Merlose was waiting for him outside the last session of the day, which usually meant trouble.

  "Walk with me," she said.

  Charlie fell into step beside her. "Am I in trouble?"

  "Not yet, but the night is young."

  She gave Charlie that smile that was now shorthand for, 'yes, that was a joke.' Charlie smiled back.

  They walked through the winding corridors of Terminal Hypnos, past a door that kept changing colors and a window that looked out onto a thunderstorm made of music. Charlie had stopped questioning the architecture. It was easier that way.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Sharpe wants to see you."

  "Why?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine. I hope it's not a parent-teacher, well, er, handler-teacher conference. I just had Lacy's yesterday, and that girl is trouble with a capital T."

  "Takes after her mom."

  The thought came out of Charlie's mouth before he even realized he said it.

  Merlose blinked at him.

  "Was that…?" Merlose was a little shocked at first, but then smiled. She continued to lead Charlie to Sharpe's room.

  They found Agent Sharpe in her classroom. It was the same bare room where Charlie had manifested the flashlight and accidentally destroyed a table. She was standing by the window, watching something outside that Charlie couldn't see. When they entered, she turned and smiled.

  "Brunswick, Merlose. Good, close the door."

  Merlose closed it and leaned against the wall. She crossed her arms and continued looking faintly amused.

  Sharpe reached into a bag at her feet and pulled out a bundle of fabric. She tossed it to Charlie.

  He caught it and unfolded the fabric. It was a uniform. Dark blue with silver trim, well-made and heavier than he expected. On the left chest, an emblem: a tower surrounded by six smaller symbols he didn't recognize.

  "Your practice kit," Sharpe said. "You're officially on the team."

  Charlie stared at it. "I thought I was already on the team."

  "You were provisionally on the team. Now you're actually on the team. Practice can officially start this week. The Director limits the season and when we can practice so junior agents don't get distracted during midterms or finals."

  "Uh-huh. Couldn't I just..." Charlie gestured vaguely at the jersey. "Manifest one?"

  "You'll want to see this, Callo," Sharpe said to Merlose. "Go ahead, Charlie."

  Charlie looked at his handler, and she gave a small nod.

  Charlie closed his eyes. Pictured the uniform. The dark blue fabric, the silver trim, the emblem on the chest. He believed in it. He understood what a uniform was.

  He opened his eyes. The uniform in his hands was a mess. One sleeve was longer than the other. The fabric was a patchwork of colors that didn't go together: swirling mustard yellow, pea green, and a stripe of purple that cut through the middle. The emblem on the chest was a smudge, like someone had tried to draw something and given up halfway through.

  Merlose laughed. "That's the saddest thing I've ever seen."

  Charlie's face went hot. "I didn't mean…"

  "No, Charlie, we're not laughing at you." Merlose's voice was light but sincere. "It was a good try. We want you to be in on the joke, too. If you can't laugh at yourself, what are you even doing? You're going to fail at this time and time again, but there's no reason to beat yourself up over it."

  "Yes, exactly, thank you, Callo. Release this." Sharpe took the manifested uniform from him, and it dissolved the moment it left his hand. She nodded at the real one. "Uniforms aren't just clothes. They’re identity and belief. When you put that on, you're saying you belong to something specific. If you don't know exactly what that something is, your mind fills in the gaps with garbage. Plus, you still haven't found your legs when it comes to manifesting something from nothing. Put that on and get a look at yourself. It'll help you remember the look and feeling so you can manifest it yourself next time. Merlose or I can help if you still think your left arm is longer than your right."

  Merlose was still smiling. "Remember when Harwick tried to manifest his own badge? It looked like brown softserve on a green field. Took him a week to live it down."

  "Are you describing the poop emoji?" Charlie asked.

  "This was the nineties, Charlie. Emojis didn't exist back then," Merlose replied.

  "But yes, it looked like sh..." Sharpe's eyes caught Merlose's. "Poop. It looked like poop."

  Charlie looked at the fabric in his hands. The weight of it, and the emblem that meant he belonged somewhere.

  "Thank you," he said.

  "Don't thank me yet. Courtney's going to run you into the ground." Sharpe glanced at Merlose. "Speaking of which. Grubb was telling me about his shielding scores."

  "I know," Merlose replied.

  "Courtney's worried. A Puzzler who can't survive contact…"

  "I know." Merlose's tone shifted, the amusement fading. "We're working on it."

