It took a few minutes to compose ourselves.

Shadow, powerful, unbreaking Shadow, stood against the wall, arms out to brace him like he was struggling to hold up his own weight. His head hung low so his thick black hair curtained his eyes. He hadn't said a word, but that had said enough.

Then there was Sheira. I admired her so much, more than anyone in fact. Besides maybe my own mum of course. She'd lost everything in such a fragile moment of her life, her mother, her father, even her home, all gone before she was even sixteen and yet she kept her head held high through all the madness and cruelty and abuse. But here she was, collapsed onto the floor, head buried in her gloved hands, muffled sobs breaking her silence.

I knew why she crying. How many more of her friends had gone through the same fate? Rose had lost her mind but how many people had died to get the recipe right? How many Juliet's had just died on the spot, screaming in agony? How many Daryl's had suffered for months before being overcome by something that destroyed them from the inside out?

Nobody really thinks about death. Not really, not like it's real or something that can ever happen. As my therapist once said, "the human brain just flat out struggles to comprehend the idea of death". Mine just flat out rejected the thought for years until I had to face it head-on and even then you deny it for as long as you can, hence the therapy.

It's just human nature and human nature sucks.

But this? This was real. Horrifically real. People had died, all for a madwoman who wanted to exploit human test subjects and dodge every human rights convention ever made. Everyone from my visions had been taken. Fifty-nine people gone, and all of them dead or unsavable. Cheery stuff, eh?

"We can't just leave him down there," Sheira sobbed, pearly tears still dripping down her cheeks. "We can't!"

"He's told us what we can do," I said quietly.

Sheira's head whipped around, her expression was suddenly furious. She stood so she was level with me. "That's killing him!" she protested. "He's my friend, I grew up with him. We can't just leave him to die down there!"

"We're not. Its mercy now," Shadow whispered quietly. Sheira and I turned our heads to look at him. His back was pressed flush with the wall but he was trembling.

Sheira wiped her eyes which were now bright, not with tears, but anger. "What?"

Without moving, Shadow said something that chilled me to the very bone. "In world war two I served with the special forces and in 1944 we were sent to liberate a concentration camp. Some people walked out. Some were carried on stretchers. Others begged to die. And sometimes we listened to them." He stopped talking for a second. I saw the thumb and forefinger rubbing together anxiously. "Take the advice of an old bastard. Sometimes, dead is better."

"But he'll burn," she snapped. "It'll be agony. He'll die screaming."

"It'll be quick," I took her cold hand in my bandaged and scarred one and squeezed it gently. She snatched her hand away. I sighed. "All we can do is end it quickly so we have to keep going. No matter what."

"He's right," Shadow said. "We know where we need to go now and we can't waste any time. Time is not our friend, well it hasn't been this entire trip but you get my point. We're on a tight schedule."

She contemplated for a moment, eyes shut to dam the tears, so when they opened again the sadness and heartbreak was still visible but so was determination and courage that burned like a white bonfire. She wasn't happy but we had a job to do. Sheira nodded shortly and lead the way up the spiralling staircase with Shadow and me tight behind her.

Other than the faint orange glow from Incaendium on my back, the staircase, and by extension, the flowing network of connecting rooms was unlit and unwelcoming. Cold draughts of air blew past our faces from broken windows and icy puddles and soaked carpets splashed and squelched unpleasantly underfoot. It was like downstairs but with one very key difference.

There were people.

Hundreds of them, scurrying along corridors and through doors like ants. Staying out of sight was now difficult but not impossible as Shadow kept us veiled with a comforting sheet of undetectable blackness and frankly, no one seemed to be paying much attention to anything. Everyone who rushed by had a job to do and were trying to do it as quickly as possible.

People who could produce fire or resist the extreme temperature stuck out like sore thumbs as the rest had coats and thermals that wouldn't have been out of place on an Antarctic expedition. I'd never seen so many Beasts in one place either. If they were small enough that were huddled in jackets or curled around their master's necks like furry scarves, all while the larger ones hugged close to their heels and snapped bitterly at anyone who got in the way or even anyone that didn't for that matter. Whether it be a combination of the cold, workload or the general air of animosity that radiated from everyone like a flare of hatred, everyone was on edge.

It was just like the last day of an exam. By that point, everyone was fed up and just wanted to go home, eat an unhealthy quantity of ice cream and hibernate indoors for a week until you recessed into an acne-ridden vampire. That was what you wanted to do but had an hour and a half of pure torture before you could get to it. Impatience, annoyance and barely concealed loathing.

