Rachel twisted away from the blast of oatmeal, backpedallng and pivoting. But the goo spouted at her too fast to dodge, clubbing her across the chest and slamming her into the loading dock. She fired twice. The bullets splashed into Spandle and vanished without a ripple.

And part of her realized that that hadn’t been raised rubberized floor in the back of the van. That had been five or ten inches of compacted Spandle, poured smoothly across the floor.

Rachel crabbed backward and when the oatmeal reared higher she fired again, two more shots. Not expecting to hurt the ooze, just hoping to attract a little attention. A little help, maybe, would be okay.

She clambered onto the loading dock as Spandle avalanched forward, bubbling and popping. With a wet smack, the sludge spewed onto the loading dock, like a horrorshow slug undulating up a flight of stairs.

Rachel jumped off the dock, but Spandle just splashed herself to the ground, fast for a half-ton of sentient goo, and boxed Rachel between the wall and an industrial trash compactor.

"Can you hear me?" she said. "Mrs. Spandle, can you hear me?"

The paste oozed forward.

Maybe not the right time for a conversation. Rachel heaved herself up the trash compactor, and almost made it--but a gout of the viscous slime surrounded her trailing foot--and tugged. She swore and whipped her leg away. She broke free with a wet slurp, crawled across the top of the compactor, then stood with her back to the wall, pointing her gun downward.

The compactor shuddered, and the be-twee-doot of a police siren sounded from the street. Which meant they'd heard her gunshots.

A patrol car rolled toward the loading dock, then jerked to a halt.

"I need a shotgun!" she shouted at the cops, when the doors opened. "There's a, something on the other side of--"

The cops drew on her, and the burly one shouted, "Put the weapon down!"

"I’m an agent of Homeland Sec--"

"The weapon, now!"

"Okay! I’m dropping the weapon." She put her gun down. "I need some kind of explosive or--"

She stopped, realizing that the compactor had stopped shaking, that Spandle had oozed away from the cops, without them seeing, and was sloshing and bubbling against the warehouse wall.

"I’m, uh, Agent Kravitz," she continued, keeping her voice flat. "Homeland Security. I’m reaching for my ID."

"Slowly," the burly cop said.

He approached at an angle, making Rachel turn from his partner, keeping the line of fire open. Broad shoulders, bull neck, and a boyish face, he looked like Dennis the Menace after a decade of weightlifting. Quick eyes, too, and light on his feet. He reminded her of some of the better guards at her father's complex.

She passed him the ID and he said, “Rachel Kravitz. You really are Homeland Security."

"Yeah."

"They're hiring from kindergarten these days," the other cop said.

"Sorry about that," the burly one told her. "After the subway bombing, we’re a little tense. We got a shots fired."

"That was me."

"You opened fire?"

"I need your oxygen tank and a shotgun.”

The burly cop frowned and said, "Nancy Drew, Girl Detective." But he headed back to the patrol car.

The one with the moustache asked why.

“Because on the other side of the trash compactor there's a--no! Don’t get too close."

She lowered herself to the pavement just in time to see an inch of goo lapping at a crack in the warehouse wall and vanishing. Two tons of Spandle slithering through a mouse hole.

"Damn." Her adrenalin rush suddenly crashed, her forward momentum hitting the wall. Pinpricks of light danced in her vision. She sagged against the loading dock and saw the cops speaking but only heard a roar of thunder. She needed them to follow Spandle, check the other side of the wall, but when she opened her mouth, she heard herself say, "And for my next trick, I’m going to faint."

She lay back and watched the sky slip away.

Her vision dimmed, then returned almost immediately. Everything looked exactly the same. She breathed a few times, then let the burly cop pull her into a sitting position.

He said, "You’re hurt."

"Scraped my arm."

"On a bullet?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Still feeling shocky?"

"I’m fine, I’ve got to get moving before--"

"Is that your car?" he asked. "The rental?"

"Yeah."

"Then these are your keys." He dangled them at her. "You can have them back after the medic clears you."

"Give me the keys, asshole."

"Sure, once the medic says it's okay."

“I'm pretty sure I outrank you.”

A glint of mischief on his boyish face. “I'm definitely sure I outsize you.”

She knew his type, tough and blunt and kind. You did the right thing, then accepted the consequences. Right now, he figured he needed to stop her from driving. And he outsized her. She wasn't going to win that argument.

"Whose van is it?" the cop with the moustache asked.

"The guy who shot me. Did you respond to the warehouse?"

"The art place?" the burly one said. "Yeah."

"Two men critical," the mustached cop said. "One dead. No sign of the shooters."

"The critical ones were me."

"Goddamn," the burly one said, his expression wavering between horror and sympathy, "you're just a kid."

"She's not just a kid, Dusek," the other cop said. "She's Rachel Kravitz." He looked at her. "You still working out your daddy issues?"

"Rachel Kravitz?" The cop named Dusek whistled. "I knew the name rang a bell. Yeah, I see it now."

"I should start dying my hair."

"Get a pixie cut," Dusek told her. "It'll bring out your cheekbones."

Rachel didn't say anything.

"My wife’s a hairsylist," he said. "I’ll give you her card."

"I need to go," she said.

"She waxes eyebrows, too," he said.

“What’s wrong with my eyebrows? Is something wrong with my eyebrows?”

“She practiced on me. I walked around for two months looking really surprised.”

Rachel almost laughed, then looked at him, suddenly suspicious. "Why are you telling me that?"

"Does there have to be a reason? Maybe I'm just talking."

"Are you?"

Dusek showed her a hint of his Dennis the Menace smile, and when it disappeared he said, "Why are they using a kid?"

"They think my father's involved."

"He's alive? I thought you--" he lifted one burly shoulder. "You know."

"He survived."

"Good," he said.

"Why good? He's probably behind these bombings. He's going to--he'd kill a thousand people just to prove a point."

"It's good that you didn't kill your own father," Dusek told her, his voice soft. "Whatever else happens, Rachel--Agent--that is a good thing."

But he still wouldn't give back her key.