  "Grubb offered to help," Charlie said. "Extra sessions."

  "Did he?" Sharpe asked.

  "Is that bad?"

  "No," Merlose said, a beat too late. "Grubb's... fine. He's been here forever."

  "Very dedicated," Sharpe added. "Punctual."

  Another look between them.

  "What?" Charlie asked.

  "No…it's just." Merlose pushed off from the wall. "I once had a teacher who assigned me a paper. I turned it in, and he gave it back to me the same day, saying, 'Is this the best you can do?' So I rewrote it and turned it back in. He gave it back to me within the hour, saying, 'Is this the best you can do?' again. Well, I get super pissed off, and I write the best paper that man has ever read. It blew his eyebrows right off. I hand it to him, and he asks me if this one is the best I can do. I finally yell at him that it is, and do you know what he said back to me?"

  Charlie shrugged.

  "He said, 'Okay, Callo, I'll read it now.'" She smiled. "What I'm saying is, Grubb would have said the first paper was the best he could do. He would have been satisfied with it. Never be satisfied with the first paper, Charlie."

  "Hear, hear," Sharpe added.

  Charlie was so confused. "So you do or don't want me taking extra lessons with him?"

  "He's fine, for now, but I'll find you a field agent with real experience. Shields used to be specifically to prevent bleeding, but the watches have done that for a millennium now. Some field agents still use them all the time for actual defense, though."

  "We'll have to have our watcher defend him in the games if he can't protect himself."

  "Like I watched over you?"

  "We won the championship that season."

  "Exactly, I'm saying it can be done."

  Charlie folded the uniform carefully and tucked it under his arm. As they left, he glanced back at Sharpe. She was watching him with an expression he couldn't quite place.

  Not worried, exactly, but not-not worried either.

  *

  Charlie's first Board Games practice was three nights later.

  Courtney met him at the south training wing, already in her uniform. The same dark blue and silver, but hers was worn in, comfortable. She looked him over.

  "Good. You manifested it yourself?"

  Charlie nodded. It had taken him four tries. The first three looked like he was joining a clown troupe.

  "It gets easier. Come on, the others are waiting."

  The Board Games arena was outside, and the roof opened to the permanent pink-orange sky of Terminal Hypnos. It reminded Charlie of the football stadium his grandfather had taken him to years ago by the lake. The rest of the team was already there: four older agents, maybe sixteen or seventeen, warming up near the far end.

  "Quick introductions," Courtney said. "Marcus is our Watcher. Delia's our Holder. She builds the base. Jin's our Fixer, objects. Yolanda's our Medium, apparitions." She pointed to each in turn. "And I'm Director. I call the strategy."

  "What do I do?" Charlie asked.

  "You're our Puzzler. Board Games is simple…ish. Six on six capture the flag. Both teams have a token. Your job is to build encryption around the other team's token in our base so they can't get it back. When we're on offense, you crack whatever their Puzzler built."

  “Oh, so we take turns?”

  “No, Charlie, going on offense just means we’ve cleared enough of the other team off the board for you to venture out into the field without being immediately eliminated.”

  Charlie nodded like that made sense and was comforting.

  "That's it?"

  "That's the core of it. There's scoring, elimination rules, three rounds, but you'll pick it up as we go." Courtney tossed him a small brass key. "That's our token for practice. Delia's going to build a base. You're going to encrypt around the key. Then Marcus is going to try to defend it."

  "From who?"

  Charlie looked around, but there wasn't a separate team.

  "Me." Sharpe walked in, wearing the same practice outfit. "Ready, Courtney? I'm not going easy this season. We have a shot, and you all just need a little tough love to get there."

  "Then we've got ourselves a Puzzler." Courtney smiled. "Delia, build us something. Two minutes."

  Delia closed her eyes. The floor shifted, and walls rose from it. They weren't brick or stone, but something that looked like compressed thought, gray and slightly translucent. A small fortress took shape, maybe twenty feet across, with a single visible entrance.

  "Charlie. Get in there. Make it hard to reach the token. Three minutes."

  Charlie walked into the structure. He found a pedestal in the center. It was Delia's work, and he set the key down.

  What does hard to reach look like?

  He thought about the encrypted room. The Rubik's Cube that moved on its own. The crossword with impossible answers. The statue that didn't want to be turned.

