"Go! Go! GO!"

Call screams in my ear with every single hurried step I take towards the hangar. Pearl groans and covers her ears after the dozenth-or-so exclamation that's somehow getting louder by the scream, and I wish that I could too. There's a mania in his voice–desperation and panic combined into one–that sounds a little too dangerous for my liking.

It's the voice of someone about to do something radical. Someone that's supposed to be staying put in that room so neither of us get found out. Whatever psychic programming the Preservation has him under is… well… to be blunt, it's idiotic. If I get to the hangar and there's a dozen other speakers all panicking like Call, then we'll have a much bigger problem than just the mechs.

And that's already a massive problem.

"Call, I need you to focus–check your map and your messages," I say in an attempt to distract him. "Anything that comes in from the Preservation higher ups, you make sure I know it. And before you think about running out of that room to help with this yourself–remember the flyover."

"The flyover?! What does this have to do with the–th–the flyover?" he sputters out, then goes quiet. "Oh, shit. Are they doing this to me? It's happened before, and I thought it was just panic from something like this happening for the first time, but I'd never had a reaction like this before and I can't really imagine myself panicking pointlessly like this especially when we have something much more important…"

He trails off again in a haze of muttering run-on sentences. There's a little more cognizance to his voice as he mutters, but the mania is still there. So, so much there. All that's changed is that he actually knows it now. Doesn't mean he won't act on it eventually if the Preservation sends out the right messages.

A shuddering rumble flows through the air–just the air–as I reach the fence at the edge of the hangar compound. It leaves a strange wavy pattern stuck hovering in the air like waves in a shallow pond, magic flickering from them in increasing amounts. I drop to the ground to avoid the things, roll on my side, and jump back up into a sprint when I'm clear.

Pearl hums in thought. "I don't think you had to do that. The magic in them isn't strong enough."

"Yeah, but we don't know what they do. A pure attack might do nothing, but they could lock up the suit."

"Good point. But what about the rest of them?"

Pearl extends a finger at the rest of the space between us and the hangar. The frozen waves are far more numerous the closer we get, and right around the walls, they're so thick that I can't even tell they're waves anymore. It's basically a solid mass of strange leaking magic.

"I'm here!" A frantic voice screeches from behind me, beside me, and then in front of me as someone sprints in at mind-boggling speeds. "Don't blow up don't blow up don't blow up!"

They blow through the magical waves like a knife through thin aluminum. But, like a knife, their speed dies down and dulls with each wave, until they slow to a walk in the mass. A loud gasp fills their lungs for far too long.

Crunch.

Their armor collapses in on itself. Blood and viscera squelches out of cracks down the back in a horrible display like toothpaste being generously squeezed from a tube. Call cries out in surprise, but much to my own surprise, it barely phases me. The magic felt off. Yet, somehow… it doesn't feel like the magic was solely at fault.

"Call, I need a little air," I say seriously. "Even if it's just a pinhole, open something up for me."

"Yeah, yeah, can do, yeah, yeah," he mutters.

A small hole opens on the back of my neck. It's exactly what I asked for; a pin's worth of air that's not enough for anyone to look inside. My awareness bursts free like a swimmer filling their lungs after a deep free dive, coating everything around me in a sense that feels so normal.

All the magic becomes so much clearer. Each wave is compressed in on itself, stuck in midair because each side of it is trying to push towards all the other sides with exactly equal force. It isn't that the waves themselves forced something on the deceased speaker. It's that they were slowed to a stop at the absolutely worst possible spot, then tried to do… something… that brought the waves into their suit.

"Do you know what Class that guy had?"

I field the question to Pearl as much as to Call. The former shrugs helplessly, but the latter makes a confirmatory noise that sounds like it's on the brink of doing something stupid.

"He's a transmuter. They–"

"Got it," I interrupt. "He must've tried to take in the magic and got crushed for it."

"Mmhm."

I tilt my neck to the side and grimace. I could get through this easy with a purification or infusion, but Call probably couldn't. People also aren't as close as I'd like; there isn't a single speaker in my awareness or on Call's radar. Maybe that's good enough. But if I do anything, that could be traced back to me…

"PLEASE! SOMEBODY! WE'RE–"

The voice of the old man from earlier resonates from inside the hangar. There's a hitch in it that sounds like an injury, and then it just stops mid-sentence. I ball my fists, take one more look around in my awareness, and feel someone flying down. But they're not fast enough. Not to save someone who might already be dead.

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"We can't," Pearl says quietly. "You know that."

It hurts to give a shallow nod. "I know."

"It'll just take fifteen seconds."

"I know."

I try to move. Pearl gently extends some shellraiser goo to lower my arm–not with enough force to actually stop me, but as a reminder that I can't put everything at risk. I'm not some movie action hero that can blast my way out of anything and come away perfectly fine. If the Preservation gets so much as a whiff that I'm here, then things instantly go sideways.

So even if it hurts–even if it means a single innocent person dying–I stay my hand. Blood trickles down the side of my mouth from biting my tongue. Pearl offers me a melancholic look of sympathy that's been honed from far too much experience.

Boots touch down next to me not five seconds later. They're attached to a speaker suit that's unbelievably intimidating; glossy black, reflective like glass, and completely bereft of any markings whatsoever. It's like the entire thing was carved from volcanic glass, then faceted to get a few more details down.

