent a while taking over everything, including the police.”

“Including my dad,” the boy said.

“Oh,” Ripley said.  “That makes some stuff at dinner make more sense.”

“Yeah,” Mia whispered back.

“But you are a criminal?”

“Yeah.  But it gets kind of topsy turvy when the cops are bad guys, right?”

“I guess.”

Mia had anticipated this conversation for a long time.  She wanted to be careful to give Ripley the space to navigate her own feelings.

Carson had stepped away, and was hiding near a pile of transparent blue plastic bags with waste in it, not far from the doorway to that tiled room where the doctors kept most of the essential supplies, tools, and machinery.  Most of the waste in the bags was blood-stained bandages and plastic containers from one-use medical paraphernalia.  And there was a lot of it.

Mia knew there were steps she needed to take, but this was vital too.  If Ripley felt abandoned or unheard, or if she balked, then it could cause problems at a vital moment in their escape.  If Mia could win her over, there was even a chance that Ripley might be willing to leave Natalie.

Was there a chance that, if she took Ripley over to the shelving and duct where Natalie was, that they could have a whispered conversation?

In one of the stories about Solomon, two mothers argued they should have a baby, and Solomon offered to cut that child in half.  The true mother forfeited her claim for the sake of the child.

Mia didn’t trust Natalie to forfeit like that for Ripley’s sake.

“You took me.  You admitted that.”

“Saved you.  When I found you in that car, you were hot.  Then I waited.  They were inside, so caught up in fighting, so much, they didn’t pay attention, didn’t see me, didn’t see you.  I waited for a long time.  If I hadn’t found you and if you’d been in that car, I don’t think you’d have made it.”

“They were fighting?  Sean too?”

Mia nodded.

“She’s still angry and fight-y, but it’s about you, instead.”

“It might be easier than being angry at herself.”

“I know Valentina is Davie’s daughter and that makes a kind of sense.  And why you kept it secret makes sense.”

“Yeah.”  Mia stroked Ripley’s head.

“Tyr?”

“His parents were awful people who were going to sell him.  To people who kill and record it.  So they can sell the recordings to other awful people.  It was almost an accident that I found him.”

“I hate this,” Ripley whispered, and her voice had a little quake in it.  “I hate that nothing’s okay.  Police, Davie, the people, you.  Dad.  It’s all awful.”

“I have been fighting- listen,” Mia interrupted herself to make sure she had Ripley’s full attention.  Ripley wiped at one eye.  Gently, Mia continued, “Listen.  I have been fighting all night with one goal in mind, okay?  To get you out, and get you to a place where things are okay again.  It’s not all awful.”

“It’s all-“ Ripley whispered, and she choked on her emotions, voice breaking up, body hitching.  She suppressed a cough, but that made everything else worse.

“Devon,” Mia whispered.  She stroked Ripley’s hair.  “Blair.  Devon’s stepdad.  His mom.  Blair’s parents.”

“They know.”

Mia’s heart sank.

“They know you took me.”

“I know they went to the hospital.  I hoped…”

“They know,” Ripley said, eyes on the floor.  “About the traps in the house.  Ben got video.  That you’re a criminal.”

A part of her had hoped this was salvageable.  A big piece of the reason she’d stayed was to let Ripley keep people she loved dearly.  As insane as it all was, a part of her had hoped that she could thread some needle, convince key people, like school administration.  Fake records.  Make it out to be a convoluted plot.  Rider and a corrupt judge, a journalist manufacturing a story, a mom who lost her kid trying to slot Ripley in.  She and Carson had broken into Natalie’s place and looked at some of Ben’s saved footage, when he had Ripley at the hospital.  The meeting with Maya could be used as ammunition, in painting that picture.

Or, in other circumstances, if Natalie, Ben, and Rider didn’t make it through tonight, due to bad luck or other circumstances… maybe a few outliers like the school could be convinced.  If media was shit and police were in shambles, and people could be convinced to take the route that ninety percent of the population seemed so eager to take – that easy, shortest path, then maybe she could get people to leave things alone.  That would buy time to obtain or manufacture more supporting evidence, tell a better story.  If someone felt like telling on her, but hesitated, then that hesitation could be extended, more doubt cast on Ben’s version of events.

Or people could be convinced to move.  Maybe something more alarmist.  Make police corruption clear, provide the evidence, convince them that due to associations, they had to run.  Make it up to them with money.  Then, separated from past ties… a life could be built elsewhere, with Ripley and the friends she loved, with Tyr, with Valentina, with Carson.

It was insane, but it was insane in a wider context of the city burning, and everything else falling to pieces.

A needle could be threaded through, somehow.

If the well was poisoned with Devon’s parents, that got so much harder.

Ripley seemed to have pieced that together too.  She looked so dejected.  Her teeth were chattering.

Blood loss.  Which would only get worse.

“If she loves you half as much as I love you, we find a way out of this, I save her life, I save yours, and we have hard conversations, ones where you’re priority number one.  Compromise.  Dual custody, maybe.  Or however you decide to split it up.  And while you’re with Natalie, you can spend more time with Devon and Blair, keep going to your old school.  Figure out what to do with your arm.”

Ripley leaned harder into Mia.  Mia rocked slightly, like she had when Ripley was a baby.