  He layered the encryption on the room. Anyone approaching the key would translate Charlie's intent, but he did his best to make a tight enough knot that he hoped it wouldn't be untangled quickly.

  "Time," Courtney called.

  Charlie stepped out.

  Sharpe walked toward the base, but she wasn't alone. Six apparitions flanked her, each one different, each one moving with purpose. A wolf made of shadow. A knight in armor that moved in stuttering bursts. Something with too many arms. Three others Charlie couldn't get a good look at before everything started happening at once.

  "Defend!" Courtney shouted.

  Marcus sprinted to intercept. Yolanda's five apparitions rushed to meet Sharpe's. Jin manifested something that looked like a net, then a wall, then something else Charlie didn't recognize. Delia stood rigid, reinforcing her structure as impacts shook the walls.

  Charlie watched from inside the base, near the pedestal, feeling useless. Courtney kept yelling orders to the team to fight against Sharpe's press.

  The battle was chaos. Marcus intercepted the shadow wolf, but it was faster than him, slipping past his guard and raking its claws across his chest. He stumbled back. Yolanda's apparitions rushed to help, but Sharpe's were simply better. Stronger and faster because Sharpe believed they should be. Two of Yolanda's dissolved in the first thirty seconds. A third went down trying to protect Jin.

  Courtney called out positions, adjustments, and warnings. A constant stream of information Charlie couldn't process fast enough.

  And through all of it, Sharpe advanced. Slowly, methodically. She wasn't rushing. She didn't need to.

  She reached the entrance.

  Charlie had designed the encryption with the room in mind. The one that brought him to Terminal Hypnos. Shelves at impossible angles, objects that demanded attention, puzzles nested inside puzzles.

  But when Sharpe stepped through the entrance, the room changed.

  The shelves flattened into a grid of locked cabinets. The crossword became a wall of combination locks. The statue that didn't want to be turned was now a series of doors, each one leading to another door. Charlie's intent remained. He had built the encryption with layers, resets, and misdirection, but the shape of it was hers now.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  She moved to the first cabinet, fingers working a lock he didn't recognize.

  "Layers," Sharpe said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "This is clever."

  She solved the first real puzzle and moved deeper. Picked up another object. Set it down. Tried a different approach. Then she solved the second and the third.

  A horn blared as Marcus was thrown out of the white chalk that marked the ring. One of Sharpe's apparitions had launched him into the stands.

  The fourth layer came and went. Charlie watched her face, watched her solve what he'd built, and realized he had no idea what to do if she reached him.

  She stopped three feet from the pedestal. Looked at him.

  "What now, Brunswick?"

  Charlie had no answer.

  Sharpe reached past him and picked up the key.

  "Time," Courtney called, her voice flat.

  They ran it three more times. Sharpe won every round, though each one took longer than the last. By the fourth run, she was breathing hard, and Charlie's encryption nearly held long enough for the timer to expire.

  "Not bad," Sharpe said when they finished. "Your encryption is solid. Better than solid for a first-year."

  "But?" Charlie could hear it coming.

  "But you stood there every time. Frozen." She tossed the key back to him. "What happens when the enemy Watcher gets past Marcus and comes for you directly?"

  "I don't know."

  "You wake up. And everything you built vanishes with you." She looked at Courtney. "Until he can protect himself, Marcus shadows him during matches. He doesn't go anywhere without cover."

  "Understood," Courtney said.

  "I'm working on my shielding," Charlie said.

  "And Marcus is your shield until then." Sharpe looked at the rest of the team. "That's it for tonight. Same time Thursday. First game is when? Courtney?"

  "A month from now. Rasputin's team."

  "Keep this up, and everyone will be ready by then," Sharpe nodded to the group. "Even our first year."

  The others filtered out. Charlie stood watching Delia's structure dissolve, the walls folding back into nothing.

  He'd built something that slowed down a senior agent, but it meant nothing if he couldn't stay asleep long enough to maintain it.

  *

  The shielding classroom was the same as always: bare walls, a padded floor, and the faint smell of ozone. Agent Grubb wasn't behind the desk. Instead, a man Charlie had never seen before sat with his feet up, reading a book that kept changing titles every few seconds.

  He was older, maybe sixty, with wire-rimmed glasses and the rumpled look of someone who had given up on first impressions decades ago. His watch was the same as everyone else's, but he had two more just above it in different styles.

