Trapped

First: Jode lunged toward Sebastian, slamming a fist toward the boy's face. The blow didn't make contact-Sebastian's nanite friends would never permit that-but the boy reflexively retreated from the attack. Backward. Into the airlock shack that led to the electric cage. At some point when we'd been distracted by other things, Jode must have opened the shack door. Still backing up, Sebastian tripped over the lip of the airlock doorway and fell to the floor inside. He didn't hit the ground hard-his nanite friends cushioned the fall-but Jode shut the door behind the boy and threw a lever on the shack's outer wall. The inner door of the airlock, the one to the prison cube's interior, slid open in response to the button. The mass of dusty black inside the cage, quiescent all this time, lurched instantly toward Sebastian and rolled over him like a midnight avalanche.

Second: the Caryatid cried, "Damn you!" and erupted into flame. Spontaneous human combustion-an age-old legend dismissed by scientists, but if anyone could manage the feat, it was the Steel Caryatid. She lit no match to start the blaze; she simply waved her hands, and suddenly she was burning. Not just on fire… the Caryatid was fire, a woman turned an inferno: advancing on Jode as her legs withered to ash, then continuing forward as flame incarnate, a final conflagration accelerating across the room and roaring into the alien at full speed. Jode was just turning away from shutting Sebastian in the airlock. The fire struck the Lucifer blind-side and ignited its Rosalind clothing. A howl of pain. A wet sizzle. There was nothing left of the Caryatid at all, her flesh and bones incinerated in a flash; but Jode was awash in searing flame.

Third: Dreamsinger turned toward the burning alien. The light of the flames lit her face with orange intensity, but the Spark Lord's expression was blank. She'd been caught by surprise when Jode and the Caryatid acted. I think Dreamsinger had expected someone to attack her, she wasn't prepared to be ignored, treated as if she meant nothing compared to more important targets. Now as she approached Jode-in-flames, I couldn't tell if she intended to put out the fires incinerating the alien or to stoke them higher. Dreamsinger apparently couldn't decide either-she moved slowly, distractedly fingering the ‹BINK›-rod in her hands, finally coming to a bemused stop in front of the Lucifer ablaze.

Which is how she was standing when the Element gun went off.

She was hit by a volley from all four barrels-bullets, fire, acid, sound. The first three attacks stopped short of their target as the force field around Dreamsinger's armor blazed into violet life. Bullets turned to molten lead as they hit the energy barrier; fire and acid splashed the violet glow but couldn't reach the gawky girl inside. Only the hypersonic waves got through… and I assume they would have been stopped as well if Dreamsinger had been wearing her helmet.

Without that helmet, she was vulnerable to simple sound. Amidst the clatter of bullets and the whoosh of flame, she gasped and crumpled to the floor.

A Spark Lord defeated. Unconscious.

Elizabeth Tzekich raced around the corner of the laser cage and ran to what she thought was her daughter. Knife-Hand Liz held an Element gun; its barrels were still smoking.

Tzekich was followed by the same two bully-boys we'd seen in Nanticook House. They'd all come around the far side of the prison cube: moving quietly, hidden by the great alien mound in the cage and by the noise the rest of us had been making.

I didn't know how long Tzekich had been listening, but obviously she hadn't understood that the girl who looked like Rosalind was actually an alien shapeshifter. Or maybe she had heard and didn't believe it. We'd told her the previous night that her daughter was dead, replaced by some kind of double… but she hadn't believed it then, either. And who knows what goes through a mother's mind when she sees what looks like her daughter enveloped in flame? She only had our word this wasn't the real Rosalind; and she wasn't prepared to trust us.

Not when her daughter was burning.

The moment Tzekich reached the fiery Jode, she tossed her gun aside and whipped off her thick winter coat. She used the coat to swat the flames, muffling Jode's body when the fire had been beaten down enough to be smothered. By then, Jode's face was black and flaky, scraps falling from the creature's cheeks like bits of burnt paper; but the Lucifer still retained some semblance of Rosalind, enough to fool a frantic mother. Tzekich was murmuring teary words in a language I didn't understand-leaning close as if she wanted to kiss the girl but was too afraid of damaging the blistered face.

"You know what's going to happen," I whispered to Annah.

"Yes," she said. "If the Lucifer's still alive…"

"It is. Bits of it. Remember, each curd is a separate organism. What Opal called cellules."