Luckily for us, that was just the atmosphere we needed to coast by without being seen. The mass of empty rooms and cupboards also came in handy, that goes without saying as without them we wouldn't have made it a yard. It was actually going rather well.

Until, of course, it wasn't.

"What's the situation?" I hissed, trying to stop my racing heart.

Shadow had just done his weird, ghostly phasing through the wall trick and had given me a heart attack. He'd make a great ninja. As the last of the blackness seeped back into his skin like slimy tar (Lovely image right there) I could see his expression and let's just say it didn't fill me with hope.

"We've got a problem."

"When do we not have a problem?" Sheira replied impatiently. She whacked the broomstick that had been steadily creeping towards her head with a firm thwack! "It would be wonderful to have something go right the first time, it really would, but it seems to me that we're cursed to have everything go wrong."

She had a point. As of the present moment, the three of us were crammed into a broom cupboard that still had calcified dust from the middle ages woven into the floor. We weren't just in here for the fun of it. We'd come across a giant set of open doors that were impossible to sneak by and, as Shadow was the only one who was capable of actually being stealthy, he'd been sent to scout ahead. He hadn't brought good news.

"The doorway leads to the main entrance chamber," he said as he traced a map into the grime with the end of a mop. "Beyond that is the great hall, dining areas, meeting rooms..."

"The fancy bits," I said.

"Exactly and they're really open plan so there's no way of hiding. But, there is a staircase here," he jabbed at the square he'd just drawn. "That should lead upstairs."

Sheira's shoulders slumped. "But?"

"But, Molly's lab is right between us and it. They seem to be processing something in this giant machine, possibly the elixir she's using to take control of all those Elementals, but its crawling with people. I'm usually pretty good at going undetected but I'll raise my hands and admit it got pretty hairy out there."

"We can't do what you can do," Sheira pointed out. "I got my powers when I was eight. For god's sake, Nick got his two weeks ago! You've had centuries to practise!"

"So what?" I asked. "We're stuffed? We're not falling at the last hurdle, I refuse! We've come way too far to give up now!"

I glanced at Sheira. I could see the cogs in her head whirring away to try and find a solution. She crouched down and examined the crudely drawn map carefully, trailing her fingers lightly over the doorways. Then she stood up, a spark of an idea at the corner of her eye.

"How close can you get us? To the machine I mean."

Shadow drummed his fingers against his chin, calculating how close we could go before certain death. "The doorway. That's as close as I dare."

"Do it," she ordered.

"Alright..." he said like he thought this was a very bad idea. I shuddered as the familiar cool curtain of dark surrounded us once again. "Stay close and stay quiet." With an unsure glance at Sheira, he checked to see if the coast was clear and then we were out.

I understood why he was so nervous pretty much immediately. In the hallways, there hadn't been more than one hundred people dashing around but on the factory floor so to speak? Times it by ten and you've got a good estimate. I was flattened against the wall trying to control my breathing as Sheira peered around the threshold and made a small sound of triumph.

Oh great now I have to go look. I managed to cram my head under Shadows arm and above Sheira shoulder to get a glimpse at the strangest machine I'd ever seen, which at this point was saying something. It looked like a giant saucepan but it wasn't anchored to the floor. Instead, it was suspended on giant chains, smaller than the ones at Truespear Hollow but definitely bigger than you'd see at your average shipyard, above a giant pit that roared with the familiar sound of gas-powered flame. Above it was a chasm in the ceiling, whether it was intentional or just the buildings age was up for debate but from what I could make out it looked like the room Juliet had melted in.

The handle of the saucepan was another matter entirely. This highly resembled a cactus. It was long, thin and shiny but I couldn't tell if it was for pulling liquid out of the saucepan or transferring stuff into it. The cactus part came from the fact that it was covered in tiny cylinders that would periodically inject something into the contents of the saucepan handle. Every now and again someone would zoom up on a hyperactive cherry picker and remove one cylinder only to replace it with another.

"What is it?" I asked, feeling like I was missing something obvious.

Sheira fell back into a more secluded corner and pulled out the vial of gel she'd picked up in the storage room. "Have you two still got yours?" she asked. I handed it to her and waited for the explanation because I wasn't following, other than that's what those weird needle-like cylinders were. "Did you see the way that machine was using this stuff?"