  "Agent Grubb didn't fall asleep tonight," the man said without looking up. "I'm filling in. Name's Abernathy."

  Benedicta's hand shot up. "Vice-Puzzler Abernathy? Isn't teaching junior shielding a little beneath your position?"

  "I'm on deck, kid." Abernathy turned a page. "Nothing to do while I wait for my turn at the plate. Teaching you lot is about the next best thing to do after nothing."

  Charlie's ears pricked at the title. Vice-Puzzler. He thought about the door he'd found. THE PUZZLER (by appointment only).

  "What's a Puzzler?" Charlie asked.

  Abernathy looked at him for the first time. His eyes were sharp behind those glasses. Sharper than his slouched posture suggested.

  "Board Games has puzzlers. The SCA has The Puzzler." He shrugged. "Different things, same word. They handle the system-wide encryption for our most important places. But you've got enough on your plate already, Brunswick. Leave wondering about the Board to people like me."

  Charlie blinked. "You know my name?"

  "Kid, you were all we talked about for a week straight." Abernathy swung his feet off the desk. "Alright. Shields. Who can tell me what they are?"

  Kenji raised his hand. "Defense against bleed?"

  "Technically correct. Practically useless." Abernathy walked to the center of the room. "Shields are encryption and manifestation happening at once. You're imagining a barrier while believing nothing can get through it. And I mean nothing. Not thoughts, not memories, not even air."

  "Don't I need air to breathe?" Charlie asked.

  Abernathy smiled. It was the first genuine expression Charlie had seen from him.

  "You think we're speaking English? You think I’m breathing air between words in here?"

  The room went quiet. Charlie thought about Teddy's cupcakes. Dream food that wasn't food. He'd never considered that the breath in his lungs might be the same kind of illusion.

  "Your body is in a bed somewhere," Abernathy continued. "It's breathing just fine. What you're doing here is habit. Your mind thinks it needs air, so it performs the act of breathing." He tapped his temple. "Shields work the same way. You're not building a wall. You're believing so completely in the wall that your mind stops performing the act of being open."

  He walked over to the closet and took out a small device. A child's bubble machine. He turned it on, and it produced what looked like soap bubbles filled with smoke, drifting lazily toward the students.

  "These will try to get inside your heads. They're harmless. Training constructs. But if one gets through, you'll hear a thought that isn't yours." He smiled. "I can't vouch for the content. The Fixer made this years ago for Grubb."

  The bubbles began to move.

  Gwen's eyes narrowed. Charlie watched her shoulders drop, her breathing slow. A bubble drifted toward her, touched the air around her head, and slid off like water on glass. Shields had been Gwen's best subject since day one.

  Charlie tried to focus. Imagined a barrier. Believed in it.

  The bubble passed right through.

  I really hope no one notices the hole in my sock.

  Charlie looked down automatically. His socks were fine. The thought had been someone else's, and now it was in his head, rattling around like a marble in a jar.

  "Brunswick." Abernathy was watching him. "You're trying to build something. That's not how this works. It's not like encryption, where you make the space between you complicated. It's more like you outright reject the reality being presented."

  Charlie tried again. Another bubble approached. He thought about the puzzle door, the way it wouldn't open no matter how hard he pushed. He thought about refusing entry, about being closed.

  The bubble froze in the air, inches away from his forehead.

  "Interesting." Abernathy tilted his head. "You didn't build a wall. You made the space between your forehead and the bubble into one complicated folding space. More encryption than shield."

  "Is it wrong?"

  "It's wrong for what we're doing in here." Abernathy's eyes lingered on him. "But it's worth watching. Try to make a real one. Reject the reality before you. Believe in the one you make."

  Teddy was struggling. Bubbles kept sliding toward him, and each time he tried to block one, another slipped past. His hands were shaking. A cupcake materialized in his grip, then dissolved. Then appeared again.

  "I can't," Teddy muttered. "There are too many, I can't just close, I don't know how to..."

  A bubble passed through. Teddy flinched, and his face crumpled. Charlie wasn't sure if it was from the failure or the message.

  "Breathe, Schreier," Abernathy said. "Or don't. Remember, you're not actually..."

  "I know," Teddy snapped. "I'm not actually breathing. Thanks."

