After getting over her nausea from letting Ethan teleport her over the mountains and back to Apex Tower (which was a lot like riding a rollercoaster with zero safety devices), Quinn swiped her badge and strode confidently into the lab, only to immediately run into a desk, banging her shin hard against the metal.

  “Ow,” she reached down, rubbing her black pantleg. She gazed up, then scoffed at the lab’s appearance, which now resembled something akin to a makeshift bunker rather than a world-class scientific facility.

  “What happened here?” she whispered. “I was only gone for four days!”

  Behind her, the door swung open, and two people walked, freezing in place when they spotted Quinn standing there with her arms folded, looking irritated. There was one man, shorter than Quinn, who could only be described as average in every way, and a woman roughly the same height with long black hair wearing an orange Protector suit. They were holding hands but let go awkwardly when they saw Quinn, cutting off their conversation and stopping short, standing in the doorway.

  “Who the hell are you, and what have you done to my lab?” Quinn demanded to know.

  “It was Derrick,” Gabriela said quickly, pointing to the man standing next to her. “He thought we were going to explode so we needed a little extra protection.”

  “And you thought my desk would save you?” Quinn asked pointedly.

  “What Gabriela meant,” Derrick correcgrd delicately, ”is that this whole city is going to implode, and we’re the ones meant to hit the button that lets Apex know it’s happening.” He gestured to the furthest desk away, the only one still against the second floor railing where Quinn noticed a giant red button taking up half the workspace. “We moved the desks to potentially buy us a little more time before the implosion happens.”

  “You mean by turning the whole lab into a massive fire hazard?”

  “I wish we were just dealing with a fire,” Derrick muttered.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Surge is gonna blow the city up in, like, three days,” Gabriela said indignantly, as if this was information Quinn already should’ve possessed.

  “Two, now,” Derrick muttered.

  “I see,” Quinn nodded. “And is Amory aware of this?”

  “Yeah, she sent Velo out to investigate.”

  “And?”

  “I…don’t think she’s come back yet,” Derrick said quietly.

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  Rainey must’ve trapped her, Quinn thought, feeling a pit in her stomach.

  “Has she sent anyone after her?”

  “Negative,” Gabriela answered. “There’s been too many attacks in the city since Titan went down. She can’t afford to send anyone else on a suicide mission.”

  “Except us,” Derrick muttered.

  “Except you,” Gabriela corrected. “As an expert marksman I have some value.”

  “What good is a marksman that can’t lift anything heavier than a baseball?”

  Gabriela turned to Derrick. “Derrick, you know I’ve been doing curls down here and-“

  Quinn let out a curt sigh, cutting Gabriela off. It’s really up to us, then. I need to figure out how close Rainey is to pushing all of the Surge energy to the city before Ethan gets us kicked out of here.

  Quinn moved through the maze of desks and found hers, then quickly logged in and began checking Apex’s probe map to see which probes Rainey’s moves would’ve set off. While it loaded, she glanced down at the Junction, surprised by how calm the first floor was. There was almost nobody left in the lab, save for the three of them, and the Junction was dark, but Quinn knew it wouldn’t stay that way for much longer.

  At the sound of a pleasant ping she brought her attention back to her monitor, frowning. She stared at the screen, confused at the lack of data. Normally, there would be a live chart measuring the rises and falls in levels of radio reactivity in the mountains near the probes, but now the line was just perfectly still. She thought she was missing something, but then she realized that the probes weren’t reporting everything as safe, they weren’t reporting anything at all.

  “How long have these probes been offline?” She called over to Derrick.

  “They started going down two days ago,” he answered. “That’s why Amory sent Velo out.”

  So Rainey’s been working on phase two of her plan for at least the last two days. She’s got a head start on us.

  “What was the last probe to go offline?”

  “The last probe we saw tripped was in Gould.”

  “Gould?” Quinn pulled up a map, unfamiliar with the town. It was a small valley town nearly three hours away. Crestone, where Rainey attacked earlier, was only two hours away. “When did it go offline?”

  “Three days ago.”

  Quinn nodded. “She’s moving the surge hour a day closer to the city,” Quinn said.

  “Uh, who is?” Gabriela asked.

  “No time,” Quinn stood up, her chair clattering behind her. “Get me a map of where the probes would be, and quickly,” she pointed at Derrick, who complied. Gabriela gave him a confused glance. Quinn pointed at her. “What do you do here, exactly?”

  “Annoy me, mostly,” Derrick answered for her.

  “Annoy him, mostly,” Gabriela agreed.

  “Good enough,” Quinn said. “We have to be quick if we want to cut her off. We only have two days max before she sends all the Surge energy slamming into the city.”

  “Wait,” Gabriela said, “there’s someone doing this? Not something?”

  “Correct,” Quinn told her, taking a printed out map from Derrick. A probe location about an hour south of Crestone caught her eye, but she couldn’t quite remember why.

  “Why would anyone do that?”

  “Probably because she was hurt,” Derrick offered.

  “If anyone hurt you, I’d kill them,” Gabriela said affectionately. Derrick blushed, looking away.

  Quinn stared intently at the map, then smiled. There was a probe running directly through the center of the Surge located in Mount Visage. “That’s exactly it. She wasn’t hurt. I was.”

  “What do you mean?” Derrick asked. Quinn’s phone buzzed, drawing her attention.

  Trapped. Need exit.

  “Could’ve guessed,” she smiled, shaking her head. She looked up at Gabriela with a mischievous smile.

  “Gabriela, I’ve got a job that just might be perfect for you. I need to get out of here, and I need to make a scene.”

  “Oh,” Gabriela said, hopping off a desk, suddenly interested. “Do you need to make an escape? Because there’s something I’ve been dying to do.”