They gave me combat gear instead of my suit.

  First warning sign, right there. Kingdom's got standards. We wear suits. Makes us different from all the other powered freaks running around in spandex or leather or whatever. But here I am, stuffed into black tactical crap with a dozen pockets I don't need, looking like some discount special forces wannabe. Vector and Tarbaby got the same getup - we all look the same now. Guess that's the point.

  I'm not gonna be the one to say that we kinda look like Middle Eastern terrorists. I'm gonna think it over and over, don't you worry, but I guess that's the point. I don't know. I signed up to break into a supermax full of violent criminals, not to be racist. "You good?" Mrs. Synapse asks, checking the contents of her case one more time.

  She's pretty. Too pretty to be working this gig. Could've easily became an actress or some shit like that, not like me.

  "Always," I tell her, adjusting the tactical vest. It fits wrong - too tight across the shoulders, too loose around the middle. Not like my suit. The suit's tailored. Makes a man feel respectable. This getup? Makes me feel like what I used to be - just another grunt doing the dirty work.

  "Storm's moving in fast," Vector says, checking some fancy gizmo with blinking lights. He's Red Calf, not Kingdom, but he's been professional so far. "We need to get below ground in the next ten minutes."

  I look over at our little team. Just the four of us for the actual grab—me, Vector, Tarbaby, and Synapse. Vector and Tarbaby are Red Calf - the TK shovel and the goo guy. The rest of our people are up top, making noise, drawing eyes away from where we'll be.

  Above us, Mrs. Zenith's handiwork is rolling in - clouds so black they make midnight look gray, already starting to spit rain. Thunder rumbles, not too close yet but getting there. Perfect cover, except for the part where it might flood our tunnel if we don't do this right.

  "I got it," I say, kneeling to touch the ground. The soil here is rocky, lots of old mining waste mixed in. Further down there's better stuff - granite mostly, with veins of that titanium ore running through it. Easier to work with than people think.

  Tarbaby steps up next to me, his whole body seeming to shift like he's barely holding himself together. "This is for after," he says, handing me something folded. "Thought you might want a better version of your... thing."

  It unfolds in my hands like origami, shaped exactly like my paper bag, but made of some material I've never seen before. Feels like paper but stronger than steel, with a weird slick texture.

  "It's carbon-fiber composite," he explains, like I asked. "Bulletproof. Fireproof. Still looks like your trademark, but better."

  I fold it back up, shove it in a pocket. "Thanks," I say, not meaning it. My bag ain't about being fancy. It's about being ordinary. Being what people throw away. But I don't got time to explain philosophy to Tarbaby right now.

  "Thirty seconds to get underground," Mrs. Synapse cuts in, checking her watch. She's got a case strapped to her chest - sedatives for the girl. "B-Team's starting their show in five minutes."

  I press both palms against the ground, feeling the layers beneath us. My power works better when I know what I'm dealing with. I don't just turn stuff to liquid - I gotta understand it first.

  "Here we go," I say, and then I push.

  The ground beneath my hands goes soft as pudding, spreading outward in a perfect circle about ten feet across. It looks like mud but it's not - it's liquefied rock, dirt, everything, all the way down. I keep my concentration tight, controlling the spread, making sure it doesn't just splash everywhere.

  "Whoa," Vector mutters, stepping back. "That's... different."

  Different from what he expected, he means. People always think my power's just some parlor trick until they see what it can really do. I sink my arms into the liquid ground up to my elbows, feeling deeper, pushing the liquefaction down and down.

  "Vector, start moving this stuff," I say, and he nods, raising his hands. The liquid stone starts flowing to the side, piling up in a depression twenty feet away. His telekinesis is smooth - gotta give him credit for that.

  "Forty-five degree angle down," I tell him. "Then we level out at about eighty feet."

  Mrs. Synapse steps up to the edge, one hand pressed to her earpiece. "B-Team's in position. We're good to proceed."

  I push myself forward, sliding into the hole as the earth parts around me. It's always a weird feeling - like swimming through something that should crush you but doesn't. My powers keep a bubble around me where everything stays liquid, so I can breathe, move, see well enough to guide us.

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  Vector and the others follow, Vector using his TK to keep the liquid stone from collapsing back on us. Tarbaby brings up the rear, his hands leaving trails of sticky black stuff on the tunnel walls that hardens almost instantly, keeping everything stable even after my liquefaction wears off.

  We move fast - faster than any drilling machine could. I push forward, the stone parting around us like water, Vector moving the excess away, Tarbaby sealing the tunnel behind us. Twenty feet down in the first minute. Fifty feet by minute three.

  "First groundwater seepage," I say, feeling the change in pressure. The storm above is already pushing water into the ground. "We need to curve this tunnel. J-shape."

  "Why?" Vector asks, but he's already adjusting his TK field to follow my lead.

  "Storm's gonna flood any straight shaft," I explain. "We go down, then up a bit, then back down. Traps the water in the low points, keeps our path dry."

  Mrs. Synapse nods approvingly. "Smart."