“Talking about it makes it hurt more.”

“Okay.  But maybe if we can’t find out a good way to fix it, you could have a really cool prosthetic.  One with tools loaded inside.  Imagine being a badass engineer, strutting your stuff, and you pop out a working tool.”

Ripley leaned in and hugged her tighter, one-armed.

“Is that okay to talk about?”

“Yeah,” Ripley whispered.  “Steampunk.”

“Do you want the aesthetic or actual steam power?”

“Dunno.  I want a lot of different arms.  Different styles for different occasions or moods.”

“What about a chainsaw arm, same style as the chainsaw in that Heir book?  Except as an arm?”

Ripley nodded.  Mia wondered if she was falling asleep.  And if she should keep Ripley from nodding off, if blood loss was a concern, or if it was easier to have her just one iota more rested, instead of being as drawn-out and worn down as she was.

“Might be noisy,” Ripley whispered.

“We could figure something out,” Mia whispered.  “What was that curly wood in that fantasy story?”

“Elderwood.”

“Elderwood arm?  Cosplay it?  Your friends could help design something.”

“I don’t think Natalie’s the compromising type,” Ripley whispered.

A change of subject.  Back to what they’d been talking about before.

I don’t think so either.

But I need you to believe there’s a way this can all be okay.

Mia decided this was the time to ask.

“Rip.  I need to leave you here and go talk to her.  Figure out if she can get out quietly, ask some other stuff.  I’m worried about a situation where both of you want to be heroic, when we’re in a situation so scary it might be impossible.  If she says she can’t get out, and her trying, or me and your dad trying to help risks making too much noise, and she wants you to go… is that okay?”

“No.”

Mia winced, clenching a fist Ripley couldn’t see.  Fuck.

“I’d always wonder.  Wouldn’t I?” Ripley asked.

“Okay.”

Ripley twisted back, out of the hug, and looked at Mia.  The look hurt- skeptical, wary.

“It was always, always the plan, that when you were old enough and we told you the full story, we’d show you all the people we’ve worked with, answer all the questions, and give you the ability to make your own decisions.  When we were rushing here to get to you, we were focused on that, finding a way past all of Davie Cavalcanti’s people, a way to get more help, some way to reach you.  Valentina -we gave her that same power, to make decisions, decide what’s right or wrong- she said to save a girl in trouble, and we did, and that’s how I hurt my shoulder.  You can ask her later.”

“If we make it.”

“Let’s assume we will.  Trying to get Natalie out will make it harder.  Do you want to come?  Talk to her too?  Are you feeling steady enough?

Ripley paused, then shook her head.

“I’m going to go.  You keep each other safe.  You’re doing well.”

Ripley and the boy nodded.

Mia checked the coast was clear, and, even so soon after mentioning her arm, tried to use it to steady herself, and found it a lot weaker than she’d expected.  She almost, almost banged her knee into the side of the ventilation unit, as she fell sideways.

The metal shelves were bolted to the wall, so Mia felt okay using one as a foothold to ascend.  She put her face close to the hatch.

“Natalie.”

“You.  Fuck you.”

How was Mia even meant to respond to that?  It wasn’t the time, and she wasn’t sure she wasn’t angrier, after seeing Ripley so hurt.

“You have no idea the amount of misery and pain you’ve put out into the world.  You own this, you’re how Davie Cavalcanti entered our lives.”

“He’s seizing control over the area, he’s entering everyone’s life.  If she grew up to be an engineer or reached even half her potential, ten, fifteen years from now?  She’d be caught up in things.”

“Not like this,” Natalie said, her voice hard.

“No,” Mia whispered.  “Please keep your voice down.  For her sake, if nothing else.”

“Fuck you.  You’re the most evil person I’ve ever met.  You have no idea the agony you’ve inflicted on others for your own selfish reasons.”

“Have you repeated and practiced that in your head for all these years?” Mia asked.

“Fuck you.”

“Would you believe you were a bogeyman to me, all these years?  I was terrified of the idea of you.”

“Good.”

“In a way, you still are.  If you keep being an idiot, swearing and fighting me, then Ripley doesn’t get out.  The idea you might be stupid and petty enough to let that happen.  I need-“

“Do you think you’re the hero in this scenario?”

“Ripley wants to get you out, so we’re getting you out,” Mia whispered, pushing forward.  “I’m going to ask you some quick questions.  We don’t have enough time.  If you delay or you don’t answer, you’re hurting Ripley.  You are handing her over to a man who will butcher her.”

A hand gripped Mia’s leg.

She couldn’t let herself flinch, or make a sound.

Carson.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Natalie or Rip?”

“Rip.  But you can tell me about Natalie too.”

“Hurt, scared, betrayed-“

“That’s you,” Natalie whispered.

“-her teeth are chattering.  She’s shaky, she’ll need a steadying hand, or be carried.  I think she’s lost blood and it hasn’t been replenished.  And that’s only going to get worse.”

“Davie showed up, as you came over this way.  He’s organizing people.  I think he’s feeling the pressure from people on the outside.  Ben’s diverted him, and I think they started a fire.”

“Ben did?”

Her husband dipped his head in a singular nod.

“Any specifics?”

