“Rosemary is definitely trying to catch us in a trap,” Thomas said, pointing towards the door across the dance floor, indicating the guard had now left his position. “She pulled this same crap with me eight years ago. We need to attack her with true surprise.”

“How does her Civ work?” Blair asked.

“It’s called Wirebaby. Self-centred, I know. It allows her to create metal threads or wires that she can use to grab objects, slice through her enemies, or coil into limbs. If one of her threads gets into your body, she can use your body’s chemicals to restructure new and dangerous compounds. Like gasoline. But . . .”

“What?”

“There’s something I’m not getting. After I made a phantom heart to replace yours, my heart rate dropped significantly. Then, she started freaking out. I couldn’t fight nearly as well as I did, but somehow that ‘phantom heart’ screwed with her psychologically.”

“That sounds useful.” Blair and Thomas were focused on the alcove, contemplating their next move to the sounds of thumping electronic music. “That’s where she is right? Up in that private room?”

“Yup.”

“Why don’t we just come back later? We know where she is. Let’s just grab Piotr and come back later,” Blair said.

“Well, they probably know we’re here, and it’d be easy to follow us to your house, and they already know where I live, and we have no idea where Piotr is living—”

“Point taken,” Blair said, pulling out a heat gun from her backpack and tucking it into her fanciful pocket. “Should we just wait for a clean shot?”

“I don’t know. There are people everywhere. If she goes ballistic, she could start killing indiscriminately . . . but she didn’t do that last time. God, if only I knew how her Civ fully worked.”

“I don’t think she’s going to start killing her patrons. She runs this place as a business, right? If she started killing her own patrons, then she’d be done for. Nobody would come back here.”

“Can we take that risk?”

Blair looked out at the mass of dancing youths, enjoying their lives, oblivious to the fact that the floor they were dancing on had dozens of gang deaths buried below it. Blair couldn’t help but wonder about the people who had died in that train accident—the people who weren’t so lucky. “No. No, we can’t. Who would we be if we put innocent people at risk in order to carry out some revenge fantasy?”

“So, what are we supposed to do?”

“We have to let them follow us.”

“Blair, I’m not letting that happen. We have to look out for ourselves. If we get killed, then who knows how many people might die in the future because we gave up our lives?”

“Exactly, Thomas. Who knows? We can’t dwell on possibilities—on the unknown maybes of life. We need to act with the information we have. And how could you say that after risking your life to save people from that train?”

“You’re right. It’s just that . . .” Thomas sighed. “I don’t have a lot of people behind me, you know? And it’s selfish, but I can’t lose someone else. I can’t do it. I won’t let it happen.”

“I’m sorry about that, Thomas. I really am. And I’m glad I can be an ally, but we didn’t start on this quest to make friends. I’m going to get them to tail us, Thomas. It’s the only way,” Blair answered, walking out the door and giving a “hearty pip-pip from Maud Dixon” to the security guard. Thomas found that specific wording to be a bit on the nose, but who was he to judge?

Thomas followed suit, the two of them exiting the premises. “Are we really just running away? This feels anticlimactic.” Thomas said, jogging to catch up with Blair. He could feel eyes on him. Watching his every move.

“Rosemary wants us to come to her? Then we just won’t do that. You said it yourself: this whole thing was probably a trap, to begin with.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t mean it was like a trap-trap. I meant it was one of those traps where somebody says ‘Aha, I trapped you,’ and then you say ‘No but I trapped your trap!’ and then you get the cheese.”

“Those don’t exist,” Blair said getting onto a train car with Thomas following suit.

“Hmm. I never really thought of just not doing a fight, you know? There’ve been so many times where I seek out a fight and then it gets bad, and then I just keep going. It seems like a lot of people do that. It’ll be nice to avoid some danger tonight. Wait, are we slowing down?” Thomas beamed with pride about his realization before the beaming faded as the train screeched to a halt. “Nevermind,” Thomas said, prying open the car doors to get a look at what had stopped the train, and what he saw didn’t surprise him. Hundreds of red wires had curved their way into the train’s wheels before the place had even fully left the station outside The Snapping Jaws.

Rosemary was standing, dishevelled, on the platform, staring at Thomas, with hundreds of threads coming out of her shoulders and back. “What is wrong with you!? I hand you the opportunity to kill me, and you just walk away? Who the fuck does that?”

Blair poked her head out of the doorway. “Smart strategists—that’s who! Now you’ve fallen into our trap!” Blair said with a laugh. “Thomas, activate the trap.”

“What trap?” Thomas said, immediately before Rosemary screamed and the wires wrapped around their train car, tearing it from the order of the rest of the train and lifting it high into the air. The car had been flipped on its side, with the doorway thirty feet off the ground leading to the dark concrete of the train platform. And a furious Rosemary Krokodil.

“I was looking forward to this, Thomas. When I found out that the elusive and dreadfully annoying Phantom Limb and the backstabbing worthless wretch Thomas Finn were the same person, I was ecstatic! I was literally going to kill two birds with one stone!”

“‘Backstabbing’? Thomas, what is she talking about?” Blair asked, turning towards him while trying to avoid falling out of the train car.

“That wasn’t my fault. We can talk about this later.”

“Oh, did he convince you that he was some sort of misunderstood and troubled individual? ‘Boohoo. My mommy died, and my daddy doesn’t like me. Well, guess what, Thomas? I’m the exact same way, and I turned out FINE!” Rosemary shouted as the wires around the train car began to crush the metal coffin, squeezing the two into a claustrophobic meat compressor as other wires shut the door.