  "No shit," I mutter under my breath. It ain't book smarts. It's knowing how water moves in a pipe. Same reason you put traps in plumbing. I learned that stuff working construction, not in some classroom.

  We're seventy feet down when I feel the first hint of something weird in the rock - metal, but not natural. Wires, running in a grid pattern.

  "Anti-phase lattice," I say, slowing our progress. "About fifteen feet ahead."

  Vector pulls out another gadget, this one with a screen showing blurry lines. "Confirmed. It's active but cycling. Pulses every 800 milliseconds."

  "What's that mean for us?" Mrs. Synapse asks.

  "Means we gotta time it," I say, studying the pattern I can feel through the stone. "Lattice is electrified to stop phase-shifters. We ain't phase-shifting, but that much current'll cook us all the same if we hit it wrong."

  Tarbaby moves closer. "Can you just go around it?"

  I shake my head. "It's a grid. Goes all the way around the facility. We gotta go through it, between pulses."

  I extend my power carefully, probing the area around the wires without touching them directly. The rock here is different - less granite, more of that titanium ore. Makes sense they'd use the natural properties of the mine.

  "Okay," I say after a minute. "I got the timing. When I say go, I'm gonna open a hole right between two wires during the dead time. Vector, you pull us through fast. Tarbaby, seal it behind us before the next pulse."

  We wait, feeling the electric current pulse through the lattice. One, two, three pulses. I get the rhythm.

  "Ready... go!"

  I push my power forward in a tight beam, liquefying a path exactly between two lattice wires. Vector's TK yanks us forward like we're on a conveyor belt, shooting through the narrow gap. I feel the tingle of electricity in the air - we're cutting it close.

  Tarbaby sprays his sticky compound behind us, sealing the breach just as--

  Pain explodes through my hand - white-hot agony that shoots up my arm in an instant. The lattice - it's conducting through the titanium in the rock! A pulse hits me through what should've been safe stone, electricity finding the perfect conductor in the liquefied ore where my hand is buried. My whole body convulses, muscles locking up as the current travels through me like lightning, my vision flashing white then red.

  "Shit!" Vector grabs me with his TK, yanking me backward as I lose concentration, the tunnel ahead of us starting to collapse. I catch a glimpse of my hand as he pulls it free - angry red lines like tree branches spreading up from my palm, tracing the path of the current under my skin. The stench of burned flesh hits my nostrils. Mine.

  "I'm fine," I gasp, fighting through the pain to reestablish control. My right arm is numb from fingertips to shoulder except for the burning sensation spreading across my palm where the electricity entered. If I'd been one of those phase-shifters, I'd be dead meat right now - turned inside out by that much current. We got lucky. Real lucky.

  "Hold still," Mrs. Synapse says, grabbing my wrist and examining the burn. The skin is already blistering, white in the center where the current entered, surrounded by an angry red circle. "This is second-degree at least. What happened?"

  "We don't have time," I say through gritted teeth, forcing my power back out despite the tremors still running through my body. The tunnel around us groans as the liquefied stone starts to settle. "Conduction through the ore," I explain, gritting my teeth. "Didn't expect that."

  "Hold still or I'll make you," Mrs. Synapse says, her tone leaving no room for argument. She pulls a silver packet from her case, tears it open with her teeth, and slaps some kind of cooling gel directly onto my palm. The relief is instant - like someone turned down the volume on the pain. "Two minutes. That's all I need."

  While she works, Vector and Tarbaby turn their attention to the lattice wires we've exposed.

  "Might as well leave them a present while we're here," Vector says, using his TK to carefully bend several of the lattice wires, crossing connections that shouldn't be crossed.

  Tarbaby nods, squeezing a thin line of his adhesive compound along a junction box we've uncovered. "This'll short out this whole section when it dries. Maybe buy us some time on the way back."

  Mrs. Synapse wraps my hand in some kind of special bandage that tightens around the burn. "This will keep it clean and the nerve endings numbed," she explains. "But you need real medical attention once we're out."

  "Charge dissipated," Vector confirms, stepping back from his sabotage and checking his gadget. "We're through the first barrier, and they'll have trouble getting it back online in this section. That’ll trip the diagnostics in ten minutes; buys us a window and gives ops something else to panic about."

  I flex my fingers, feeling sensation slowly returning everywhere except the center of my palm, which stays mercifully numb. That was sloppy. Should've accounted for the mineral content better. Rookie mistake. If I'd been more careful about the titanium concentrations, I would've seen this coming.

  "How much further?" Tarbaby asks, reinforcing the tunnel walls with extra compound.

  I reach out with my power, feeling the density changes ahead. "We're about halfway there. Next section is mostly clean granite, then we hit the reinforced walls of Ring D." I pause, concentrating harder. "I can feel vibrations. Regular pattern. Probably air circulation system."

  Mrs. Synapse checks her watch. "B-Team should be fully engaged now. All security forces will be responding to the surface breach."

  I nod, pushing my power forward again, more carefully this time. No more surprises. The Kingdom is counting on me - us - to get this right. I've never let them down before. Not about to start now.

  "Let's move," I say, the ground ahead of us turning to liquid once more. "Girl's waiting."