Owl dived up from Fox's shadow, leaping away just as a wave of sheer force ripped through the ground and into the wall. It left a thick cut all along the room, like the whole thing had been built on two tectonic plates that had just decided to split apart. More than that, the cut was perfectly clean, enough that even as it sliced the kitchen counter right in half and reached up to the ceiling fifty yards away there was no hint of structural instability in its wake, as if the building itself had yet to realize it had been cut.

A dangerous move. Owl glanced over at Fox to make sure the other girl hadn't been hit by it either, and thankfully they'd both managed to come out unscathed. Still, their attempt to kill the target had been thoroughly dismantled; Dr. Faye now ran along with the other Artificers, the whole group heading for one of the exits.

"Go!" Owl said, and without hesitation dashed right for the swordsman.

Fox wasn't equipped for direct combat. Owl wasn't really equipped for it either, but she certainly had a better shot at it with her Trick, so if they were to salvage the mission she'd have to play distraction while Fox went after Faye before the doctor could find some safe room to hide in.

Thankfully, Fox quickly came to the same conclusion and went after the Artificers, her disguise peeling off in a liquid haze, the aged and portly form of Kilmer dissolving to reveal her true lithe form. The guard—a gunslinger, from the looks of the silver revolver he now unholstered—shot at her with a series of bullets that seemed made of pure light, and Fox managed to weave between them fine enough, but Owl had to stop paying attention to whatever happened after that because now the swordsman took another swing and she had to slide under it.

Much less dangerous, this time. The sword swept horizontally, and instead of cutting the room in half again the emitted force seemed to simply slam against the walls with a resonant thud. Looking at it, Owl saw that the blade had been re-sheathed and turned into more of a makeshift baseball bat, though the man wielding it did so with no less grace.

Had he decided the full might of his weapon was too dangerous to use indoors or around his allies? Maybe, though from the looks of it Owl thought he could've kept any collateral damage to a minimum if he so wished. So, what? Was he taking it easy on her?

As if to answer the unspoken question, Jason parried her sudden knife thrust with a casual flick of his sheathed blade. "You're just a kid..."

Owl responded with another thrust of her knife. When it got parried again, she turned it into a slice up at his face that he easily leaned back from, but that was fine. It let her get close enough to dive into his shadow.

Jason blinked when the girl suddenly disappeared into the ground, sinking into his shadow with nary a ripple. Interesting Trick there. He couldn't say he'd ever seen anything exactly like it, but after enough time in this business one naturally got a sense for these things. He closed his eyes and breathed, turning his Spirit Sense up to eleven.

He felt the Artificers across the room, a gaggle of Spirits so fluid they almost seemed to slip into each other. He felt Vincent, shining stalwart like a lightbulb, and that Talisman gun of his. He felt each bullet as they split and curved through the air, turning like speeding frisbees right toward that other girl who'd pretended to be Kilmer.

One etching for "plug" and the other for "bullet," or so Faye had said. Jason felt the result now as the girl's Spirit, a gaseous morphing thing that seemed to constantly bloom into itself, completely disappeared around where one of the bullets hit her arm, as if it had been shot right out of her body and left behind a dead vacuum. A gun that could destroy Spirit piece by piece? Was it permanent?

Jason would've kept wondering about it, but then he finally felt what he'd been fishing for the whole time: the little girl who was trying to kill him bulging back up out of the floor. He pivoted away from her stab, grabbed her wrist, considered breaking it but decided not to because it would've made him feel bad, idly raised a knee to block the kick she threw at his groin, then finally just went ahead and slammed the pommel of his sword hard enough into her gut to knock all the air right out of her.

Owl crumpled on the floor, this time not due to her Trick but to sheer, breathless pain, face twisted into a glaring and endless gasp. It was tough to watch, but Jason figured he shouldn't give too much slack to what seemed like some kind of trained assassin, even if she couldn't have been older than nine or ten.

"Don't feel too bad," he told her, propping his sheathed blade on his shoulder. As he did, the alarm blared out, filling the whole room with its ear-ringing drone. "You did pretty alright for someone your age."

It would've been easy to finish her off now. Very easy—she still struggled to so much as get a breath in, and even seemed on the precipice fainting altogether—but he didn't. If Owl hadn't known for sure before, she sure did now; this Ranger was definitely taking it easy on her. The Spirit flowing out of him alone was enough to lock her limbs in place despite all her defenses.