“If I had them, I’d give them to you,” he told her.  “He’s calling the analyst upstairs to organize people and check some stuff.  The analyst is meant to come back down with a team and do a sweep of the basement.  Grid style.”

“How did you do with our shopping list?”

“Slipped in while everyone was showing up and looking attentive for Davie.  I got the kit for Rip.  In case you’re right.  Jugs are over by the bags I was huddled by.  I couldn’t get everything else.  Two suits.”

“Okay.  Keep an eye out?  We want to know their movements.”

Carson stepped up onto a shelf, leaned in, and kissed her, before leaving.

Mia never felt un-anxious.  But the kiss helped to still parts of her that were jittering and insecure.

“Natalie.”

“Monster.”

“When you damaged the generator, what did you do?”

“What?”

If there was any way Mia could kill Natalie and still thread that needle, keep Ripley happy, and find a way through this, she would be sorely tempted to now.

“What did you do?  Did you break it or remove something?”

“The belt.”

“Did you cut it, or did you take it?”

“I have it.  Sean, Camellia’s actual father, taught me about car maintenance.  Drive belts.  I thought, if it’s hard to get a car part, then taking something for the generator might be bad too.  And it was quieter to remove than breaking anything would be.  Then I came here.  When the power died, there was enough shouting and other noise I could get-“

“Can you give it to me, without banging in there?”  Mia was careful to frame it as a challenge, instead of a request for help.

“Yes.”

“Can you get out?  Without making noise?”

“I don’t think so.  I can back out, lie across the top of the shelves, but the metal pops.”

“Then wait for my cue.  Are you able to get the belt out of your pocket, or-?”

There was a faint strumming sound as it ran against the angled slats in the cover.

Mia’s shoulder screamed in agony as she used two hands to ease that cover down and open.

She took the belt, then closed it.

“Wait for my cue.”

“Fuck you.”

She crossed over to where Ripley was.  Carson was hunkered down, peeking around the edge of the ventilation setup.  The people by the generator were the closest, but they were preoccupied, trying to rig something on their own, to make up for the missing belt.  Three men.  Two were old for Cavalcanti soldiers- middle aged.  One was young.

Two more men were still with the doctors.

We have minutes.

“There isn’t enough time for anesthetic,” Carson whispered.

“You found some?”

“No time.”

“Rip, honey,” Mia whispered.  “I need you to be brave.”

Carson had the steadier hands right now.  So he unwrapped the bandage, exposing the stump, which was mottled with the texture of the bandage, blood pressed into creases.

Mia could remember when Ripley was tiny, a skinny little kid who’d squirmed at even the idea of a needle.

This was worse.

“Hold,” he told Mia.

She embraced Ripley, her body positioned to steady her, arm running past her, and used the band Natalie had given her to cut off blood flow to and from the stump.

She would have liked to use two hands for the better grip, but she didn’t trust her right one.  It helped that Ripley’s upper arm was so thin that Mia’s hand could almost encircle it with thumb and forefinger.

Ripley made a small sound, pulling.

“Rip, what heroines and heroes of the stories you’ve read could do this?” Mia asked.  “Who’s tough?  Who kicks ass at this sort of thing?”

“Ambrosius, but I’m not sure he even feels pain by the end.”

“Yeah.  That’d be nice.”

Small sound.

“Keep going.  Put your mind there.”

“Talk about something else?”

“Natalie can get out, she says.  But it’s noisy, so we’re waiting.  We’re going to try to flip the script on the bad guys here.  We’re going to take the tools they use and try to turn them against them.  If the power was turned on for the entire city, that would be nice, but I think we’re going to have to use the generator.”

“How?  That doesn’t make sense.”

“It won’t be easy.  But number one…”

Carson, having cut the sutures at the end of the stump, opened the flap.  Ripley jerked.  Blood had clotted, and skin stuck together.  Now that had to be separated.

Mia was strong enough that when Ripley pulled, it didn’t break her grip.  Her grip itself had a strength given to it by the Fall.  An unawareness of her own pain, strain, and difficulty.  Ripley had no such benefit.

Davie Cavalcanti was a bastard.

From within, Carson fished out the tracker.

Ripley made a small gagging sound.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Mia shushed her.

“I don’t like that that was in me.”

“I know, okay.  Don’t look.  Almost done.”

They’d had enough experience tending to wounds.  Carson was fast with the suturing needle.

The moment they were done, Mia had to go.  She couldn’t waste time, when the agent could be back anytime soon, and the guys by the generator were trying to make something out of their own belts.  She kissed the top of Ripley’s head.  Then she unplugged the ventilation system, so it wouldn’t flip on if Ripley was inside, and she took the tracker.

She used the end of her own shirt to wipe the rubber belt clean.  When the men were focused on adjusting the length of the makeshift belt, she strode forward, ducking low, and put the rubber belt where the plastic sheeting piled up on the ground.

The time window to get this done was between when the analyst came down with a crew of people to start the sweep, and the sweep finishing.  Assuming it started close to the door, and they were checking every shelf and fixture, it would be a couple minutes.

She pitched the tracker into the corner opposite where Ripley and Carson were, amid shelves and boxes.

There were a dozen possibilities there.

