The girl's eyes snap open.

  For a second, there's nothing but confusion in her gaze - the glassy disorientation of someone fighting through sedatives. Then her gaze sharpens, focusing on Vector, on his outstretched hands controlling the telekinetic field around her. On the tunnel. On us. On the fact that she's floating three feet off the ground surrounded by strangers in tactical gear.

  Fear floods her face. Pure, animal panic.

  "Easy," Vector says, his voice steady but strained. "We're not going to hurt you. Just stay calm."

  She stares between the four of us, trying to decide which one to be more afraid of. Trying to figure out which one is keeping her from moving. She waves her hands around experimentally, like she's trying to figure out how to swim.

  Vector mouths the words "sedative" to Mrs. Synapse. I think in retrospect we'll all agree that was maybe the worst possible decision to make. The girl's body goes rigid, her eyes locked on Vector's hands. Then something shifts in the air - a ripple of pressure, like the moment before a thunderclap.

  "Shit," Mrs. Synapse hisses. "She's copying--"

  Vector flies backward like he's been hit by a truck, slamming into the tunnel wall hard enough to send chips and dust from the ceiling down onto us. The telekinetic field around the girl collapses, but she doesn't fall. Instead, she hovers there, her hands spread in a crude mirror of Vector's earlier stance, the air around her shimmering with power. Her backpack goes hovering too, loosely dangling, attached to her wrist.

  "Kid," I start, raising my hands slowly, "we're not here to--"

  She doesn't let me finish. With a wild gesture, she sends Tarbaby tumbling down the tunnel, barely avoiding snapping his spine on a rock - he cushions himself with a forceful spray of black tar. Wait, if you could do that that hard the whole time, why didn't you? Mrs. Synapse ducks, pulling a sedative spray from her belt.

  "Hey!" I shout, trying to draw the girl's attention away from Synapse. "Kid, listen! We're trying to help you! Eyes over here!"

  The girl's head snaps toward Mrs. Synapse, her eyes widening at the sight of the spray. I don't know if she remembers being sprayed or if she's just making a reasonable assumption that a person pointing a bottle of mysterious red liquid at them doesn't have her best interests in mind. I don't think we really have time to puzzle that out.

  Mrs. Synapse lunges forward, aiming the spray, but freezes mid-step, her face contorting.

  Then it hits me. Like a wave of needles driving into every inch of skin facing the girl. Sharp, precise points of agony - not burning or aching, but a hundred simultaneous pinpricks drilling just beneath the surface. My muscles spasm, limbs jerking backward on pure reflex, like touching a live wire.

  For a millisecond, it's the worst pain I can ever imagine feeling. Like every part of my body is being cut at once. The part of my body that can tell when I burnt myself on a stove is activating, all at once, the kind that makes you jerk away before you can even register it in conscious thought. That's what I can tell, in the moment.

  I hear something hitting the ground, but I can't tell what, because even my eyelids are flinching. My entire body scrunches up, trying to reflexively pull itself away from the source of the pain. It's something more primal than anxiety or emotion. Just animal fear. I hear, more than I see, everyone else going through the same thing, slightly delayed, like a wave passing through us. Synapse's strangled cry comes out first, then whatever noise gurgles out of my throat, more like a gasp than anything, followed by Vector's voice and then Tarbaby's.

  I recover first. I guess I'm more used to pain than everyone else is. When I open my eyes, Deathgirl is staring at the four of us, keeping her eyes locked open while she... repeatedly slaps herself? No TK anymore, she's groundbound, but is she using Synapse's power on herself to wake herself up? That's... Clever. I keep my feet fully on the ground, trying to create a bubble of liquefied stone above her, with only a thin shell separating us. Then all I need to do is melt down another centimeter, and it gets dumped on her head...

  Won't keep her buried - doesn't work that way - but it will distract her for precious seconds. My hand aches sympathetically underneath the quick bandages.

  "Stop fighting," I grunt, struggling to maintain concentration. "We brought your stuff, kid. Even grabbed your penguin. We're not here to hurt you. We're taking you someplace nicer than this."

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Her eyes widen at the mention of the penguin. But not in relief. In rage.

  Fuck. Rookie mistake #2.

  "You touched Mr. Waddles?" she screams, her voice high and cracking. "YOU WERE IN MY ROOM?"

  I realize my error just a hair too late.

  The entire tunnel floor dissolves. Not just softens - it completely melts, dropping out from under all of us like a trap door. I have a split second to see the look of shock on her face - she didn't expect it to be so powerful either - before we're all falling.

  I manage to grab onto a solid edge of stone, my burned hand screaming in protest. Vector catches himself with his telekinesis, snagging Mrs. Synapse with the same field. Tarbaby shoots a strand of tar to the ceiling, hanging like some demented spider. What the fuck, you have Spider-Man powers too, dude? Why the hell have you been holding out on us this whole time?

