We took advantage of the chaos outside and started opening the door to every glass house in our path. Not all the doors were locked, but we didn’t have time to inquire why, assuming that HQ relied on security and the Berserkers to keep their assets in place. We startled those inside—clones of our witches and scientists—none of whom had enough speed of thought to put on red lenses. Where the doors wouldn’t open, we smashed the locks or broke the windows to look inside, still searching for our friends. As we moved further down the extension, the noise from the Valkyries and the Berserkers grew fainter, but I still heard the shouts and the screams, the splashing of doppelgangers being thrown into the water.
“They have to be here,” Jericho whispered as we continued with our search. “They have to.”
“We’ll find them,” I replied, still firm in my beliefs and driven by a surging determination to survive. Moments later, I opened another door, and a clone jumped on me. It was a copy of Corrine, only she seemed… incomplete. Baring her teeth and hissing like a wild animal, her features were smudged as if someone had wiped her prominent cheekbones and bright eyes with a sponge, leaving only faint impressions behind.
“Astra!” Thayen managed, but I shot the witch-clone with my pulverizer weapon. Silvery ashes settled on me. I huffed and puffed and coughed some of it off, but I got back up, and we went on with our search. We didn’t waste our pulverizer pellets, using them only where needed. I realized that the witch-clone from earlier had jumped at the door, not me specifically. The creatures that were held here must’ve been dazed, and with the violence currently unfolding around them, I imagined they’d be confused and desperate to get out.
“They have to be here,” I murmured, mostly to myself, five minutes later. We were still pushing doors open and bumping into dazed doppelgangers who couldn’t even see us. “They have to…” I took a moment to look at Thayen. He was getting better with his glamoring—or at least his recovery periods were getting shorter. I hoped he’d be able to do more, soon enough. I would’ve liked a proper spirit-bender to help us with the powerful Berserkers, at least.
We spread out, each of us taking a glass house along the way until finally I heard Isabelle’s frightened squeal and my mom’s cry of pure joy, followed by laughter. It must’ve been weird for Isabelle and the others to have their souls “checked” without even seeing Mom. By the time Thayen, Jericho, and I reached her, she was inside another unit, visible and with her arms thrown around a groggy Isabelle who’d just gotten out of bed. Voss and Chantal were with her, IV needles piercing their forearms.
“Finally!” I groaned, then revealed myself and swiftly kneeled beside Voss’s bed. He gave me a curious look as I pressed my hand through his chest, his soul tickling the tips of my fingers. “It’s him,” I told Thayen, who took my place and gently removed the hawk-wolf’s IV. I checked Chantal and Isabelle while Jericho cleared their arms of needles and gave them plenty of water to drink so that the medication would leave their systems as quickly as possible.
It was the one thing I couldn’t help with. They weren’t ill or hurt, so I had nothing to heal. We would have to wait for the drugs to pass naturally through their bloodstreams and wear off.
“Can you stand?” Thayen asked Isabelle, who could barely keep her eyes open. She shook her head slowly, and he put an arm around her shoulders to help her up.
“This isn’t the holding section,” Jericho noticed, looking at some of the boxes filling this particular glass house. “This is storage.”
“They were using Isabelle, Chantal, and Voss to get to us,” I said. “They knew we were coming for them. They knew Myst or even Brandon would spot them here, and that they would bring us to this place.” It had been a ruse from the very beginning. But we’d found them. That was all that mattered.
Thayen took Isabelle, Jericho handled Voss, and I had Chantal. The three of them were drowsy, their knees weak and eyes drooping. “Come on, it’s time to go,” I said, looking at Mom. She was frozen in place, her eyes wide and cold purple as she stared at me. “Mom?”
A low growl slipped past her, wisps of black coming from her back like steam rising. The shadow hound behind her reared its ugly, shapeless head. Only then did I see the obsidian claw extending from its crooked, smoky hand and up to the side of her neck, where it threatened to pierce.
“No…” I mumbled, my blood running cold, the horror suddenly too real. “Let her go.”
The shadow beast hissed, and I felt the light growing inside me. It screeched and tightened its grip on my mom, hiding behind her while its claw broke the skin and drew a generous drop of blood. It was its way of telling me to stop or it would do much worse before I could get it off her.
“There’s only one of you,” I said firmly, though my voice trembled. I wasn’t sure it was enough to deter the fiend, but I was desperate to get my mom out safely. “This isn’t going to work.”
The creature growled, its jaw dropping, and I could see the pitch blackness in the back of its throat, an abyss that hungered for my flesh and my soul. Mom tried to stay calm, not moving a single inch. “Don’t provoke it,” she said. “Take a deep breath, baby.”
“Why don’t you zap away from him?” Jericho asked, holding Voss close.
“It’s got another claw in my back,” Mom replied. “I can’t risk
