No one in the room dared speak for the next five minutes as they waited for any sign of Ambrose. The only sound that periodically jarred them were brief updates from Grim.

“Circling around,” they said, the crackling from their call making everyone in the room jump for the third time. “Tell me when you know what door he’s headed towards.”

Eli pressed his headset closer to his ears and frowned. If he focused, he could pick up a ragged pattern of hard, labored breaths. That had to be Ambrose—they weren’t coming from inside the room, and he hadn’t heard them in any of Grim’s calls.

“Ames? You there?” he asked, then turned to Sherry. “Do you hear that?”

Sherry imitated his posture with her headset, then closed her eyes and nodded. “Five minutes will be too much. Ambrose, I need you to come back now.”

“No.” Ambrose’s voice finally came through, but the jagged roughness in the single word failed to give Eli the reassurance he wanted. “I’m almost at an exit.”

“I said come back—”

“Don’t do it, stay ghost,” Banneker cut in sharply. Sherry glared at him, but he took no notice, his wide blue eyes locked on a camera at the top of his bank. “Pearce is going into lab twenty-five.”

They all leaned forward to watch. There was Pearce, giving a curt nod to the scientist Ambrose had spoken with earlier. She had a false, professional smile pasted on her face as he asked her questions. After a few muffled words, the smile fell, and she looked back at where the icefall case had been.

One of the guards at Pearce’s shoulder raised a hand to his earpiece.

“Run.” Eli stood. “Ambrose, run.”

Alarms and flashing lights rippled across Banneker’s screens. On the monitor closest to Eli, a man suddenly appeared at one of the exit doors, crashing into it just after it locked down. Brown hair faded to blue as he staggered against the wall and held himself there, gasping with effort.

“Where do I go?” Ambrose breathed. Eli’s heart lodged in his throat as Ambrose’s grip on the wall faltered. If he fell and a single one of those vials cracked—

“Go left,” Banneker said. “Your badge might still work there, if you can get through the guards.”

As guards approached on several screens, Ambrose edged over to the corner of the hall and dropped his hand into his pocket. Sherry suddenly had a stiff grip on Banneker’s shoulder.

“Are you sure there’s no other way out?”

“It’ll be fine,” Ambrose cut in, then swallowed the contents of another vial.

“What did he take this time?” Eli asked sharply. No one bothered to answer.

“Grim, head to the southwest corner of the lot,” Banneker rushed his words. “You’ll see a loading dock on the left and an empty truck on the right-“

“Can you disable the camera there?”

“Working on it.”

As Banneker’s fingers flew, Sherry frantically scribbled out numbers in a notebook. “Grim, I’m calculating the neutralizer amount he’ll need once he’s out.”

“Double the dose?”

Sherry blanched as she wrote. “At least triple.”

Eli looked around and found nothing useful for him to do—he could only watch as the guards pounded closer to Ambrose.

“What’s your plan?” he asked, his legs feeling weak even as he leaned against Banneker’s desk. “There’s three of them ahead, four more coming down the side hall to your right.”

“It’s a fraction of a plan.” Ambrose spun around the corner and whipped his hand in a horizontal motion. A wave of white energy rippled out from his palm and swept the oncoming guards clear off their feet. As they slammed into a wall and crumpled to the floor, Ambrose rushed over to the target door. Locked. “Less of a plan.” His hands now glowing white, he staggered back and sent another energy pulse towards the door. It rattled, but didn’t open. “Alright, I have no plan.”

“More guards coming.” Banneker’s fingers blurred. “I don’t know if I can unlock the door for you in time—“

“Grim, are you outside now?” Ambrose asked. Grim’s car skidded into place by the loading dock.

“Here.”

Ambrose dipped into his pocket once more. “Sherry, I need to use the phaser.”

“No.” Sherry almost dropped the notebook, her eyes fearful. “It’s not tested, you shouldn’t have even packed that—“

“It’s the fastest way out.”

“It’s the fastest way to your death is what it is!” As Ambrose pulled out the vial, Sherry cursed and clutched at her headset. “Grim, do you have the defib in the car?”

Eli’s gaze whipped over to her. “Defib? The defibrillator?”

Ambrose downed the potion just as four guards sprinted into view.

“There!”

They raised their guns. Ambrose turned and dove straight into the door.

A refractive rainbow light rippled across the wall in sharp, chaotic shapes, as if he were diving into a kaleidoscope. Though bullets dented the metal around him, his body passed right through.

“Yes!” Banneker shouted, then waved at the screen, as if that would make Ambrose run faster. “Get to the car, get to the car-“

Once he was outside, Ambrose didn’t bother stopping his momentum—with a running leap, he phased into the backseat of Grim’s car.

“Got him!” Grim peeled away from the loading dock with a smoking screech. Eli’s stomach flipped—he could still hear Ambrose’s heavy, desperate gasps over the squealing tires. “Banneker, cut comm once we’re out.”

Sherry tightened her grip on Banneker’s shoulder. “What if he—“

“I’ll reach out when we’re stable, just cut it.”

At a keystroke, the gate to the lot swung open, releasing Grim into the snarls of city traffic. As soon as the car left frame, the hacker severed his connection with Grim, Ambrose, and the lab’s security feeds.

The last image Eli saw on screen was of Pearce, gazing up at one of the security cameras in lab twenty-five. If he didn’t know better, he could have sworn the man was looking directly at him.