Before Banneker could respond, Grim threw open their office door. “Have you checked the drone?” they shouted down the hall.

Banneker rolled his eyes. “Only every ten seconds!”

“And it’s still up?”

Eli’s throat went dry as Banneker flicked through his apps and pulled up a jittery video stream of nothing but endless forest and two-lane roads.

“Yes, it’s still up,” Banneker called back. His shoulders had tensed again, and he stuffed the rest of the cookie into his mouth with one gulp. “I’ll tell you when it’s—“

Then his eyes popped wide as the view of the forest blurred and went black, and a No Signal warning pasted itself across his screen. “It’s out!”

Cursing filled Grim’s office. Eli’s gripped the counter, his knuckles going white.

“What does that mean?” he demanded, but went ignored again as the front door burst open, and Ambrose and Sherry stumbled in.

“You didn’t leave us a lot of time, Beake!” Grim strode into the hall, hands raised. Behind them, the car sat at a haphazard angle in the driveway.

“Apologies, they picked up the trail faster than I thought,” Ambrose kept his hand on Sherry’s arm. “Is it time?”

“Our decoy drone was just shot down. Your call.”

Ambrose took a breath and nodded. “Get the files, then.” He looked down the hall, ignoring Eli standing next to Banneker. “Banneker, wipe the drives. Sherry—“

Sherry swallowed back a sob next to him. He turned and placed both hands on her shoulders. “Sherry, I promise it’ll be alright. Go get the boat ready, and take Eli with you.”

“Hey!” Eli spat the word like lava, his lips searing with frightened, confused anger. “I’m not going with her until you tell me what the fuck is happening!”

But the team had already split—Grim to their office, Banneker halfway up the stairs, Ambrose throwing open the basement door. Sherry rushed towards him. “Eli, listen—“

He slid out of her grip and bolted down the basement stairs. “Ames!”

Ambrose hardly glanced behind him as Eli’s feet struck the basement floor. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you—“

“Tell me what?”

Ambrose reached into the cabinet and pulled out a small metal lockbox—the same one Eli had seen during the drone scare months ago. “Tell you the plan,” he finished, flicking open the latches. “Grim will explain it all to you once you’re safe.”

The last word spiraled in Eli’s head like an alarm. “And why can’t you explain it to me now?”

Ambrose lifted a single vial from the box—longer than the others, and far more refractive. Like pure icefall, it spilled rainbow fractals across Ambrose’s shirt, sharp reds and purples and greens cutting across the white fabric. Eli looked to his face, and every inch of it was molded around an unspoken apology.

“If I told you before it was too late,” Ambrose said, “you’d never let me do it.”

He downed the potion and staggered back, bent over on himself. Eli leapt forward to grab his shoulder, feeling like he had just taken the potion himself—heart hammering, ice in his veins.

“You,” he choked, “you said there were no more missions. You promised.”

Ambrose steadied himself and met his gaze with burning white eyes. The veins across his temples glowed in fiery rainbow streaks, pulsing in time with a manic heartbeat.

Then all that light came racing at Eli as Ambrose crashed his lips desperately into his. Eli couldn’t bring himself to taste it—not the icefall, not the desperation, not any of it—and he ripped himself away from Ambrose. The glowing white that filled the man’s eyes curved into a despairing gaze.

“I’m sorry,” Ambrose breathed. “Drawing him out is the only way to make it stop.”

With that, Ambrose sprinted up the steps, leaving Eli stumbling to follow.

“Don’t do this.” He reached for Ambrose as he hit the top step. “Whatever it is, we can think of another way—“

Massive arms yanked Eli away from Ambrose, picking him up and carrying him down the hall. Eli thrashed uselessly against them. “Grim, let me go!”

“Sherry, the potion.” Grim turned Eli away from the front door, where Ambrose was half-standing, half-leaning against the handle. “Give it to him now.”

He screwed his eyes shut, as if that could stop anything.

“Eli, breathe,” Sherry said, and he felt a hand at his face and smooth glass on his lips. The heaviness of the invisibility potion struck him before the liquid had finished trickling down his throat, and he opened his eyes. Grim’s arms weren’t visible around his torso. And though he could feel Sherry’s hand on his wrist, he couldn’t see it.

Eli started kicking.

“You’re leaving him?” he shouted as Grim’s vice grip on him tightened. “You’re fucking leaving him behind?”

“Everything’s wiped,” Banneker’s shaky, disembodied voice shot past him. “Cars coming up the driveway.”

“Go,” Ambrose’s voice snapped down the hall. The back door swung open, and Grim wrestled Eli out to the porch.

“I’ll start the boat if you—,” Sherry started, then gave a small gasp.

Across the yard, a line of agents half-crouched behind the trees, guns facing the house. Their black vests and tinted helmets made them look like beetles hiding in the shadows.

On an unseen cue, they all started moving towards the cabin.

“Down the stairs, now.” Grim ordered in a low voice, then set Eli down. “Eli, protect Sherry.”

Eli curled one hand into a fist, but fumbled for Sherry’s arm with the other. Grim didn’t need Eli to protect Sherry. Sherry didn’t need Eli to protect Sherry.