  The session ran on until the bubbles faded. Abernathy looked at the class with an expression that might have been satisfaction or might have been boredom.

  "Adequate. For most of you. Practice on your own time. Dismissed."

  Students filed out. Charlie gathered himself slowly, waiting for Teddy and Gwen. Before he reached the door, Benedicta stepped into his path.

  "I thought you were going to quit two weeks ago, Brunswick." Benedicta's voice was casual, carrying. "What happened to your promise in 7B?"

  Charlie froze.

  Teddy stopped walking. "What's she talking about?"

  "Nothing."

  "Didn't sound like nothing." Teddy's voice had an edge Charlie hadn't heard before. "What's 7B? What promise?"

  "It's not..." Charlie fumbled for words. "Benedicta's just being..."

  "I'm just asking a question." Benedicta smiled. "You two are friends, right? I'm sure he told you all about our Saturday session. The training room. The conversation we had about whether he belongs here. His promise to me that he was going to quit."

  Benedicta turned and walked out the door, but not before looking over her shoulder. "Be careful what he promises you, Schreier. Brunswick apparently can't keep them." Then she went down the hallway.

  Teddy turned to Charlie. His expression wasn't angry. It was worse than angry.

  "You hung out with her? On a Saturday? You're going to quit?"

  "It wasn't like that."

  "Then what was it like?"

  Charlie opened his mouth. Closed it. He couldn't explain 7B without explaining the ambush. Couldn't explain the ambush without explaining that he'd almost quit. Couldn't explain almost quitting without admitting he'd kept all of it from his only friends.

  "I was going to tell you," he said.

  "When?"

  Charlie didn't have an answer.

  Teddy nodded slowly. The cupcake in his hand dissolved and didn't come back.

  "Cool. Good talk, Charlie."

  He started walking. Gwen reached for his arm.

  "Teddy, wait..."

  "Why?" He turned on her. "So you can write this down in your little notebook? Add it to your collection of other people's problems since you don't have any of your own?"

  Gwen recoiled.

  Teddy's face flickered at Gwen's reaction. For a second, Charlie thought he might take it back. Instead, he turned and walked out without another word.

  The corridor was very quiet.

  "What just happened?" Charlie asked.

  Gwen's voice was flat. "Teddy's upset you kept secrets from him. So he decided to take it out on me. Because that makes sense."

  "But I didn't... I mean, I did, but it wasn't..."

  "You promised Benedicta you'd quit. In room 7B. Two weeks ago." She crossed her arms. "And you didn't tell us."

  "I was going to quit. But then I found something and..."

  "You found something." Her voice got colder. "And you didn't tell us that either."

  "I was going to..."

  "Forget it." Gwen cut him off. "Teddy can think about what he said. You have practice today, right? I'll walk with you."

  She started walking toward the Board Games arena. Charlie followed, trying to understand how everything had fallen apart so fast.

  He still didn't get it, not really. He knew Teddy was hurt, Gwen was angry, and somehow he was the cause of both. The actual mechanics of it, the chain of feelings that had led from Benedicta's comment to Teddy's cruelty to Gwen's cold shoulder, remained as opaque to him as they'd always been.

  Some puzzles he just couldn't solve.

  *

  Weeks passed, and Teddy ignored them the whole time. Charlie had given up trying to talk to him; Gwen had never started.

  Charlie trained with the Board Games team three times a week, practiced shielding with Gwen on Saturdays, and tried not to think about the empty space where Teddy used to be.

  It wasn't that Teddy had disappeared. Charlie saw him in sessions, in the corridors, and in the training room. Teddy didn't fill the silence anymore. He sat apart, manifested cupcakes he didn't eat, and looked away whenever Charlie tried to catch his eye.

  Gwen said he needed time. Charlie wasn't sure how much time was enough.

  On this particular Saturday, they'd found an empty training room in the east wing. Gwen sat cross-legged on the floor, her notebook open beside her, walking Charlie through visualization exercises.

  "You're still building," she said. "Stop constructing walls. Just believe nothing can get through."

  "That doesn't make sense."

  "It doesn't have to make sense the way you're thinking about it. You can make up why it makes sense. You're trying too hard to make it obey rules you understand." She held up her hand, and a small bubble drifted toward her. It touched the air around her head and slid off like rain on glass. "See? I'm not doing anything. I'm just certain it'll work."

  Charlie tried again. Imagined certainty. Believed in impermeability.