Vision growing spotty, Owl looked for Fox. The other girl had stopped trying to dance around the gunslinger's shots, cutting a path through the Artificers and using their jumbled mass as cover. While the researchers did try to fight back, Fox kept them at bay with her knife and a few well-placed kicks, one of her arms hanging at her side and swinging limply with each twist of her torso. Still, the circle of safety she'd created slowly closed in. Nearby a couple of bodies lay on the floor, victims of Fox's rush, but Faye stood unharmed at the crowd's edge, watching on in trepidation.

To make it all worse, Owl could already hear the stream of guards running through the halls, directed by the loud voice on the PA system, their footsteps thumping closer. Soon enough Fox and her would be well and truly surrounded.

This was why Owl hated rushing through a job. Stupid. They'd gotten overconfident, and Father had probably put too much faith in them. Or, no; how could they have known someone like Jason would just happen to be in the area? The way he had so immediately sensed their intentions and then just as immediately subdued her, he couldn't be anything less than the kind of high-level Magician you didn't send an infiltration team anywhere near. Even the outright combat pairs back at the House would probably have trouble with him.

The gunslinger didn't help either. A livid Vincent kept shooting, except instead of aiming straight for Fox and risking damage to the Artificers he aimed straight up at the ceiling. What should've been a foolish waste of effort turned into a slight stroke of genius, since the light bullets—fast enough to look more like needle-thin ray beams—headed upward, curved over the crowd of researchers in a speedy arc, and headed right for the assassin at their center.

Fox managed to avoid the bulk of the barrage, most of the beams hitting the floor in a harmless splash of light, but one grazed her on the hip. At once her leg buckled, and though she recovered quickly her sidestepping came with a clear limp. The Artificers tried to advance, and while a swipe of her knife kept them back, that obviously wouldn't last for much longer.

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Owl tried coming up with a way out, her breath finally returning somewhat. Glancing up, she saw Jason's gaze locked on Fox, but if the pressure she felt meant anything then the bulk of his attention was still solidly on her. It seemed he'd decided not to intervene in the other fight, and why would he? Vincent was doing just fine on his own.

Still, she had to do something. Fox wasn't in any position to, and Mouse would've retreated the moment she heard the alarm. The whole situation made Owl extremely aware of the pill she kept under the false tooth at the back of her mouth, but things weren't quite that bad yet. They could still get lucky. Not a great chance of it, but it could happen.

And then it did.

Faye suddenly gasped and fell to her knees, chin stretched up. Behind her, Mouse simply materialized out of thin air, her knife pointed directly at the Artificer's neck, black eyes scanning the rest of the room with cold intent.

"No one move," she said, and though she seemed not to put much strain on her voice it still echoed loud even above the alarm.

Seeing her there, and seeing the bead of blood now slipping down Faye's neck where the girl's knife nicked skin, everyone silently froze. Vincent stopped shooting, lips drawn into a grimace, and slowly lowered his gun. Even Jason blinked in apparent surprise, the first signs of real discontent he'd shown throughout the entire encounter.

Mouse glanced at Fox, and some message seemed to pass between them. Too far to see for sure, Owl could only guess that some instruction had been subvocalized, because the older girl went to her younger partner and their new hostage.

"Let us through," Mouse said. "And don't try anything."

In case anyone questioned her severity she cut deeper into Faye's neck, eliciting another seething gasp. The doctor made some attempts at breaking free while they advanced, but the combined strength of the girls—as well as the blades they kept very close to her jugulars—kept her from breaking out. The remaining Artificers parted to let her reluctantly through, and while progress was slow due to Fox's numbed leg the girls eventually reached Owl, who still lay beaten on the ground near a now calculating Jason.

"You don't have to do this," the Ranger said, some frustration making its way to his tone, hand tight around the handle of his sword.

Mouse didn't respond, merely passing by him until she stood next to Owl. Speaking quietly, the girl didn't dare look away from their enemies, particularly when the scattered lab guards finally began flooding in. "Get up."

Nodding, Owl did just that, though not without some difficulty. Count on Mouse to turn things completely around, she thought, feeling a strange fullness in her chest that was either pride or the full return of oxygen to her lungs. Confusion took hold of the lab residents as guards became aware of Faye's position and the Artificers pleaded both with them and the infiltrators, but Owl ignored the cacophony of mingled voices and kept ready for what actually mattered.

