Thinking fast, I fumbled in my bag and brought out the prism flare. Not that I had any intention of using it. A repeat flare that quickly after the first could cause more than temporary vision damage. My friends and I were the good guys. And what made us the good guys was acting like it.
But the security goons didn’t know that. They’d assume the worst of me in this situation and I needed them to until we were clear.
The man frowned as I lifted the cylinder, Anavi and Devin shielded behind me. “Back off. Let us out or I’ll set off this flare. I’m guessing you don’t want your prize test subjects here getting hurt.”
They wouldn’t know that Anavi and Devin were useless for their CEO’s evil purposes. Not yet.
The security cowboy started to surge forward, but a hand from behind pulled him back, against the wall. We were allowed to pass.
And there was the elevator, which I guided us past. I opened the stairwell door. “Sorry, we have to take the stairs. Pretty sure they can stop that elevator.”
“You are kind of terrifying,” Devin said, going through to the stairs.
“Thanks,” I returned.
Anavi was shaking her head, her blinks slowing as her eyes recovered. She hesitated at the threshold. “Lois, I—I had no intention of collusion, I—”
I pressed her into the stairwell after Devin. “Good to have you back.”
Both of them were recovering. They were going to be themselves. That was all the thanks I needed.
“Do you think the connection’s severed for everyone?” I asked.
“I could still feel the others when Daisy tossed us out of the game. Weak, but there. The second shock severed us. Cleanly,” Anavi said.
“She’s right,” Devin tossed over his shoulder. “It was like my brain made a moat, forced everything on the other side of it.”
We half stumbled, half ran down the stairwell. “How did you figure it out?” Anavi asked.
“Long story, lots of research. Some help from my trusty sidekick.”
“I don’t think that was a game,” Devin said. “It didn’t feel like Worlds.”
“It wasn’t—or it wasn’t going to be one forever,” I said. “They were going to try to sell it to the military. ”
Maybe even to my dad.
Maybe he would have liked it. Maybe he would have wanted to buy it.
No, I wouldn’t believe that. Couldn’t. It was plain enough that the military hadn’t been told anything about this. And Dad would never have agreed to it. But soon they and the rest of the world would know the details—assuming the rest of the plan went smoothly.
We reached the door that opened to the first floor. Part of me was more nervous about this than any of the rest. We had to make a getaway if we were going to tell this story. That was the only way to ensure the experiment got put on permanent ice. “Follow my lead,” I said, pulling open the door. “We’ll move quick and hope for the best.”
Or not.
The lobby was filled with more security guards. There were stun guns pointed toward us. The tightly wound, superior front desk woman held a taser that I did not doubt she’d delight in using.
It was my responsibility to get the three of us free from this place. Once we were out the front doors, everything would be fine.
That meant holding off security until our reinforcements showed. The only bluff I had was the prism flare.
So I hefted the cylinder high.
“Stay back,” I said.
A tall woman in a suit wearing an earpiece stepped forward. “I’m the head of security,” she said, “and you seem to be abducting two of our visitors.”
“They want to go,” I said. “They never wanted to be here in the first place.”
She ignored that. “I also happen to have this gadget developed by our very own lab that disables that kind of flare.”
The woman held up a long, slender device. It didn’t look that different from the detonator the soldiers in the simulation upstairs had been about to use. “It’s got a limited range, but it can kill that or anything with a signal—like your phones—from here.” She pressed a button on it. “Our instruments were designed to be unaffected by this. Yours wasn’t, I’m afraid.”
To be on the safe side, I said, “Close your eyes,” to Anavi and Devin, before I squeezed my own shut and pulled out the pin of the flare.
But as I’d suspected, nothing happened. The woman was telling the truth about her effective little gadget.
She was also coming toward us.
Which meant the commotion at the front doors was as welcome and as well-timed as it could possibly have been. Jamming the dead flare in my bag, I walked forward to meet the woman, and when I reached her, I did something I’d done plenty of times playing around with Lucy—I tripped. I grabbed her arm for balance, and she reached out to steady me. She dropped the gadget in the process, but I was still in motion, and the device made a satisfying crunch under my boot.
“Um, oops,” I said.
She frowned down at it, and I released her arm and slipped away from her.
The part of Dad’s self-defense lessons about evading holds had come in handy, finally, against someone other than my kid sister.