This basement was Davie’s insurance.  It was his escape route, his guarantee.  It was where he kept his prizes.  He was supplied.

That included gas for the generators.

She grabbed a plastic case.

Her right arm was a mess, and Tyr could have beat her in an arm wrestle, it felt like, even if she took the pain out of the equation.  But it still worked enough that she could reach out, grab a box cutter, sticking it into her waistband, and then get a nearly-empty plastic bag.

Footsteps.

She ran forward, toward the footsteps, controlling her foot placement to make as little sound as possible.

She placed herself behind the door, waiting.

It was more people.

The time window was slipping away.

“Fuck, this is heavy, it’s digging into my fingers,” one man said.

“Stop bitching.”

They were bringing cases downstairs.  Beelining straight for the patients.

She had to assume these were Davie’s trusted.  People who could see what he was doing as a pasttime and not run screaming, or turn on him.

That wouldn’t be everyone, but as he asserted more control over the group, it would include more people.  Probably, she guessed, they were his people, where others had longer-standing loyalties to Nicholas, Andre, the butcher, or the other guys out of town.

She wondered if there was something they could leverage there.  If Davie was keeping his people close to the house, and the people with loyalties and relationships built up in Nicholas’s or Andre’s camp were out in the woods, or on the fringes.

Carson would know more about that sort of dynamic.  He’d have instincts on what to expect.

If this worked, they might see, in any event.

Was it better to wait, or to deal with the additional people?

She didn’t hear noise upstairs, and she saw movement of the new people, restless, on the one side of the plastic sheeting.

She decided to wait.

They dropped off what they had to drop off, and got the hell out.  They didn’t like this, they didn’t want to be a part of it.

The door at the top of the stairs shut firmly.

It sounded quiet, but she wasn’t sure she trusted her ears.  The tornado sirens were a low, groaning, aching whine, more audible near the open door.

She’d taken soap from the bathroom while they’d been talking to Danny, Davie’s beaten son.

Now she ascended the stairs, and she laid out lines of the stuff.  The stairwell was dark.  The plastic squeaked against plastic as she depressed the nozzle at steady intervals.

Best to do it on the two stairs near the top where there was the least light.

With the box cutter, she sliced her black t-shirt, caked in mud, dust, and blood, damp with her own sweat.  One cut extended from the collar down, another went across the shoulder, to the end of the sleeve.  Cutting it off was easier than pulling it off with her shoulder being in the state it was.

It wasn’t enough to bridge the gap, but it was weight.  The plastic bag served for the rest.  She could slice it, then lay it across.  The contents of the bag, a series of fixtures for furniture, weighed down one side of the plastic. The shirt weighed down much of the rest.

She emptied the gas canister into the base of the stairwell, face turned away.  The barrier she’d rigged at the bottom kept it from leaking out.  Most of it.  It pooled on the square of concrete, on one side of the door.

She eased that door nearly shut.

I put the rubber belt where you should see it, she thought.  Where it’s plausible you missed it before.

Figure out how to put it on, start up the generator, turn on the lights.

She had to imagine her enemies were competent, then be pleasantly surprised if they weren’t.  She removed the top portion of the bottle and emptied more soap into the expanding puddle of gasoline that was leaking past the barrier.

Then she drew her gun.

The generator roared to life, on the other end of the expansive basement.

Lights flickered, not quite there, then turned on.

Give it a minute.  Let the computers turn on.  Let them find the tracker’s location.

Let them find their footing.

“We’re set!” one of the men who’d fixed the generator hollered.

Mia backed away to where some shelves gave her a semblance of cover, while maintaining a view of the door.

Does the analyst lead the way?

She could hear the commotion.  They were coming down as an organized group.

There.  Someone fell down the stairs.

That someone landed in the gasoline at the base.  Hacking, coughing, sloshing, he pushed at the door and they broke the seal, letting gasoline leak out.

Two someones.

They froze when they spotted her with her gun out.

A third leaped past them, one hand gripping the top of the doorframe, to keep from bashing his head.  Jeans, holster across the body, holster at one thigh.

The analyst.

He hit the puddle of gasoline with soap on it that she had set up just past the barrier.  His feet hit ground and went out from under him.  But there was a flash.

The sound of the gunshot followed, more delayed than she might’ve expected.  Or maybe it was the jumble of sensations, her body telling her she’d been punched, hard, and then getting around to processing the sound, past tense.

That hadn’t been the plan.  She’d wanted to take them at gunpoint, delay the people upstairs knowing anything was up.  Failing that, she’d wanted the fumes from the gasoline vapor to be a deterrent.

But he’d gotten past, and had placed his first shot before he’d slipped.

Now the people upstairs knew.  Now she had a hole in her leg, with no idea how bad it was.

He coughed, wiping at one eye as he got his gun hand out from under him.

Lying on her side, now, head leaning at an awkward angle against the lowest shelf, using her non-dominant hand, she shot back.

Miss.

She kept shooting.  Miss, miss, miss.  Bullets took small chunks out of the concrete wall around him.  One clipped a shelf.

She fired her fifth shot at the same time he placed his second.  He hit the shelf she was using for cover, very close to her face.  She wasn’t sure if it was shrapnel from the bullet that caught her eye, or if it was grit it had kicked up.  Her bullet hit him.