Mouse's voice reached her like a close whisper. "We need to run."

Owl's response came through pursed lips that opened and closed minutely, knowing that Mouse would be sure to hear it no matter how low she spoke. "That's obvious, but how?"

Fox's voice came through. "They couldn't follow us too well outside."

The great window behind them vibrated against the force of the blizzard that had by now consumed the whole landscape. Owl supposed it wouldn't be easy to track them in that storm, but then again it wasn't like they could navigate through it too well either.

"It'll help if we split up too," Fox said. "Give them less of a trail to pick up on. Meet back up at the rendezvous point?"

"If we make it that far," Mouse said.

"What other choice is there?"

"I guess none," Owl admitted.Now that she thought about it, this was probably the worst any of their missions had ever gone. It would've made her panic if she hadn't had that impulse literally beaten out of her.

The guards just kept coming in, dozens and dozens of them now narrowing in on the girls and their hostage, panic and shock slowly morphing into restlessness. Even the Artificers seemed to be coming around to the idea that this much of an imbalance in numbers was too much for anyone to overcome, something Owl was sure Mouse and Fox were as aware of as her. Vincent and Jason stood close by, bodies tense and ready to spring at the barest hint of an opening.

The longer they waited, the less chance they'd have. It made the frostbite-induced deaths that would almost certainly follow their attempted escape seem absolutely thrilling by comparison.

"If I don't see you two after this," Fox said, voice only partly insincere, "I want you both to know it's been plenty of fun."

"Nothing about this is fun," Owl muttered.

Mouse couldn't imagine all three of them not making it through this. Not because she was that confident, but because the very thought of having to go back to the House by herself was enough to make her knife tremble against Faye's neck.

But she took all that trepidation, fear, despair, and sunk it to the depths of her psyche. Those feelings had no use here. "On three, cover your ears."

Owl and Fox nodded, and something decisive must've come through in their bearing because Jason took a step forward.

"Don't do it!" he said.

Mouse ignored him. "One."

Vincent pointed his gun back at them, finger on the trigger, everything about him screaming at the need to squeeze it. Still, Faye's terrified eyes kept him in check. Behind him, the rest of the lab residents seemed to realize some shift was about to take place, all of them drawing forward.

"Two."

Now Faye's hands found Mouse's unmoving wrist. "Please!" she said, tears suddenly spilling from her eyes. "Just let me... At least let me tell them what should come next—"

"Three."

Mouse pulled, and her knife sliced through with a spray of crimson. Faye managed one last gurgle before, to the disbelieving horror of everyone before them, the woman fell forward into an expanding pool of her own blood, body twitching once or twice and then settling into deceased immobility.

"No!" Vincent screamed, shooting off one bullet after the next, his own face now streaking with tears. Jason, eyes wide, ran forward, sheathed sword swinging. The guards and Artificers behind them, some breaking into war cries and others bawling with unmasked grief, all surged as one rage-filled mass.

But it was too late. Even before Faye hit the ground Mouse had inhaled deeply and raised her other hand, Spirit expanding in practiced urgency. Owl and Fox both covered their ears tight, already stepping back behind the smaller girl, and when their target gasped her last breath Mouse snapped her fingers.

The air cracked open. Its unrepentant boom devoured the alarm and the shouting crowd of people and even the immediate shatter of the window. Hundreds of ears instantly popped, every sound replaced by an all-consuming whistle that rang over their own pained gasps, so much so that they couldn't even hear when the blizzard swept into the room and blinded them just as much as they'd been muted, the whole room filling with endless white noise.

Amidst this, Mouse, Owl, and Fox leaped through the shattered window. White filled their vision too, and a freezing cold seeped into their skin within seconds, but they all stomped forward into the colorless void regardless, knowing that a moment's hesitation would see them right back into the cage they'd just broken out of.

Mouse tried keeping her Trick tuned to their disappearing voices. She caught a word or two from Owl, a chatter of teeth from Fox, but soon enough the other girls vanished from sight as well as from sound until all she was left with was a wall of snow and a wail of wind.

"It was f-fun," she said, whispering the words to herself through clenched teeth, wishing she had let the others know when she had the chance.

And maybe she would get that chance again, if she survived this. The girl trudged forward, arms wrapped around each other and head forced down by pounding gusts, holding onto that single bit of hope.