"Kinda..." Not really though.

"I think, and this is just a hypothesis but it's a pretty educated one, that this stuff is some form of powerful coagulant."

"A co-what?" The word sounded familiar but that was only because I think Slattery barked it at us on one of his bad days.

"It makes liquids thicker," Shadow explained, uncharacteristically helpful. "Like cornflour."

Sheira nodded and was in the process of binding the vials together with string. "From what those workers said and the way the machine is getting through them it doesn't need much. By the looks of it one cylinder fires every ten seconds and they only use a minuscule amount. So this strong stuff, whatever it is." She tied the last knot and fixed her gaze on Shadow. "You said we can't get past without being seen, right?"

"Yeah."

"Could we get by with a distraction?"

He opened his mouth to respond, then glanced down at the bundle, then back to Sheira and grinned. "That could do it."

"Anything could happen," I pointed out. I'd figured what the plan was I was just trying to decide if it was genius or madness. "It could blow up and destroy everything within a mile!"

"I know," she replied cheerfully. "That's why he's doing it." She forced the package into Shadow's hands, "may as well put that immortality to use."

For a moment he looked like he was about to argue and then decided against it. With a final warning of 'don't you dare move or I'm throwing you into the pot as well', Shadow stepped into a patch of darkness and vanished as if he'd never been there in the first place.

"Do you really think it'll explode?" I asked the moment he was out of earshot.

She shrugged. "Dunno. It'll probably just clog up the system but plan an exit, just in case."

You didn't need to tell me twice. Leap from the window or make a break for the door, take your pick. I leant heavily against the wall and sighed. "They're upstairs Sheira. We're in the same building. We're here." The thought alone was enough to send my heart racing. I was nervous and excited, like the feeling of waiting for a rollercoaster.

"How are you feeling?" She asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know...to tell you the truth of what I might see. It's been weeks since I last saw them, what if something bad has happened, like what if..." the word lodged in my throat and refused to budge. Even my tongue didn't want to say it out loud.

Sheira placed a hand on my wounded arm and lowered her head to look me in the eye. "We can't change what's happened, we can only worry about now." She sighed bitterly, "I know there's nothing I can do about Daryl. He's dying, it would be kind to end it for him but...."

"I get it. Never thought you'd have to think about...."

She bit her lip. "He was one of the first people I met when I arrived in London. You wouldn't have met the Trainspotters, would you? They go down to the train stations and look for runaways. Daryl showed me how to get to camp and helped me settle in, him and Annie. I grew up with them, he's more like a brother than anything. I tried to be like that for Annie when he disappeared, like a sister. That didn't go down too well." She chuckled but there was no mirth to it. "So many friends in such a short space of time. Maybe that's why I didn't drag you back when you left."

"That's a good point," I said. "You're so logical and strong and clever and yet you followed me, the average village idiot into the unknown. I've been trying to work out why for, like, a week."

She shuffled her feet and picked at a loose thread on her jeans. "I don't know why I didn't either. I should of, I should have knocked you out and hauled you into the Harpy's office but I saw you I knew I couldn't. I don't think a hurricane would be stopped you. You were so willing to go out there and risk everything just for a chance of seeing them again. We...we haven't done as much as we should have. I will wholeheartedly admit that. We were all scared for our lives but you didn't care about what could happen to you. Perhaps it was stubbornness, or determination or just being plain mad but you were the only one willing to take the plunge. I really admire that about you."

I looked at my friend, saw the raw honesty in her words and remembered everything she'd done for me. "Well, whatever made you do it, I'm glad you're here. I'd be dead if it wasn't for you, you've done so much for, more than you needed to so you're the only reason I made it this far. Without you, I wouldn't have made it out of London. I owe you so much Sheira, you've done more for me than I can ever repay and if we get out of this alive, just know you can always count on me for a dumb idea or a partner in crime."

She looked stunned, but a happy stunned. Not like being hit in the back with a taser, more like walking into a surprise party. "I may have to just take you up on that," she grinned.

I took her hand in mine. "Thank you Sheira, for everything."

"No problem."

Then she hugged me. She was too short to reach any higher than my chest and my chin just about rested on the top of her head but it felt good, it felt happy in a weird way considering where we were. A week ago I'd lost everything. Now I had the chance to get it all back and I had two new best friends to boot. It was as my old man used to say, 'Tomorrows another day, you just have to keep fighting to see it through,' and we're not done fighting yet.

