The halls of the Material Science Division stretched into the distance, a long expanse that branched into hundreds of labs and testing facilities. Grace strode down the hall, her footsteps interrupting the soft hum of the air conditioners and the buzz of the fluorescent lights.

Thea walked just ahead of her. Her lab coat was a size too big, and it dragged on the floor, collecting dirt and grime. Sweat beaded on the back of Thea’s neck, reflecting the harsh lights, a sharp contrast to her dark brown skin.

“You’re starting to worry me,” Grace said. “I thought the manufacturing was ahead of schedule.”

“It was.” Thea kept walking, face forward. “And I was sure our reflectors shared the same properties as the sample. The exact same. They were perfect. I had no doubt about that.”

“Had?”

Thea stopped beside a thick door with no handle. She turned to Grace and bit her lip. “Yes, well… it’s the First Shadow. As soon as the Shadow descended, the sample evolved into something new. Its properties are completely different. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Let me guess, our reflectors didn’t evolve with it.”

“Exactly. Let me show you.” Thea tapped a password into a keypad by the door, and it whooshed open.

Grace followed her onto a catwalk that ran along a massive warehouse. Below, hundreds of reflectors stood in neat rows, ready to be packed and shipped to the staging facility. A massive bay door closed off the end of the warehouse, with a fleet of trucks standing by. But any effort to finish packing had ground to a halt, the workers just standing around and twiddling their thumbs.

The reflectors themselves looked like orange pieces of glass that were cut into conical wedges. They were semi-transparent, and when Grace looked through them, they had a wavy, warping effect on the light. Exactly like the original sample had appeared, only more refined and shaped to their purpose. It had taken months to get this far, but if Thea was correct, all these reflectors were now useless.

Thea’s footsteps clanged against the catwalk as she strode to the other side, where another door was inset into the wall. This door was thicker and required higher security clearance. The door opened, and the two stepped inside.

The sample storage chamber had originally been a locker room for the warehouse workers. Now it was reinforced with concrete blast walls, capable of withstanding quite the explosion. Though Thea’s abilities had never caused any accidents, supposedly there was a slight risk of a resonance cascade. Better to be safe than sorry.

The sample itself was held in a safe built into the far wall. Grace could see it through the bulletproof viewing slit. Before, the sample had been a jagged piece of orange glass, but now it was a smooth orb. A fractal pattern rippled beneath its dark purple sheen.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Grace said. “We knew Second Shadow required a bigger array, but Owen never said anything about the material evolving into something new.”

“Yes, but Owen doesn’t need to worry about that. We’re the ones trying to take a shortcut.”

Grace tapped her fingers against her thigh. This would certainly be a setback. And she had to assume there would be a similar problem with the Third Shadow as well. Which meant no shortcuts. Perhaps it would be better to invade Eldridge Creek and take over the mining operation. It would mean an all-out war with Owen, but there was a chance she could win it.

The idea was worth considering, but she couldn’t cut her losses yet. “I assume you’ve tried to replicate the new material.”

“Of course,” Thea said. “But even with the power of the First Shadow, this material seems as elusive as the original sample. Perhaps more so.”

Grace took a sharp breath, and she tried not to let her irritation show. If this new sample took as long to replicate as the first one, then they’d be months behind schedule. “Try it again. I want to see.”

Thea nodded, and she reached into a bin against the wall and retrieved a fist-sized lump of glassy stone. Then she opened a smaller safe, revealing an array of plastic vials. These vials held small slivers of the original sample, and Thea carefully teased one out. She raised the rock with one hand, arm trembling with the weight, and held the sliver with the other.

Thea closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The air in the room grew heavy, and it started to flex toward Thea as if the universe suddenly revolved around her. Grace kept her gaze locked on the stone, and it started to shift before her eyes. Its shape smoothed into a perfect sphere, and its color darkened. But beyond that, the rock didn’t change. It kept its dull gray color, and it was missing the sample’s fractal pattern.

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The sliver disintegrated in Thea’s palm. An unfortunate by-product of her power. Though she could copy the molecular structure of any object, it always destroyed the original. She leaned over, panting. “That’s the closest I can get without destabilizing the molecular structure.”

“Keep at it,” Grace said. “And maybe see if Upton can help. Have you spoken to him?”

Thea nodded. “He’s in the Sauna with the others, but I don’t think he’ll be cooperative. I can go get him if you’d like.”

“No, I’ll see to it myself.”

Grace strode from the storage chamber, the door clanging shut behind her. This whole thing was turning into a massive headache. After all her planning, she couldn’t help being disappointed. These parasites had tricked her into thinking she had everything under control. That she knew all the variables. But the First Shadow had shattered that illusion with every step.