  The bubble passed right through.

  I wonder if I'll pass the encryption exam next week.

  "That wasn't mine," Charlie said.

  "I know. I'm thinking about encryption theory." Gwen almost smiled. "Try again. And stop thinking about…"

  The door opened. Sadie poked her head in.

  "Oh, sorry. I didn't know anyone was in here." She stepped inside anyway. "Hey, Charlie."

  "Hey, Sadie."

  She looked at the bubbles drifting around the room. "Shielding practice? How's it going?"

  "Badly," Charlie said.

  "He's building encryption instead of shields," Gwen said. "It's a whole thing."

  "That tracks." Sadie leaned against the doorframe. "You know, if you ever want to work on manifestation stuff, I'm usually free on Saturdays too. I've been practicing a lot since..." She trailed off, and something flickered behind her eyes. The hydra. "Anyway. I've gotten better. I could help."

  "Sure," Charlie said. "That'd be nice."

  "Yeah?" She brightened. "It's a date then." She held his gaze a beat longer than necessary. "I mean. Not a date date. A practice date. A training thing."

  "Okay," Charlie said.

  Sadie waited, like she was expecting something else. When it didn't come, she laughed softly. "Okay. Well. I'll let you two get back to it. See you around, Charlie." She gave Gwen a small wave. "Gwen."

  She slipped out, pulling the door shut behind her.

  Gwen stared at the closed door for a moment, then turned back to Charlie. "You know she's flirting with you, right?"

  "What? No she's not. She said it wasn't a date."

  Gwen pressed her lips together in a way that suggested she was choosing not to pursue this.

  "Try again, and stop thinking about…"

  She froze.

  Footsteps. Running footsteps. A lot of them.

  Charlie turned toward the door just as shapes streaked past the window. Fast, wrong, and moving with purpose. He caught glimpses of fur, scales, and something with too many limbs.

  Then he saw the horns. The brass ring glinting in a bovine nose. An axe that was bigger than Charlie.

  "I know that one," Charlie whispered. "Those are rogue apparitions."

  "What?"

  "The minotaur, it's from the Waste. It tried to take me to its boss."

  Gwen was already on her feet, notebook clutched to her chest. "What's it doing inside Terminal Hypnos?"

  "Nothing good."

  They should have stayed put. They should have found Merlose, or Sharpe, or any adult with actual training. It was a Saturday afternoon, but Terminal Hypnos always had some staff, even if it was a skeleton crew.

  Charlie knew this. Gwen probably knew it, too.

  The apparitions were heading deeper into Terminal Hypnos. Toward the Encryption wing. Toward the place where Abernathy had said the Puzzler handled system-wide security.

  "We should follow them," Charlie said.

  "That's a terrible idea."

  "I know."

  Gwen pressed her lips together. Then she shoved her notebook into her backpack and nodded. "Stay behind me. If something attacks, I can shield us both. Probably."

  They slipped into the corridor.

  The apparitions moved fast, but they weren't trying to hide. Charlie and Gwen followed at a distance, ducking behind pillars and pressing into doorways whenever one of the creatures glanced back. The hallways grew narrower. The architecture stranger. Charlie recognized the breathing walls, the shifting floors.

  The Encryption wing.

  The group of rogue apparitions split at an intersection. Half went left, toward something Charlie couldn't see. The minotaur and two others went right.

  "We follow the minotaur," Charlie whispered.

  "Why that one?"

  "Right is toward that room I told you about. The encrypted one I couldn't break. The Puzzler."

  They crept down the right-hand corridor. The minotaur's hooves clicked against the floor, steady and unhurried. It was leading the others somewhere specific.

  The trio of rogue apparitions hit another branch, and the minotaur pointed toward the Puzzler's room. The two others went that way, and the minotaur branched off down another corridor. They followed the hooves.

  The creature slowed as it approached a door. It was larger than the others, with symbols carved into the frame. The minotaur reached for the handle.

  Charlie's foot caught a loose tile.

  The sound wasn't loud. A soft scrape, barely a whisper. But the minotaur's head swung around, nostrils flaring, and its eyes found Charlie immediately.

  "The boy." Its voice was the same low rumble Charlie remembered. "The boss will be pleased."

  It charged.

  "Shield!" Charlie shouted.