A cough from behind us killed the moment like a rock dropped from the top of the Empire State Building.

"Well I don't mean to break up this tender moment," Shadow said as he deliberately failed in keeping the amusement out of his voice, "but if you two are done canoodling I think you'd need to see this."

We both jumped apart, ensuring that there were at least six feet between us and then darted over to the doorway where Shadow was leaning, a stupid smirk on his stupid face. I narrowed my eyes and focused on the saucepan machine intently. What would it do? Would it blow up? Would it simply sputter and die like a rust choked engine? We waited.

Ten seconds.

Twenty seconds.

A minute.

"You did put all of it in, didn't you?" Sheira asked, shooting an unconfident glance at Shadow.

"Yeah, I did. Just...give it more time." He tried to sound assuring but chewed his bottom lip anyway.

Two minutes

Well, this isn't working, I thought to myself. What was plan B again? Oh yes, we don't have one. We barely even have a plan A come to think of it but that's another kettle of fish. I tugged gently on Sheira's jacket.

"Let's find another way up," I whispered.

She waved a hand. "Wait! Something's happening!"

Once again I stuffed my head between the gap of Sheira and Shadow's bodies and squinted at the machine. Like some giant, swollen automaton the machine was groaning, the metal buckling and popping unnaturally. It definitely hadn't been making those noises earlier. And was it me or was smoke belching from the gaps in the steel plates?

"Get back," Shadow barked, quiet but definitely frantic, "Get back, get back, get back!"

BANG!

A wave of foul-smelling steam rolled past us like a freight train, just as Shadow pulled a black shield around our hidden forms. The mist shimmered a venomous green and smelled like boys changing room that hadn't been deep cleaned for months. I pulled the hem of my shirt over my mouth to muffle my cough. The shield disintegrated and I peered around the corner to survey the damage.

On the plus side, it didn't look like anyone had been seriously hurt. No one was screaming and disintegrating from being doused in the tar-like liquid, they simply scraped it off their clothes with wrinkled noses. The machine, however? Well...

The lid had evaporated, just poof, gone, it was no more and the rest of it, while still being present in this dimension, wasn't looking so good. The metal had buckled outwards, the vials of liquid and thousands of rivets had been ripped clean out so glass and fragments of steel littered the floor. One of the chains which had kept it elevated had broken free and now was swinging dangerously, the remaining chain cracking with the sudden strain

Everyone was staring wide-eyed at the dead machine. Some were running their hands through their hair, another had dropped to his knees and was trembling. No one was paying any attention to the doors.

"Go!" Sheria ordered and we dashed along the wall, clinging to the shadows, all the way through the chamber and into the tower staircase. We'd made it. We were all breathing heavily and I was having a minor panic attack at the fact we hadn't been seen, be we'd made it! I could have danced a jig.

"What's going on here!" a voice roared.

It was a young male voice, lower-pitched than Marx but definitely pre-puberty. But one thing was for sure, it wasn't a friendly tone. A worker standing near our hiding place barely muffled a cry of despair. I searched for an answer in Shadow's face. He mouthed silently, James.

James? A name I'd only heard in passing but I knew who he was. Molly's fourth general. I'd seen him on the walkway of Demoney Tower but luckily hadn't run into him since, except in my visions. He'd always creeped me out. A strange, vampiric figure with bone-white skin, hair as dark as Shadow's, and a bar piercing through one eyebrow. But the most prevalent part of his appearance was the dark sunglasses he wore, even at night. They weren't cosmetic, he had some power in his eyes that he had no real control over, like Cyclops from X-Men only a thousand times worse. No wonder I woke up in a cold sweat after dreaming of him.

I pressed my ear against the door.

"How did this happen?" he snapped, "who is responsible?"

You could have cut the fear with a spoon. Some poor soul, a very brave poor soul, spoke up. "Sorry, s– sir. It seems there was a malfunction in the injecting mechanism–"

"Well that's bloody obvious, isn't it?" he spat viciously. "How much has been lost? Hmm? TELL ME!"

There a desperate scramble for paper and a different, equally terrified voice piped up. "Just the contests of the tank, sir. Around a million litres, sir. The safety kicked in and the reserves were saved. We can get everything up and running again as soon as–"

"Don't bother." Something that sounded strangely like hooves clopped around the chamber. His beast was a zebra, wasn't it? "The general has just given me the order to decrease the production rate. Lady luck is on your side today."