She’d wanted something methodical, taking gradual control.  Hostages here, while securing the door.  Then the group by the doctors.

Now that group was coming for her.

And the guy she’d shot was down, a hole in his ribs, possibly going through a lung, but he had a gun in his hand and he was aware of her, trying to take aim.

His gun hand was probably feeling a lot like her right arm.

The sirens wailed in the background.  Footsteps tramped above.

She could barely get up off the ground.  Worse, getting up meant posing a bigger target, if he decided to shoot.  Men were coming from her right flank, pushing their way past plastic sheeting.

The analyst indicated where she was for the benefit of the men flanking her.

They opened fire.

Too much distance separated them for her to shoot them, or them to get a good hit on her.  But she was forced to keep her head down.

Need to shut the door, at least.  Securely.

She waited.

Carson appeared behind the five other men.

He settled behind the generator, arms straight out in front, gun in hand, head level with arms and weapon both, and then opened fire.

Three dropped in short order.

A fourth turned, responding, but he was more in the open -the basement was mostly open space- and Carson was behind cover.  They exchanged three shots each, in what would have been a sad looking scene in an action movie, the man walking to one side, Carson steady.  Carson’s last two hit, with one making the man stagger and the other taking the top of his forehead off.

Mia extended her own hand, aiming in their direction, and shot too.

It was a distraction.  A young man didn’t even have the sense to get it together and shoot once by the time one of his seniors had shot three times.  Then he was hearing gunshots from two directions.

“Drop it!” Carson hollered.

He didn’t, but he didn’t do a good job of turning on Carson or taking aim, either.  He wobbled, raised a gun, aiming it in Carson’s general direction, if Mia was being generous, and then got hit by Carson before he could narrow down to ‘actual general direction’ or Carson himself.

The analyst shot at Mia again.  It seemed to take concerted effort for him to get his gun level, with the hole in his ribs.

“Three hundred and fifty thousand!” Mia called out.

“What?”

“If you switch sides.  We get you medical care and help.”

“I think he has better doctors.”

“They’re ours, now,” Mia said.  I hope.

She had to fight her way to a half-standing position, one foot off the ground to keep her leg from having to bear weight, and kept her body behind the densest cluster of boxes and supplies on the shelf.

He pushed himself more to an upright sitting position, instead of being slumped over, and then called out, “Okay!”

“Gun down, slide it across the floor!” Mia called out.

He did.

“Second gun!”

He did the same.

“And lift your pants legs!” Mia called out.

She really needed to get that door shut.

He started to, then broke into coughs as he provoked his injury, doubling over.

Carson was focused on the doctors.  One had pushed plastic sheeting aside to see what was going on, and now stood frozen.

The analyst rose awkwardly to his feet, one hand at his knee.

“Stop!” Mia called out.  “Don’t-!”

Hand slipped from knee to the ankle holster.  He drew and aimed at Carson in a singular motion.

But Mia’s warning had been enough, and the draw was awkward, especially when the coughing fit was legitimate and body-wracking.

Carson shot the man dead.

She forced herself to move, choosing a route that let her lean on things.

She didn’t feel pain like she should, after the Fall.  She knew there was pain, and that her body wasn’t moving like it should, but the extent of it was hard to measure.  Thigh muscles trembled.

“Get to me!” Carson called out.  “I can’t take my eyes off them!”

She knew.

Limping badly, she reached the door, coaxing the two men who she hadn’t shot to come outside.  They were coughing badly, staggering, bleary-eyed.  They’d tried to go back upstairs and had slipped back down.

Holding her breath, squinting, Mia glanced up.

She shut the door, careful to keep the metal between herself and the bulk of the gas, in case the fumes ignited.

“Move.  Fast.”

They did.

“Any chance I could get that cash?” one of the two asked, clearly more nervous than good-humored.  But making the joke anyway.

“Shut up,” his friend said.

“Are you an ex-government spook from an organization that doesn’t exist?” Mia asked, back.

“Maybe.”

“No,” she told him.  “Come on.”

Single-minded doggedness kept her moving forward, and when they hesitated a second too long, it meant she had to stop, find that doggedness all over again, and resume limping.

The blood wasn’t bad enough to suggest something arterial, and it hadn’t shattered her bone, or her leg wouldn’t hold her up, but it had gone through a major muscle and just walking fifty feet had her breathing hard, a good part of her leg feeling like heavy stone, the rest feeling weak.

“Zip ties,” Carson said.  He’d already given some to doctors, who had obliged, tying their hands.

“Ripley?” Mia asked.  “Are you up to walking?”

Ripley climbed to her feet.  The boy supported her.

“Get Natalie to come down?  The basement is mostly secure.”

Ripley nodded.

“Okay?” Carson asked, as they got the prisoners settled.  “Let me look at that leg.”

She nodded.

“What happened to your shirt?” Carson asked.

“Used it for wadding.”

“Why don’t we do more jobs where we need more wadding?” he asked, tone light.

“If we did, we’d make sure we came supplied with it.”

“True that.  We’ve got your jeans half off too.”

“You only have to ask if you want me to take my clothes off,” she told him.  She watched the prisoners, because Carson was too busy trying to make sure there was pressure on the wound.