Call's voice clicks before I can say anything. "Lament! It killed Gush!"

The suit that's about a head shorter than me looks down to the crushed mass of person. "I see. Drawl will be here soon; if there's anything left of Gush in there, he'll be able to heal him. Anything else I should know?"

"Um, he just ran into open air, and then imploded!"

Lament nods to himself and takes a careful step forward. His shoulder brushes a wave as he walks by, and it gently pulls him towards the center of it. Magic fills his armor at exactly the right point until it audibly hums with power, then detonates with a single pop of thrumming magic.

The wave disintegrates in the blink of an eye. So does a leaf that had the misfortune of gently wafting in Lament's general direction at the time. Both of them gently dissolve, like a piece of wood crumbling into ashes, until absolutely nothing is left. Lament brushes a fine dust from his shoulder and keeps walking.

"SHL radiation. Do not touch it unless you have an anti-magic spell, skill, or item prepared," Lament warns. "It's the stuff that keeps the reactors working, which means we already have a core breach in there. You're not strong enough to be here on your own."

The way he says it is unbelievably matter-of-fact. No dismissal, no punching down, just a raw fact that Call will die if he touches too much of this stuff. If SHL stands for anything close to Shellraiser, though, then I might have one of the only minds cozied up to mine that could stop this reactor from detonating.

"Then what can I do?" Call asks helplessly. "I can't just sit back and let everyone get hurt!"

Lament turns and stares directly at me. There's hesitance in his body language, and if he was feeling what Call is feeling, then he definitely wouldn't have any kind of hesitance. He must be immune to whatever the psychics are forcing on Call.

"I know you can't," he mutters, though there's fondness in his words. He turns and waves for me to follow him. "Stay close and do not leave my bubble for any reason. We've already lost one speaker today to impatience."

Call's passive mumblings stop dead in their tracks as I step into Lament's 'bubble', which is really just a mass of disintegrating magic that somehow doesn't affect me. The guy has masterful control over it. I breathe in through my nose and watch as the radiation breaks down before it can get more than an inch into the eight-foot radius sphere of magical destruction.

More signals appear in my helmet at almost the exact same time. Dozens of speakers rushing to stop the hangar from becoming a threat to the entire city. Even if they're all spurred on by the Preservation manipulating them psychically, these are all Class bearers who want to protect people. Who want to make the world a better place–even if their world only consists of themselves and this city.

Most of them will fight tooth and nail to stop the resort from dealing with the Preservation higher-ups. A lot of them will die thinking they're saving the world. Even more will die without knowing any truths at all. Maybe all of them will die under the psychic control of someone stronger than Gasp–the psychic the Preservation tossed away like garbage.

I turn away and refocus on the door. Lament's already putting his hand on the metal and shoving it in with a single strong-armed push. The metal simply dissolves around the impact, spreading all through the door itself until it doesn't exist any more. Radiation chokes the life out of the space I remember from just a little while ago, and a hum from deeper in warns that this is far from the worst of it.

"Help…" a weak voice struggles from inside of the radiation. "Please…"

Lament grabs my arm and pulls me over to the voice. His magic shears away the radiation to reveal the old guard from before, though… he looks like he's seen better days. His fingernails lie next to his hands in perfectly clean chunks. Both of his eyes rest on the metal like glass marbles. Every single one of his teeth spill out of his mouth as he opens it to sob in pain. I want to look away, but force myself to stare in horror at this poor man.

"Am I going to die?" he whispers.

Lament slowly shakes his head. "I'm sorry, friend, but you'll survive. Someone will be here in a moment to aid you. I… pray for your recovery."

The man licks his lips. His tongue falls out. Lament's entire body shudders as we all stare at the piece of muscle that looks like it was pulled out of an anatomy model, not the head of a still living human. The old man scrapes his nail-less fingers along the floor with a throaty cry for help garbled by a lack of tongue and teeth.

Armored speakers rush into the room. A healer shoves me and Lament aside without a word and kneels down next to the man as they summon a syringe filled with liquid that pulses with magic that feels like liquid sleep. Lament snaps out to grab their wrist before they can do anything.

The healer looks up at him and sighs. "It's a mercy."

"It's unnecessary," Lament decrees. "He is not untreatable. So treat him."

"Potions? Can we not use potions?" I ask in confusion as the healer swaps out the syringe for one that feels like angry bees ground down into liquid fire. "God damn it, Call, ask the damn question!"

His voice clicks. "The radiation undoes any magic weaker than it. So unless you have a potion stronger than the reactors in our mechs… this is the best we can do."

I grit my teeth and watch as the healer injects the man with liquid fire. He convulses and gurgles out in pain as the injection visibly travels down his arm and into his bloodstream in branching tunnels of molten pain. Lament fixes his visor on the other speaker and puts a hand on the healer's shoulder, leaving an outline of a handprint that vibrates with magic. The healer doesn't notice at all.

Then Lament turns to focus on what's inside the hangar. I can feel at least one mech struggling to break free from its restraints. And where there's one… all the rest are soon to follow.

"If anyone's alive in there, we're saving them first," Lament says. "Follow me. I won't let this be a repeat of last time."

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