I was on my back, completely out of breath. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I was way bigger than she was. Wasn’t I supposed to win in a fight? True, I didn’t have much hand-to-hand training, and she seemed to have … well, more than “not much.”
She had dropped her pack in the chaos and was reaching into her cloak for a gun. Not good. I managed to get to my feet again, wheezing, and jumped for her. She might get to pound on me some more, but so long as she was doing that, she wouldn’t be shooting me. Theoretically.
However, what she pulled out wasn’t a gun; it was a mobile. Almost as bad—she was going to call the team. I slammed into her as she was distracted. The mobile bounced away, and Mizzy struggled against my grip, getting her arm up and ramming her thumb right into my eye.
I yelped, throwing myself backward, blinking at the pain. Mizzy rolled for her mobile. So I kicked it.
Kind of too hard. It skidded right off the side of the roof. Mizzy threw herself that direction in a futile attempt to grab it. I took a moment to look around—one eye still squeezed shut. The tent we’d been in was shaking, one of the poles having collapsed as Mizzy threw me out the back. Off to our right, one of Newton’s gang members was prowling through the streets between tents, perhaps looking for the people who had attacked her, perhaps just watching the perimeter. I ducked to the side and pulled up my hood again, my back against the wall of a wooden shack.
Nearby, Mizzy looked up from the edge of the rooftop and glared at me. “What’s wrong with you?” she hissed.
“Someone poked me in the eye!” I snapped back. “That’s what’s wrong.”
“I—”
“Quiet!” I said. “One of Newton’s gang is coming this way.” I peeked around the side of the building and immediately cursed, ducking back around. Newton was there too now. Both were walking in our direction.
Sparks! I thought, searching for shelter. It was impossible to hide in the shadows of this stupid city because there weren’t any. The painted ground glowed under my feet with a sequence of vibrant, glassy colors.
One of the shacks ahead of me had a door that leaned open. I scrambled for it. Mizzy cursed and ran after me, pack over her shoulder. Inside I found a set of steps. What I’d mistaken for a shack was actually part of the larger skyscraper. A lot of these buildings had little structures on top, housing stairwells or storage. This one had steps that led down to the top floor.
I pulled off my cloak and wrapped it up as Mizzy crowded in behind me. She shut the door, then pressed a gun against my side.
Great.
“I don’t think it was related,” a woman’s voice said from outside. “This was just a coincidence.”
“They’re getting restless.” That was Newton’s voice. “A populace needs to be properly cowed to serve. Regalia shouldn’t hold me back.”
“Bah,” the first voice said. “You think you could do a better job, Newton? You’d lose control of this place in two weeks flat.”
I frowned at that comment, but only then did I realize the conversation was growing louder. With a start at my own stupidity, I twitched toward the stairs leading down.
Mizzy grabbed my shoulder and pressed the handgun into me more firmly. By the light of her hood, I could see her lips as she mouthed, “Don’t move.”
I pointed outside. “They’re coming in here!” I hissed.
Mizzy hesitated and I risked pulling out of her grip, then scrambled down the steps as quietly as I could. She followed reluctantly. It wasn’t happenstance that Newton had been coming this direction; she’d been looking for this very building.
Indeed, I heard the door open above us. I tried to move as quietly as possible down the stairwell, but soon found myself face to face with a wall of plants. Sparks! No way through. The stairwell was completely overgrown.
I spun around and put my back to the plants, heart pounding. Mizzy, still wearing a glowing cloak, joined me.
“I’m out of sight,” Newton’s voice echoed softly in the stairwell from above. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re following. You want to keep on with this?”
Silence.
“Yeah, fine,” Newton said. “Then what am I to do?”
More silence. She was talking to Regalia and had wanted to duck out of sight while she did it, so her tail wouldn’t overhear her