“We have one terrific daughter, you know that right?  She’s brave, and she was really tough, while I stitched her up and bandaged the wound.”

“Yeah.”

“She gets that from you.”

“I’m not sure,” she murmured.

Natalie was climbing free.

“What are we thinking?” he asked, quiet.

“Were those gunshots you?” Natalie asked, as she stalked her way over.  “Are you an idiot?  We’re now stuck in a basement, surrounded.  What the hell were you thinking?”

Unintentionally echoing Carson.

“It wasn’t my first choice,” Mia said.  “The shooting part.  The rest… unavoidable, I think.  We were already surrounded.  Getting out was always going to be harder than getting in, if we had to get you out of that vent.”

“I’m sorry,” Ripley said.

“No, no need to apologi-”

“You don’t get to talk to her,” Natalie said, reaching for Ripley.  Ripley pulled away.

Carson took another minute.  Mia waited, and they listened.  People were upstairs.

Carson paused, midway through the bandaging.  “Do you hear that?”

“Barely,” Natalie said.

“No,” Mia replied.

“Knock, knock?”

“Are they trying to barter?  Or lure us into the stairwell?”

“Find the source of the sound?” he asked Natalie.

She hesitated.

“Everyone does their part,” Ripley said.  “Except me, I guess.”

“You toughed this out,” Mia told her.  “Remember what I said about patience?  Time is on our side.  Right now, the tornado sirens are blaring, warning about fire.  The warning stations should be reinforcing that idea of fire coming.  Ben and Rider set a fire… hopefully somewhere where the smoke can reach here, but the fire won’t.  Hopefully.  We’ve targeted them over days and nights, whittling away at their organization, their leadership.  Brought back old enemies of theirs, got other enemies to target them, by giving them information.”

“He’s still building something.  He made some major people his vassals,” Ripley said, shaking her head a bit.

“It’s pressure,” Carson said, backing Mia up.  “Every little thing is some strain.  He really values these macabre trophies of his.  Now he doesn’t have them.  He doesn’t have his doctors, and if he loses them, they have to be hard to replace.”

“I was thinking that with Nicholas and Andre dead or injured, those branches of the family probably aren’t happy.  Especially if they’re out in the woods, with the smoke and sirens, and he’s keeping loyalists here.  People who know about his… activities,” Mia said.

“I found the sound,” Natalie said, striding back toward them.  “They’re cutting through the floor.  Axes, I think.”

“How did you handle the stairwell?” Carson asked.

“Gasoline and gas fumes,” Mia said.

“That’d do it.”

“Now we need to take the house,” she said.  “Gas won’t do it, and I wouldn’t put it past him to light the match if we leaned on that too much.  At least the stairwell is concrete.  This is a bunker.  He’d hurt himself more than he hurt us.”

“Agreed,” Carson said.

“Plastic,” she said.  “We can use the sheeting.  Your name?”

She’d asked the boy.

“Bryan.”

“Can you help?”

“I can try.”

“We want to block the vents,” she said.

Her head swam when she raised it to take in the full dimensions of the basement.  The ductwork snaked across the entire ceiling.

“Key areas, there, there, there, and there.  Those are the main exit points.”

“They’re caged,” Ripley said.  “I crawled a bit, I saw.  Before Natalie went up.”

“Yeah.  I know.  That’s good, and I have questions, but the main thing is that air still flows in and out through there.  The more we can do to block the way there, and this is important, without getting too close to the exit itself, because people are standing guard outside, the better.”

Bryan looked like his head was swimming with everything she was saying.  She wasn’t sure he got it.

“For right now, there’s a set of stepladders by a shelf over there.  For every hatch like that one-”

She pointed to the one Natalie had climbed through.  It opened from below and had the rows of slits for air to flow out.

“-open it, put sheeting across, then close it.”

She used her hands to gesture.

“When you don’t know what to do, and you don’t see more… find me.”

Bryan nodded.

“You too, Natalie.”

“You’re insane.”

“Please,” Ripley insisted.  “She’s good at projects.”

“I know.  I saw the traps going off in Ben’s video.”

“Then can we please agree, every single person here hates Davie Cavalcanti,” Mia said.  “I want to do that to him.  Turn the house against him.”

“Okay.”

“What you did, Natalie,” Mia said.  “Turning off the life support?  Forcing him to divert assets and attention to them?  I know that must have been hard, but it was smart.”

Natalie gave her a long, hard look.  Then her eyes fell on Ripley.

“That was her idea.”

Mia turned.

Ripley’s eyes fell to the ground.

“She is smart,” Natalie said.  “And tough.  It was a good idea.  I thought I should be the one to carry it out.  For obvious reasons.”

“Good,” Mia said.  “That was good.”

“I don’t want to hear that from you.  What parent would?”

Ripley spoke up, “I want to ask them.  If they want help.  If they want…”

She trailed off.

“You’re wobbly on your feet.  Do you want to do the asking?” Mia asked her.  “Since you’ll be sitting around?”

“She’s eleven,” Natalie said, affronted.

“Natalie,” Mia replied, turning.  “Stepladder, sheeting.  Help Bryan.  This is vital.”

Ripley nodded her encouragement.

Natalie shot Mia a look of pure hatred.

But she went.  Bryan trotted after.