Someone whimpered.

A piece of glass got kicked. "Clean up this mess and shut the system down before you can destroy anything else," James ordered. He trudged away through glass and iron and slammed the door that he had entered through.

Everyone, including us three hidden away, breathed a collective sigh of relief. With the raucous of hurried sweeping and crunching glass rising up from the other side of the door we crept, as silently as we could, up the narrow stone staircase. It was pitch black, even with the smouldering glow from Incaendium, and the tight passageway made it impossible to stretch your arms out properly but somehow we managed to not trip over any uneven steps, which was fabulous considering I usually can't walk in a straight line.

"He said they're decreasing production rate," Sheira muttered. "Do you think that means they're..."

"They're done?" Shadow finished.

"Mmm."

Shadow thought for a moment. "Yes. Or at least they're damn close to it."

I thought about the employee's mentioning of the 'reserves'. "How much potion do you think there is in here?"

"Well," Sheira pondered, "a million litres is about half a swimming pool."

"And it only takes a syringe to work." The numbers danced around my head, the answer felt like a cold bucket of water had been thrown over my head. "That's about fifty million doses."

"And the rest," she added stiffly.

We climbed on in silent. From the choking clouds of dust exploding upwards with every cautious footstep, it didn't look like anyone had used this tower since the middle ages.

The last few crumbling steps fell away, the howling wind biting at our exposed skin. I shuddered and then glanced out of the window and shuddered again. Whatever elemental force had taken over the castle had converted the surrounding mountains into the Himalayas.

Other than the sound of the screaming vortex outside, the narrow corridor was silent. It was empty. No furniture, no decorations, no guards standing in front of the giant metal door pressed into the stone. I inhaled sharply as I placed my hand gently against the frame and listened.

Nothing. But perhaps the steel was too thick to hear anything at all.

"Do you think...?" I whispered.

Shadow nodded.

"There are no guards," Sheira hissed. "Why are there no guards to a prison?"

"Molly would never think that anyone could get this far. Nick's family have already tried to escape once and they got caught sharpish," he replied. "She makes it look easy and then bites them in the ass. It feeds her ego. Today that's her downfall. Hey, kid, can you cut through this?"

"I'll try." It took me a few attempts to focus the flame down into a single superheated blade. I could barely keep my hands from trembling. I was scared of what I was going to see. Shadow had insisted they would be alive but what state would they be in? Would they look like Daryl, rotting alone in his prison cell? I threw up a little in my mouth as my imagination decided that now would be the perfect time to flash that delightful image into my brain.

I'm going to need to go back to therapy after this, aren't I?

At last, I made something that resembled a blowtorch and, by trailing my finger against the outline, watched the metal blossom from a cold iron grey to red angry red to dull orange to bright yellow and blinding white. Shadow hugged to my side, reading his tendrils while Sheria took the point to watch the corridor, frost rising from her clenched fists.

The final sliver of metal burned away, its weight collapsing into the molten slag with a squelchy thud. Black vines shot from Shadow's outstretched fingers, holding the slab in place. He let it slip a few feet, a gap wide enough for Sheira to force her arm through. Whoosh! A blast of numbing cold wormed its way through the gaps.

"Let it fall. Slowly," she added quickly.

Sweaty from sheer exertion, but still retaining full control like a badass, the slab fell forwards, creaking alarmingly, until it landed softly and quietly onto a bed of freshly made snow. Well done Sheria. And well done Shadow for that matter.

I was the first to step cautiously inside. The room was a stone cell, ten feet by ten feet, and was just as sparse. There was a lone bed, a pile of ragged and dirty blankets thrown haphazardly over it while another bundle lurked in a dank corner, and no other furniture. However, the most prominent feature was the gaping hole in the wall. It was the Eyrie from Game of Thrones, one wrong step and its prisoners would face a thousand feet fall down the mountainside.

I jumped a foot when a bundle of rags suddenly shifted.

Before me, crouched low, dirty, matted brown hair covering her eyes, was a woman. Thin, pale and trembling with either cold or fear. It seemed there had once been a table or a chair as clutched a shard of shattered wood in her trembling hands, the ragged ends pointed forwards defiantly. She squinted at us. And then those familiar blue eyes widened in shock.

"Mum?" I whispered.