  But I don't have time to really consider that. "Vector! Ramp!" I yell, liquefying the stone near my handhold to let it drip down. Already, he's on it, scooping it up and directing it into a diagonal flow where I can let it re-solidify. Normally, anything I liquefy wants to return to its original shape, but I guess if there's something preventing it from doing that...

  Below us, where the tunnel floor used to be, is a yawning chasm dropping at least thirty feet to what looks like an old mining level. The girl is already gone, a dark shape disappearing into the shadows of the lower tunnels.

  "After her!" Mrs. Synapse shouts, while Vector floats her down to the impromptu ramp slash bridge. "She's thirteen, how far can she get?"

  "No." Tarbaby's voice is calm. Too calm for what just happened. He swings himself back into the remains of our tunnel, pulling out a small device from his pocket. "Let her go."

  "What?" I haul myself up, glaring at him. "We've got the biggest payday of our life riding on this - from your company - and you're telling us to just ditch it? Are you trying to fuck us, man?"

  Tarbaby holds up the device - looks like a... man, what does it look like. It's reminding me of something. What the hell is it reminding me of? I reach back in my brain for some childhood memory. Small, circular, metallic, looking like a little radar with a vague GPS map overlaid... sort of like a weird pocketwatch.

  "She's tagged," he says simply, while Vector floats the rest of us to solid ground, back in our tunnel. "We've got a bug on her."

  Mrs. Synapse stares at him. "You knew this might happen."

  Tarbaby shrugs. "Contingency planning. Porcelain just wanted her out of government hands. Getting her ourselves was a bonus, not a requirement."

  Mrs. Synapse pulls herself all the way up to her feet, still shaking and wincing. "You could have told us."

  "Need-to-know," Tarbaby replies, pocketing the device. "And now you know. Mission accomplished, technically. Let's extract before this place locks down completely."

  I want to argue, but I can hear the mess from down the tunnel. The faintest echo of screaming, ringing alarms. I'm sure they're drilling through our impromptu resin seal already.

  "Fine," I mutter, pressing my hands to the tunnel wall. "But next time, I want the full brief."

  Tarbaby just smiles that irritating smile of his. "Let's focus on getting out alive first."

  I channel my power into the stone, creating a new path that angles upward, bypassing the now-flooded J-curve section of our original tunnel. My burned hand throbs with each pulse of liquefaction, but I push through it. The sooner we're out, the sooner I can get proper medical attention. Vector and Tarbaby keep doing what they're doing - which is to say, being mildly annoying, whilst also sealing up the tunnel behind us, turning us into a moving bubble of stale air inside the side of the mine.

  We move fast, following my newly created tunnel as it curves up toward the surface.

  "C-Team, this is Vector," he says into his comm, once we get close enough to the edge of freedom that comms pick back up. "Package is loose but tagged. Repeat, package is loose but tagged. Requesting immediate extraction."

  "Acknowledged," comes Mr. ESP's voice, crackling with static. "Lifter inbound to original extraction point. Two minutes."

  "Almost there," I say, feeling the ground thinning above us. "Surface is about ten feet up."

  As I push my power through those final feet of stone, rain suddenly pours in - Mrs. Zenith's storm still raging above. I widen the opening, creating a ramp that leads us out into the dark forest. The wind whips around us, rain lashing our faces. Perfect cover. Vector and I work on the same wavelength, creating a little awning to protect us from the worst of the rain.

  I'm sure that somewhere in the distance, the sounds of helicopters and shouted orders mix with the storm, on the other side of the mine. I can see lights, and vaguely hear what are either thunderclaps or the vague boom of an alarm. B-Team did their job well - most of the response force is still occupied there.

  "Lifter approaching," Vector says, checking his comm. "Thirty seconds."

  Tarbaby pulls out his tracking device again, checking the red dot. It's moving steadily away from the facility, already a half-mile from our position.

  "She's heading north," he observes. "Smart kid. Using the storm for cover."

  "She's dangerous," I say, watching the dot move. "Three powers in less than a minute. And she could do your thing without touching you," I say to Mrs. Synapse.

  "That's why Porcelain wants her," Tarbaby says matter-of-factly. "Imagine what she could do with the right training."

  Before I can say anything else, the lifter appears through the storm clouds - a sleek, matte-black helicopter with no markings. It hovers just above the treeline, a rope ladder dropping down to us.

  "Extraction's here," Vector says, grabbing the ladder. "Time to go."

  As we climb aboard, I take one last look at the chaos we're leaving behind. Daedalus, the unbreakable prison, now in full lockdown mode. Searchlights cutting through the rain. And somewhere out there, a thirteen-year-old girl with a stolen power, running scared.

  Tarbaby catches me looking back and misreads my expression. "Don't worry," he says, holding up the tracker again. "We'll find her again when things cool down. You'll get your payday."

  I don't bother correcting him. Let him think it's about the money.