Her eyes ripped across both their faces, wide and scattered and enormous. She didn't know them. Either of them. And they had her surrounded. Their words were a smear on her brain, distant and blurred to nothingness, soundless in the shriek that rippled through every nerve.

"Don't touch me." The words were frantic warning as she pressed back, pushed herself further against the corner with every bit of purchase her bare feet could manage. "Don't touch me!"

The pipes clanged in the walls, wrenching and screaming, until, with a small explosion, they burst through the wood on all levels. There was a shriek below as rusty water surged out, likely taking the Chihuelans by surprise. Where Lapis, Yuri, and Gene were, the water rained down in a torrent . . . with indistinct humanoid shapes beginning to form in the spray.

Yuri and Gene might be able to pick out their own faces, mirrored by the tens.