The elevator carriage jolted as impacts shook the building. Splashed and shaken in the dark, Roy tried to imagine it was a theme park ride.

  “Oh fuck,” said Bastion. “The storm must’ve taken out the electrics, or the aesthetic that makes this thing work as though it had electricity. You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t think that’s it,” said Roy. “Even if pieces fall off, it’ll still look like an old elevator, which is all it needs to move. I think the building got hit badly enough that the carriage is physically locked in place.”

  “We need to get out of here. If this water keeps coming in...” It was already sloshing around their ankles. “And we can’t see shit.”

  “Hang on. I’ve got an idea.” Roy rummaged through his pockets. His fingers brushed over smooth tokens, the ridged elixir bottle cap he’d kept as a souvenir, and finally the crinkling plastic of the packet of stick-on stars.

  “What are you doing?” Bastion asked.

  “Just give me a second,” Roy fought with the packet. It was one of those wrappers with no perforation, invented by a designer who expected everyone to be like W. and always have a pair of scissors to hand.

  Eventually, he brute forced it, gripping both sides and trying to pull it apart like one of the elastic workout bands he’d started with when he was six.

  The plastic split with a sharp crack, flinging stars across the walls. Several plopped into the water.

  He dropped to his knees, soaking his pants, and plunged his hands in to feel around.

  “Not to doubt you here,” said Bastion, “but I’d really like to know what your idea is before we have to start holding our breath.”

  Roy pulled his hands from the water and ran them over the boxes. He felt something smooth poking out of the top of one, picked it up, and counted the five points. Very carefully, he peeled the backing off the star and slapped it onto his sword.

  “Got it.” The moment the star connected with his plastic blade, the carriage was filled with dim green light. “OK, now help me find the rest of them.”

  They worked quickly, picking up stars and adding them to the sword. Luckily, they’d crammed so many boxes into the carriage that most had landed on them instead of in the water. Each star stuck to the blade lit the carriage brighter, reflecting off the water’s surface wherever boxes weren’t floating and making the brass fittings resemble the machinery of a retro mad science lab.

  Roy inspected the doors. They were dented inward, the metal twisted.

  Bastion tried to pry them open, but had no luck. “Can you use your sword to open it?”

  “I can try.” Roy started with a stab, trying to wedge the blade in there like a crowbar, but the flexible plastic simply bent to the side. “Not a great aesthetic in here for a sword, you know? I definitely can’t cut through metal.”

  “The place where it’s dented might be weaker. Try taking a big swing at that.”

  Roy raised his sword high, then brought it down in an overhead swipe. Before it had even connected, the stars glowed brighter, and a plume of white fire shot from the sword point.

  When the flash faded, the doors had been reduced to a red mass of melted metal before a wall of solid brick.

  “Whoa,” Roy breathed. “That’s cool.”

  “It sure is,” said Bastion. “Think it can blast through stone?”

  Roy examined his sword. One of the stars had gone dim. Tim hadn’t told him anything about how they worked, and while he assumed exposing them to light for a while would recharge them, he had no idea how long it would take.

  “It looks like we’ve only got five charges left, and that wall’s a few feet thick. We’d be back in the dark before we made it through.”

  “Then we need to go up instead,” said Bastion, pointing. “Look, there’s an escape hatch at the top.”

  Roy tilted his head back and lowered his sword, considering how to aim it. He couldn’t do an overhead swing at something above him, so he leaned back like he was approaching a limbo pole. Feet apart, spine arched.

  From this angle, Bastion’s face was lit from below. The look was unsettling, like someone telling ghost stories with a flashlight.

  “Come on,” Bastion said.

  Roy swung. A starburst of white fire tore through the ceiling, rending the metal outward like a ruptured soda can. Steam hissed around the jagged edges as water flooded in through the hole, filling up the carriage in seconds.

  The sword’s light still worked underwater. Roy held it above his head like a torch and kicked hard, swimming up to the blown hatch.

  Bastion had already reached the top and grabbed his arm, hauling him out. They stood together on what remained of the carriage roof, drenched and breathless.

  They were in a narrow shaft, with rails along two walls and thick cables which vanished into the gloom above. The sword’s glow didn’t reach the top.

  “Should we cut the cables?” asked Roy.

  “No. There’s supposed to be springs at the bottom of these shafts to dampen a drop, but being full of water puts it way over the weight limit.”

  “All right. It’s climbing time then.”

  “Wait,” Bastion protested.

  “What for?”

  “All of our armor is still boxed up in there.”

  Roy looked down into the flooded carriage. A few boxes floated on the surface, but most were trapped beneath the water. “I don’t think we can get most of them.”