But now Eli couldn’t bring himself to run back inside for Ambrose.

“Copy,” he muttered. As Grim and Banneker swept off to the right in a rush of air, Eli and Sherry slipped down the steps on the left, keeping their footfalls as quiet as possible.

They reached the dirt path below just as three agents approached from the forest. Their guns swung up, and Eli immediately pushed Sherry behind him.

But the agents’ helmet-hazed eyes weren’t focused on them, and they angled their weapons towards the deck.

“Take Icefall alive, shoot the crew,” the woman in front muttered, then gestured for the others to ascend the steps. “Remember, they could be invisible. You hear footsteps, you shoot.”

Eli didn’t breathe until they were halfway up—then he loosened his grip on Sherry’s arm and tugged her forward, eyes on the water ahead. “Come on.”

They had taken three steps when a twig snapped further down the path, far behind the ragged line of agents. The intruders on the deck whirled around together and opened fire on the trees.

“Grim!” Sherry pulled forward, but Eli yanked her left, away from the path. The explosive gunfire covered the sound of their scrambling as they huddled behind a tree.

“We can’t get to the boat that way,” Eli almost had to shout over the gunfire. Bark splintered off trees as bullets rained into the woods ahead of them. “I say we head north, then circle back along the shore once the agents are in the—in the—“

In the house.

Where Ambrose was.

Sherry squeezed Eli’s hand, and he could feel her through the icefall, crouched in the leaves, tears dripping from her cheeks. “Eli, I don’t want this any more than you do.”

Then a blast of light cut into the forest and shrieks filled the air, arcing over the deck and snapping out when a hailstorm of thuds struck the earth. Angling his shoulder to cover Sherry, Eli twisted around the tree.

Ambrose was standing on the deck, half-visible. The smoky remnants of an energy wave dissipated against his transparent fingers. Below him, all of the assailing agents were now splayed across the yard, some of their limbs in angles that Eli couldn’t look at for too long. A few of the luckier ones reached for their guns and swayed to their feet— but halfway through their motion, they froze in place.

Invisibility, energy wave, freezing…Eli whipped his gaze back up to Ambrose in fear. Ambrose met his gaze, and for a brief moment, the link of the icefall between them betrayed a surging overflow of the potion’s unbridled power. Eli reeled back with a gasp.

“Go!” Ambrose shouted. An agent staggered up the steps and pointed their gun. With a flick of Ambrose’s hand, the agent froze, then whipped backwards in another energy wave. “I said go!”

Eli grabbed Sherry’s hand and ran.

It didn’t matter how many twigs they snapped or rocks they kicked now—the intruders were all fighting their way towards Ambrose. Eli managed one more glance backwards, just in time to see him phase through the back door, leaving agents to pile up around it. A few of them stepped back and blasted shots through the windows.

They screamed as waves of energy threw the broken glass back at them.

“Grim?” Sherry’s call dragged Eli’s attention back to the dock. “Banneker?”

They slowed down, and as the dock shifted to planks of lighter wood, Eli realized that what he had mistaken for a trail of water was far too dark and far too red.

He followed the trail to the boat, where ropes were untying themselves at the pylons. As the ropes slithered against the dock, blood was quickly spreading across one of the boat’s white seats.

Eli actively dug into the icefall link to connect himself to both figures.

“Banneker!” He leapt into the boat, where he could sense the man lying on the seat, his breathing rapid and shallow. The blood was pooling under his torso. “Sherry, do you have—“

“I’ll handle it.” A seat cushion opposite Banneker lifted open and a medical bag floated out. “Help Grim.”

Ropes thumped onto the deck of the boat. “I’ve got it. Eli, get the gun under the seat to your right. Agents are still in the woods.”

As Eli grabbed the gun, Banneker flinched and gave a strangled shout.

Indistinct shouts on shore echoed back.

“On the boat!”

“Get them!”

Eli pulled up the gun and shot twice without thinking. Two agents fell.

“Grim?” Eli called as more assailants crashed through the underbrush. Three more shots, three more down. “Almost ready?”

The motor roared to life. “Hold on!”

As the boat began to slink away from the dock, a shot whistled past Eli’s ear, and the boat’s windshield shattered.“Grim!”

“Keep shooting!”

Eli did as he was told, picking off the attackers on shore in rapid succession. He told himself that for every agent bleeding on the sand, that meant one less agent in the house. One less agent pointing their gun at—

Refracted, angular light barreled through the trees as a dome of energy burst from the cabin. It was a thin soap bubble of a shield, enveloping the entire cabin in a muted, shifting kaleidoscope.

All the remaining agents turned and rushed for the house.

“Ames,” Eli breathed, then desperately shot at their backs. “Not that way, no!”

He wanted the shield to stay up forever—for the icefall raging in Ambrose’s veins to keep it going, at least until he could take the boat, turn it around, rush inside—

But he was already holding its breath for when it would fall, and fall it did, collapsing in on itself in a shattering prism of light.

“No.” Eli lowered the gun. “No, Ambrose, please don’t give up…”

The boat lurched forward, and he let the force of it collapse him into the seat.