It wasn’t far to the Sauna. Grace passed countless doors, but she only passed one worker along the way, a tall man in a wrinkled lab coat. He hurried past, avoiding her gaze. The employees knew better than to get in her way.

Her phone buzzed against her thigh. Grace pulled it out and glanced at the caller ID. Torch Labs Security. She answered, but she didn’t slow down. “What is it?”

“A car left Eldridge Creek,” the security officer said. “We followed it, of course, but they were flagged down by a deputy and taken to the sheriff’s office for questioning. Two males and a female, young twenties.”

Hmm. Were they some of Owen’s followers, or could it be this Seth Mayhew? Either way, it would be best to monitor them further. Especially with the setback to manufacturing. “Thanks for the report. Continue watching, from a distance. I’ll send backup soon.”

“You got it.” The security officer hung up.

Grace turned to the right, hurried down a stairwell, then followed the hall to a set of double doors. These opened into an airlock, and Grace stepped inside and waited for the air pressure to stabilize. It only took a few seconds, during which Grace typed her password into the keypad.

As soon as the Sauna door cracked open, the Signal buzzed against Grace’s ears. It streamed from hundreds of speakers within the Sauna’s walls, surrounding her in a sphere of energy. The sound strummed through her bones, and Grace quivered at its touch.

Fog drifted through the Sauna, obscuring the occupants. As theorized, this mist helped carry the Signal, acting as a transfer medium between the stream of cosmic data and the physical world.

Though it pained her, Grace pressed the red button beside the door, muting the speakers. Fans along the floor vented the steam, clearing the air. The fog gone, Grace was left in a small, circular room. A table filled the center, with seven seats around it, though only two were occupied.

Well, technically only one. Andrews hovered over her chair, her eyes closed and her legs crossed beneath her. Show off. “Why’d you turn it off? I was meditating.”

Such arrogance. Grace’s Charm ability allowed her to bend others to her will. But to a select few, it had given them wishes of their own. Grace called these special subordinates her Pantheon. And though these wishes gave the members of her Pantheon useful abilities, they also made them resistant to her orders.

“We have a problem,” Grace said.

“We know,” Upton said. He hunched over the table, staring through his spectacles at a rough canvas. As he spoke, he frantically drew his brush over the canvas, painting an image entirely in dark red. “Thea told us.”

Grace walked around the table and settled behind Upton. She peered over his shoulder at his painting, which depicted an ice cream sundae. The kind one would find in a retro diner, with the tulip glass and the chocolate fudge and the dyed cherry on top. Though the image was entirely red, Upton put incredible detail into the painting. He held one hand flat on the table, palm up, and within it pooled a well of blood. Upton dipped his brush into the blood, shook off the excess, then continued shading the sundae.

As he worked, the sundae’s details felt more real, more substantial. Upton quickly finished his painting. He glanced up at Grace, a slight smirk on his face, before reaching into the image and peeling it away from the paper like a sticker. But as the sundae left the paper, it inflated outward, and its color shifted: the ice cream bleaching to a vanilla white, the fudge darkening to a deep brown.

Upton held the sundae up, now real. A spoon stuck from the top, and he offered it to Grace. The scent of sugar and cream drifted through the air, sickeningly sweet.

“No thanks.” Grace reached past him and tapped on his canvas, now blank. “You’re supposed to be helping Thea with the sample.”

Upton took a bite from his sundae. “I tried, but it didn't work. The meteorite fragment is a complicated material. I need more practice. Recently I’ve been trying to animate my paintings, and the idea seems promising, but—”

“I don’t care. Just keep trying.”

This was ridiculous. Thea could rearrange the molecular structure of any material, and Upton could create matter out of blood and a paintbrush, and yet neither of them could replicate the meteorite. The miracle of the parasite was supposed to save Grace time, but she was getting nowhere. Perhaps it was a limitation of the parasites themselves.

Well, fine. If Grace couldn’t rely on the Second Shadow, she would have to hedge her bets elsewhere. “Where are the others? Is Griffin here?”

“We’d have no way of knowing,” Andrews said.

“I think I saw a ripple in the fog earlier,” Upton said through a bite of his ice cream. “But that could have been anything.”

Grace glanced around. “Griffin, if you’re here you better show yourself.” Nothing happened. Grace sighed. “What about Perkins?”

“I think it's past her bedtime,” Upton said.

Damn. Those two were the best suited for the job, but it seemed Grace would have to settle for these idiots. Upton’s ability could be useful if he applied himself. Perhaps some time out in the field would do him some good. As for Andrews, Grace wasn’t sure what to make of her. She was young and ambitious, but her wish was so unoriginal. The ability to fly? Boring.

“Get your things,” Grace said. “I have a job for you.”