“You don’t have to,” Mia told Ripley.

“Won’t you be sitting around?  You were shot in the leg.”

“I have other work to do.  A lot.”

“Oh.”

“Will you be more upset if we didn’t ask, or if you have to ask and then face them?”

“Mia,” Carson said.  “I think she might not know how much it would stay with her.”

“That cuts both ways.  Whatever the decision she makes is.”

“I’ll ask,” Ripley said.

“Okay,” Mia told her.  She ran a hand over Ripley’s hair, fixing the hair that was close to getting into her eye.

“You’re as set as I can get you.  That’s going to bleed like hell at the slightest excuse.”

She nodded.

“Want me on the job of sealing things up?”

“Can you set up the jugs?  And block the way to the exterior vents?  You can put the block at any point between the vent and the nearest fork.”

“I might need to enlist help.  My side.”

“Okay.”

She could hear the axe doing its work.  She could hear the distant sirens.

It was to their advantage that the house was built well.  That the wood for the floors was expensive, thick, possibly layered over heating elements, insulation, or soundproofing.  Especially with the basement being the horror show it was.  That the basement itself was a bunker.

Davie, Mia imagined, had his own anxieties.  Maybe they took a different shape than a normal person’s, but nobody who didn’t have some worries about the world would prep, build security measures, and store various equipment, supplies, and tools on this level.  It was as if he wanted to know the world above could burn, and he could emerge from here with all the amenities.

Not ‘prepping’ in the conventional sense.  Mia had prepped in that sense.  But still, instead of setting things up in the world, like a bunker and backup places, places he could set up and abandon, he’d built this.  He’d supplied it.

He’d made it hard to break into, and easy to use as an escape route.  An escape route Mia hadn’t riddled out.

“Ripley.  A question,” she asked, as Ripley finished talking to one person.

“Yeah?”

“Did you see any buttons, levers, panels, or anything, in the ventilation?  Especially near the exit vents?”

“No.”

Maybe it was a rumor that they were meant for escape.  Or maybe it wasn’t that thought out.

Or she hadn’t figured it out and likely never would.

Mia worked.  Ripley talked to the armless, legless victims of Davie.  Bryan, Carson, and Natalie sealed the ducts.  Carson used a spray sealant wherever screws stuck through.

The sound of the axes reached an audible level, suggesting they were past a certain threshold, and were close.

“Full body suits,” Mia asked.  “For cleanup, hazards.  Like a crime scene tech might wear.”

She enlisted Carson’s help.

The sound of the axes marked their closing deadline.

She helped carry Ripley over.  She helped Ripley get dressed.  It made her think of the early days, when Ripley had been Tyr’s age.  They hadn’t yet figured out what she liked to wear.  So many fights.

Ripley was oddly complacent and withdrawn, here.

None of this was easy.

“Did any of them say they want to keep going?”

Ripley shook her head.

“Okay.”

“I’ll ask the doctors.  If we can trust Natalie and Bryan to get geared?  They aren’t as injured,” Carson said.

Mia nodded.

Mia resumed her work.  Ripley watched with idle interest.  She did with anything techy.

“You’ve loved machines and tech since before you were able to talk.”

“Still do,” Ripley murmured.  “Natalie said Sean loves cars.  Works on them.”

“She mentioned something like that.  Yeah,” Mia murmured, voice soft.  It was like she couldn’t put her heart into the words, so they came out thin and overly gentle.

It wasn’t blood loss.  With lower awareness of the nuances of pain, she had to be aware of things like that.  The cues of her body that weren’t her nerves transmitting agony.

Like Ripley’s were, right now.

“I really need everything to stop sucking so much,” Ripley said.  “I want to go find Blair and Devon and hug them to death.”

It was clear, from the angle of how Ripley held herself, and the way she kept her back turned.  Carson had set a doctor the task, and the doctor was administering morphine, glancing periodically at Mia.

Carson, meanwhile, motioned at the vents.  Mia nodded.

He’d left stepladders at key areas.  Now he ascended, quickly.  Hatch open, a cap or lid removed here.

He had good senses for it.  The vents weren’t completely level.  So there were places for liquid to accumulate.  He sprayed one spot where liquid was leaking through, hurrying to the next, hand gripping his injured side.

The doctor kept helping people on their way in the same way the Angel of Death had, a little less willingly.  Ripley kept ignoring it all.  Shutting down.

“I don’t know if this helps or hurts, but I have to believe it gets us one step closer to you being with your friends,” Mia said.  “Away from this.”

She would’ve liked more time to double check, and to check that everything was working.  The axes were cutting through.

People could be dropping in any minute now.

She’d cut a large hole into the side of a plastic container.  That hole was fixed over the air intake of the ventilation.  Duct tape and sealant helped close the gap.

“Masks!” she called out.

People did as suggested.

Undiluted ammonia.  Straight bleach.  Into the container.  Davie had prepared.  He had jugs of the stuff.

Then, where she’d torn the side of the ventilation system open, she touched two wires.  Bypassing any outside remotes or control panels, turning it immediately to maximum speed, where it would stay.

“Wait!” a doctor called out.  He’d seen one of the jugs and realized what she was doing.  “Give me a suit!”