  “Bullshit,” said Bastion, already hauling out the ones within reach. “We are not leaving any of that gear behind. We had to work too hard to get it. Stick the sword in the water so I can see, and I’ll dive back in.”

  Roy obliged. There was no arguing with Bastion when it came to material goods.

  He held the sword steady while Bastion submerged and resurfaced to gasp for air. After a few minutes of this, Roy grabbed his arm and pulled him out.

  “I think that’s the last of it,” Bastion said. “Now let’s suit up. That’s the only way we can climb to the next floor without ditching any of it.”

  Roy leaned his sword against the wall while they started strapping into their sports armor. Luckily, the baseball chest protector was a size too big, and he was able to force it over the top of the hockey armor instead of leaving it behind.

  He felt good about having extra padding surrounding his body, more like himself, somehow.

  Climbing the rails was easy enough, even with the sword gripped between his teeth to light the way. One story up, the doors opened with barely a push.

  Roy stepped out into a long hallway lined with identical doors, with purple light crystals mounted on the walls between them.

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  He turned back to the shaft, leaning out to hold his sword over the edge so Bastion could see.

  Roy had climbed up with brute strength, swinging between the handholds. Bastion was taking a different route. Facing away from the wall, he’d wedged himself between the rails and began to shimmy upward using his hands and feet. It was slow going, but with careful, nimble movements, it had to be safer, especially if you couldn’t haul your bodyweight with one arm at a time.

  Roy waited, getting bored within the first few seconds. He tapped his high-tops, watching the red stripes—until they flashed blue.

  Startled, he looked up to see chunks of plaster tumbling down the shaft. Bastion pressed himself flat against the wall to avoid them.

  The light had come from behind, followed a fraction of a second later by a thumping, fizzling, shattering sound, a concoction of sensory experiences he strongly associated with sci-fi weapons.

  He spun around. At the far end of the hall, a figure stepped through a shattered window.

  Dark suit. Sunglasses. Big gun.

  Sunglasses at night suggested a theme, but right now that oversized weapon was the bigger concern. A low hum reverberated through the hallway as it charged up for another shot.

  Roy bolted, sprinting down the corridor, wishing he’d had time to finish his armor. That stuff W. said about theming it to make it more durable sounded great right about now.

  Whirrrr.

  A ball of blue lightning shot down the hallway. It was fast, but not so fast that he couldn’t watch its progress and dive to the side. It sailed over his left shoulder.

  Long charge-up time, slow projectiles. The gun Roy had already mentally named the “Thunder Cannon” wasn’t actually as impressive as it looked.

  It felt odd, running through the same repeating patterns: door, light, door, light, with only the giant gun barrel at the end to break it up.

  Last time, its hum had gotten higher-pitched right as it was about to fire. When he heard it again, he seized the moment, leaping into the air and landing with his knees bent, his sword arced with him.

  What emerged from the blade point looked like a comet, a sphere of brilliant blue light with a white trail behind it, making a high-pitched whizzing sound that drowned out his opponent's weapon.

  So cool, thought Roy. Why hadn’t it looked like that in the elevator?

  Before, it had just been a blinding flash. Now he could see the shape of it. What had changed?

  This was the third shot out of six. Were they getting successively weaker? Or was it because he’d fired while moving? Did he have to stand still to charge them up? Or was it something else, something more closely related to the theme of glowing stars?

  He’d barely finished the thought when the miniature shooting star slammed into the man’s chest. Light exploded against the gray suit in a burst of flame and force, knocking him flat and discharging the Thunder Cannon’s next shot harmlessly into the ceiling.

  Roy was close enough now to get a real look at his opponent and the weapon he carried.

  The gun was a bulky, angular pipe encased in matte gray plating, with glowing blue energy conduits along the barrel and a large copper coil at the back. Its wielder had close-cropped brown hair and wore dark Wayfarer sunglasses, as seen in just about every movie set in the last fifty years before reality broke down.

  His gray suit was well-tailored in exactly the way most themed armor wasn’t. This was ironic, as he shrugged off the star blast as though wearing the best themed armor Roy had yet seen, and was back on his feet in less than two seconds.

  Only five doors between us now.

  Roy pumped his legs harder. He wasn’t close to out of breath, not over this kind of distance. He’d reach him within a few seconds. Time to find out if that suit’s as resistant to a sword as it is to a shooting star.

  “Charge!” he shouted, raising his blade as he ran. He felt a zap of energy through his entire body. Every step felt lighter, and his hand tingled where it gripped his sword.

  The deep hum of the Thunder cannon was rising again. The man in gray had been charging another shot even while he was on the ground.