  Gwen stepped in front of him, hands raised. The air between them and the minotaur shimmered, solidified. The creature slammed into it and staggered back, shaking its massive head.

  "I can't hold this forever," Gwen said through gritted teeth. The minotaur started slamming its massive axe down on the bubble. The sound was deafening.

  Charlie tried to manifest something. Anything. The flashlight, the little light, even a distraction. His mind was scattered, his belief cratered someplace between the noise and the panic.

  Nothing came.

  The minotaur hit the shield again and again. Gwen stumbled to a knee.

  "Charlie, I need help!"

  He couldn't focus. The minotaur was too close and too real. He was going to fail. He was going to let Gwen down, and he found himself spiraling. Gwen was going to get hurt because he couldn't.

  "HEY! BEEF BREATH!"

  The voice came from behind them. Familiar and loud. Filling the silence the way it always used to.

  Charlie turned.

  Teddy stood at the end of the corridor, hands raised, face pale but determined. Above his head, something was forming. Growing. A massive shape, pink and swirled, expanding until it blocked the entire hallway.

  A cupcake. The size of a small car.

  "Eat this!" Teddy shouted, and the cupcake dropped.

  The minotaur looked up just in time to see several hundred pounds of manifested pastry falling toward it. The impact shook the floor. Frosting splattered across the walls. The minotaur's head appeared through the top, but its body was encased in an oversized baked good.

  The creature struggled and roared, but couldn't get out.

  Teddy stood there, breathing hard, staring at what he'd done.

  "Did I just..." He swallowed. "Did that work?"

  "It worked," Gwen said. Her shield flickered and dropped. She was shaking.

  Charlie could hear shouting somewhere deeper in the wing. Adult voices. Help was coming.

  "We should go," Charlie said.

  They ran.

  Two corridors later, they nearly collided with a tall man in SCA uniform, moving fast in the opposite direction. Harwick. Teddy's handler, the one who was never around.

  "Schreier?" Harwick's eyes went wide. "What are you doing here? There's an incursion."

  "We know," Teddy said. "We kind of... handled part of it, back that way." Teddy pointed down the corridor they had just come from.

  Harwick looked at the three of them. At Gwen's shaking hands. At Charlie's pale face. At Teddy, who still had frosting on his sleeve.

  "Get to the main hall. Now. I'll deal with the rest. We'll talk about this later."

  He was gone before any of them could respond.

  The three of them stood in the corridor, breathing hard. The sounds of combat echoed from somewhere far away. Closer, the only sound was their own heartbeats.

  "What was that?" Teddy asked finally.

  "How'd you know where we were?" Gwen asked.

  "A guy can't take a nap on a Saturday?" Teddy replied.

  "That's not an answer. You were following us," Gwen said. It wasn't a question.

  "For like three weeks." Teddy couldn't meet her eyes. "I wanted to apologize. For what I said. About your notebook. About you not having a life." He swallowed. "It was awful, and I didn't mean it, and I've been trying to figure out how to say sorry, but every time I tried, the words got stuck, and then you were in danger, and I just…"

  "Teddy," Gwen interrupted.

  "Yeah?"

  "You're talking too much again. You don't have to make up for lost time."

  She hugged him. Hard. Teddy stood frozen for a second, then his arms came up, and he hugged her back.

  Charlie watched them, not sure if he was supposed to join or give them space.

  Gwen reached out and pulled him in. Charlie squeezed, and he could see her eyes were wet, but she was almost smiling.

  "You dropped a giant cupcake on a minotaur."

  "I did."

  "That was the stupidest, most ridiculous thing I've ever seen."

  "I know."

  "It was also kind of amazing."

  Teddy's face broke into the first real smile Charlie had seen from him in weeks. The three of them pulled apart, and he turned to Charlie.

  "I'm sorry I walked out. And I'm sorry I didn't let you explain."

  "I should have told you about 7B," Charlie said. "About all of it."

  "Yeah. You should have." Teddy shrugged. "But I also should have asked instead of assuming the worst. So. We're both kind of idiots."

  "Agreed," Gwen said. "Now, can we please get to the main hall before something else attacks us?"

  They walked together, the three of them, through corridors that no longer felt quite so hostile. Behind them, agents dealt with the incursion.

  Charlie wasn't sure what had changed, but he trusted both Teddy and Gwen more than he had before. Maybe he had just always underestimated the power of a cupcake.