Seven froze, the sharp metal of the vent digging into her hands. But no, sure enough, that was smoke trailing up into the vent in front of her. Luca clattered up next to her, his blonde hair already mussed with sweat.

  “I guess we’re not going that way,” he said, tugging on her shirt. “We’ll have to—“

  “Is this the way out?” Seven interrupted.

  “Does it matter?”

  “I’m not getting caught in Cheryl’s office with two keycards and a fire blazing somewhere in the building.”

  Luca frowned at her, slumping in the vent in a half-seated position.

  "But?" he prompted, perhaps reading the expression on her face.

  "But I've got one more stop to make."

  "Seven, no—"

  But she was already crawling back the way they'd come. Back towards Rook's office. Back towards the fine sitting area. Luca’s voice rang out behind her, alarmed, his knees clattering into the metal tunnel as he scrambled behind her.

  "Seven, you said you were just getting back something of yours, not getting us both burned alive."

  She kept crawling, one aching knee at a time, the vent ringing in her ears. "Odds change,” she said. “And I'm not getting us burned alive—I’ll only be a minute."

  "A minute?” He swore faintly under his breath. “Didn't you watch the safety training video? Do you know how fast these LMC buildings can light up with all the raw material inside them?"

  She waved at him dismissively and continued her way down the vent. "I’m sure it was an exaggeration. After what we found in that cave-in, do you really believe anything they tell you?"

  "I believe in fires, Seven. I believe in dying an untimely death in the midst of a heist against my employer, Seven."

  "You'll be fine."

  "I'm not fine. I’m—"

  But she'd already leapt out of the vent, landing lightly on her feet. She paused there for a moment, listening to the faint sounds of yelling deep in the building. Still too far away to matter. And if her hunch was right, the fire would be near the source of those voices. If it was wrong, she'd likely made a terrible mistake.

  But she had one more thing to do. It had been easy to walk past Rook's office earlier with a clear goal in mind. But now, in spite of the acrid smoke in her nose, she couldn't get the wretched man out of her mind. Maybe it was the mountain of debt she was in. Maybe it was the terrible first week she'd had. Maybe it was just an irrational attempt to get back at the other Rook in the only way she knew how. But she'd be damned if she let this attempt go to waste. If the whole place burned down, she'd never have it again.

  She swiped her card at Rook's office and held her breath. One second. Two seconds. Three green beeps and a chime.

  The door clicked open.

  Seven slid inside, then swore. Then grinned. The walls were lined with dice almost as fine as the dice in the glass case at the front of the employee entrance. Gleaming, glowing, and ostentatious, Rook hadn't even bothered securing them behind a piece of glass. It was tempting to swipe the lot of them, but that would leave far too much evidence; Seven wasn't here to steal them—she was here to drain them.

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  And with smoke filling the room and Luca complaining from somewhere in the vents, she had little time to do so.

  With alarms whooping and smoke filling the room, Seven trailed her fingers along each dice as she'd done thousands of times before, watching them wink out and die. A sort of electric energy zipped up her arm as she did so, her hand warming, her fingers trembling slightly.

  She usually felt a bit bad as she did this, but this time there was little remorse in it. Rook deserved everything coming to him. If she could make his day just a little worse tomorrow, she absolutely should. He’d had no problem doing the same to her. And she was sick of LMC already—even after just a week.

  And how would he connect it to me anyway? She thought, watching that glow fade. It seemed impossible; Rook would be lucky not to find his entire office in cinders.

  "Seven!” Luca’s voice echoed from the vents, then devolved into a fit of coughing. The distant shouts grew louder, and Seven’s own breathing hitched from the smoke as it filled the room. Wherever the fire was, it was getting closer—as were LMC’s security detail. She drained the last dice in Rook’s wretched office, then pulled her shirt over her nose, considering for a second, her heart beating erratically in her chest.

  The smoke was pooling up near the ceiling, far worse than when they’d entered the vents. But Rook’s office was devoid of windows—and escapes. In fact, she hadn’t seen a single window since passing through the trophy room at the front. Or an exit.

  There has to be something we can use, she thought frantically. Another way out.

  She scanned the walls for some sort of escape map for an emergency, or anything to let her know which way the exit was, but LMC’s headquarters, apparently, believed in safety as little for themselves as they did for their employees. The walls were barren, the ceilings devoid of any sort of exit sign.

  No exits. No way out—not without going through LMC’s thugs and getting caught.

  Not unless she made one herself.

  The thought was like a bolt of lightning, and it crisped in her mind as soon as she had it. She’d absorbed all of Rook’s dice, many of them just as powerful as the ones her parents kept in the vaults at home. She didn’t need exits. She didn’t need to sneak out. She’d blow her way right through the walls.

  “One more minute,” she told Luca, and tried to orient herself in the building, ignoring his protests. She needed to leave the north side—of that much, she was sure. The rest of the building was front-facing, the walls meeting busy gathering areas or the equally busy main road leading out to Luckville. In fact, she was fairly certain that the north side sheltered an entrance straight into the mines; she’d noticed the awning and darkened pile of rocks on the way in.

  Only one way to find out, she thought, and mentally let her spelunker dice clatter to the ground. There was a click, a strange sort of pain that she felt from neck to groin, and then a number appeared: a four.

  Seven couldn’t help but wince. It was a bad omen. A bad roll. A waste of the very few rolls she had left on this dice. And yet she didn’t need to roll well to see the telltale trace shards of the mine—exactly in the direction she’d been betting on.

  Luca thumped to the ground nearby just as Seven kicked open Cheryl’s door. He swore faintly, still coughing. “Whatever you’re doing, I want no part in it.”

  “You’ll change your mind,” she said. “Stay there.”

  “Seven, we don’t have time. We—“

  Seven let out a bellow and charged into Cheryl’s back wall. Past the flamingo. Past the colorful photographs of past miners, Cheryl the only one beaming in the photo. Past a potted plant that might have seen better days.

  She hit the wall with a crack, her palm shining, and felt the resistance of the stone give way around her. Swearing, tumbling, she nearly hit the beam of the mining tunnel entrance.

  Seven stood there for a moment, trying to catch her breath while listening for the sounds of LMC’s enforcers nearby. They were near, but none haunted the alleyway where she stood. In fact, from the sounds of the shouts, they seemed occupied with the fire nearby.

  Luca emerged from the rubble, looking at her like he’d seen a ghost, then wordlessly disappeared into the mines. Seven followed him, shaking, weak, but triumphant.

  Because she had her card back. She’d drained every last one of Rook’s dice.

  And it felt good, however small, to have made him pay.

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