  Roy was nearly on him. The barrel crackled. His sword arm trembled with tension, loaded with power both muscular and magical. Swinging it would feel so good.

  He leapt and slashed in one motion—half a second too late.

  Plasma hit him like a sledgehammer to the chest. He flew backwards, sparks singeing his jaw. He slammed onto his back, hard.

  Fumes rose from his armor, turning the air wavy and filling his nostrils and mouth with the sharp smell of melting plastic as he gasped for breath.

  Clawing at his chest with one gloved hand, he found the impact site. It was hard. Unmelted. The fumes came from everywhere but the point of impact, which was merely dented.

  Dented like steel.

  His theme had saved his life.

  The gun barrel appeared above him, whirring as it charged again.

  Roy couldn’t move. All the air had been knocked out of him and his strength with it. His arms and legs felt like rubber, his chest too heavy to do anything but take sharp, shallow breaths.

  Whirr. The sound was low, but getting higher.

  The Thunder Cannon filled his field of vision, inches from his face. Three chrome prongs that sparked and sizzled and singed his eyebrows as a ball of energy formed between them.

  Whirrr. Higher now. Faster.

  The smell took him by surprise. Burning hair, smoke from broken electronics, but also, oddly, the damp air after a rainstorm.

  Screeeeech.

  Thwip.

  A silver blur punched through the gun barrel. Lightning arced backward across the coils, and the entire weapon detonated in a wave of white-blue light.

  Roy felt a burst of internal energy restoring strength to his limbs and jumped back to his feet. His chest still hurt, and he still couldn’t breathe properly, but the rest of his body felt so light it seemed he didn’t need to.

  He snapped his head around. At the far end of the hall, Bastion stood, calmly reloading his crossbow.

  The man in gray had been blasted further down the corridor, his suit charred, but still intact and impervious. He was already getting up.

  But he was unarmed now, and Roy wasn’t going to let him get away.

  Roy charged—sword in one hand, shield in the other, closing the distance fast.

  Then the man in gray tapped the frame of his sunglasses.

  Instantly, the light drained from every crystal in the hallway. The only illumination left came from the glowing lenses of his shades and the three stars still lit on Roy’s sword.

  Bastion probably couldn’t see well enough to hit him again, but Roy could still stab him, so long as those sunglasses didn’t do anything else.

  They did.

  A moment later, twin laser beams shot out of the lenses. They were off target, aimed at Roy’s sword instead of Roy himself. He can’t see either.

  Roy dove low, sword out in front, ducking beneath the beams. He knew he couldn’t keep dodging them like that forever. At this range, even the slightest nod could swing those lasers across a wide arc. Meanwhile, Roy would have to shift his entire body to react in time.

  As he fell, he had a realization. The reason his shooting star hadn’t worked as well earlier. They were glow-in-the-dark stars. They were more powerful the darker it was, and his enemy had just taken out every light in the hallway to power his own themed gear.

  Roy had too much momentum to do a full swing mid-dive, and once he hit the ground, those beams would soon follow. So he flicked his wrist back. It would have to be enough.

  His sword whipped forward, chipping into the floorboards as he landed on his stomach. The entire hall erupted in blinding white-blue light.

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  Whizzing. Fizzing. A scream that abruptly cut off.

  Silence.

  When Roy opened his eyes, there was only darkness in front of him. He held his sword out like a lantern. With two stars left glowing, it provided only dim light.

  He moved it over a singed and smoking suit to reveal a melted head, still wearing cracked sunglasses.

  The star blast had been far more powerful than he’d expected.

  “Roy.” The voice came from behind. “Roy, are you OK? I still can’t see anything back here.”

  “Yeah. I’m OK.”

  “Phew. All I could see were lasers and then a big blast of light. That was you, right? Is he dead?”

  “Come and see for yourself.”

  Bastion shuffled forward, tapping the wall as he went, until he was close enough to Roy’s sword to see better.

  “Oh man. Yeah,” said Bastion. “That really did it. Face fully melted off.”

  “Yeah. I’d rather we not hang around here.”

  “Hey. Look.” Bastion pointed to the far end of the hall, where the light crystals were still lit.

  Two more men in gray suits ran past.

  “Come on,” said Roy.

  “Are we fighting them? We don’t really have any reason to. I mean, revenge for attacking you, sure, but there’s nothing we really gain from it.”

  “They’re heading for the stairs. For Mayor Big Time,” he said. “That’s what all of this is about.”

  “They’re trying to kill Big Time? Roy, we can’t let that happen. He’s about to give us a free hovercraft.”

  Bastion ran ahead, and Roy took a deep breath into his still-aching lungs before racing down the hall after him.