She twisted the wires together with rubber-handled pliers, then shut the case, before standing, awkwardly.

They’d donned the full-body suits.  Smoke masks were strapped tight to the head, spray sealant and duct tape used to keep anything from leaking in past the edges of the mask, or past zippers.  The same oxygen that had been used for Davie’s trophies was now improvised air supply.

“Hey!” the doctor shouted.

Another man coughed.  He’d caught a trace of it.  He coughed again, more violently.

“I did as you asked,” one doctor said, hand over his nose and mouth.

“Lock yourself in there,” Mia said, pointing.   “Block the vents.  Hurry.”

They, many with hands tied behind them, hurried.

Chloramine gas, from ammonia and bleach.  And chloroform gas, from acetone and bleach.  Carson had placed jugs here and there in the vents, beneath Danny’s room, opening them shortly before she’d switched on the ventilation.

Now the ventilation system that was meant to carry fresh air through the house was pumping concentrated toxic gas through it.

At a high concentration, which she really hoped they were getting, the effects would come on fast and hard.  Breathing issues, vision issues, lightheadedness, mental issues, vomiting, headache.

A whiff could leave someone with mild symptoms for up to twenty-four hours.

The house filled with poisonous gas.

Patience, she thought.

She could hear the noise above.  The shouts.

Then a silence, interrupted by a sudden explosion.

With measured movements, quiet, they moved across the basement, bringing a stepladder.

The hole in the ceiling was their best way up.  But they had to move carefully, so nothing tore or caught.  Mia was already sweating, condensation collecting inside the suit, and on the inside of the smoke mask.  Her injury didn’t help.  Her leg could support her weight, but it really didn’t want to.

Davie had been evicted from his headquarters.

There were lights on upstairs.  People had dropped things on their way to running.  They moved carefully, because there would be gas outside the house, but not as much.  If anyone out there was poised, waiting, with a gun, they could shoot through the windows.

A button on the wall that Valentina had mentioned lowered the window covers, blocking their view of the outside, and vice-versa.  In the computer room, some of the easier to move pieces of equipment had been carried away.  Some laptops, but not all.

To get access to data at the hospitals, she’d set up RATs at four of them.  Remote access trojans.  She plugged in a USB thumb-drive, then rebooted the computer.

Hold down the right keys… go to boot.

Switch priorities.

Reset again.

The computer was hers.

It wasn’t an older operating system without security, so that was where her management of things stopped.  It had never been especially important to learn how to get past a login screen.  It had been important that she have a means of seeing what the hospital saw, records-wise, and manipulating the data.

Most of what she did was prey on the obvious weak points.  Surface-level.

So she couldn’t go deep here.  She could only go wide.

Multiple computers, same approach.  Same stopping point.

A part of her had hoped that she could find an unattended computer and get access to the drones.  She’d hoped she could get control of one of the big military ones, and point it at Davie, and other leadership figures.  Everything obvious had been locked or auto-locked.  She wasn’t capable of getting past that barrier, stupid and minor as it was.

Even clicking ‘I forgot my password’.  That required an internet connection, and probably pinged a phone.

Phones.

She checked each in turn.

Not her area of expertise, except for sniffing cell signals, and she didn’t have the setup to do that here.

People, so often, were the weak point in security.

All it took was one idiot at a company clicking a link.

She checked one phone with a graffiti-style case.  It lit up.  No password or verification required.

Or one idiot who wanted convenience, instead of a face scan, thumb scan, PIN, or other verification.

An idiot who’d been here, with the tech guys.

A check of recent messages verified why.  He’d been sent to pick up a drone that had fallen or gotten tangled in something.  They’d linked back to the same setup they were using to coordinate.  So he could have the coordinates and a view of what the drone saw.

There were others.  Overhead shots.  Views of drones that were racing across the sky, scanning the ground.

At the foot of the hill, a decorative strip of trees, bushes, and grass between two sections of road had been set on fire.  People were working to handle it, because the wind blowing in a specific direction seemed to be blowing licks of flame all the way across the road.  Burning leaves, maybe.

Mia wondered if Ben and Rider had planned around the eventuality of fire reaching this house, while Mia, Carson, Ripley, Bryan, and Natalie were all within, still.  Or maybe they’d thought Mia was a lot more impatient than she was.

And views of Davie’s group, a healthy distance from the house.

People were angry.  They had to be.

They’d lost a majority share of everything.  Business, contacts, resources.  They’d lost territory, they’d lost supply chains.  They’d lost sons, brothers, cousins, and friends.  They’d been reduced down to this house and they’d lost it too.

So Davie was losing the branches of the family that were more loyal to Nicholas, Andre, and the others.

Or so Mia assumed.  The chunks were large and cohesive.

He still had some mercenaries, and police, by the looks of it.  He still had the drones.

Mia watched the man open the trunk of a car, get out a large glass bottle, and then stuff a rag into it.  He handed it to one of his subordinates.

If he’d didn’t care about the house, she doubted he cared about the mountainside, or the risk to the city.  She’d seen his underground setup.  He might have put a lot of eggs in one basket, but his ideology was clear.  He expected to rise up and be okay after the chaos.  After things burned to ashes.

He’d burn them out.

It was a good move, and it was one she didn’t know how to handle.

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