Haralda peered over the Clipboard Shield, a rectangular scutum finished in technical glass so that it could double as a whiteboard. She had to kneel behind it because it was only four feet tall, but she felt as safe as if she were taking refuge in a nuclear bunker. Yes, the Frenchman had stolen some of her memories, but it was more of a blessing — she couldn't wait to re-experience all those steamy novels.

The Italian woman dropped Tarquin from ceiling to floor, and then she grew ablaze with light, fading out of existence like a photo left out in the sun. She turned to those she'd been sharing the beast with, smiled, and gave them an exaggerated salute.

"Arrivederci," she said, leaving behind a hole in the mound.

"You bastards!" shouted Connie, slinging the Net of Lies in front of her as she charged. Faust caught her and wrenched her back behind the shield.

She struggled harder, trying to kick him, screaming "Let me go! I'll get you for this, you bastards! I'll fucking glass you!"

"No, Connie — something's not right," Faust mumbled, holding his elbows up to avoid cutting himself on the Double Edged Sword that poked out of a scabbard at his hip.

Eirlys said, "Connie, look at our Djinn, then look at Kari's."

The makeshift shiv, just a few leather straps fastened to a sharpened steak knife, was shining brighter than a traffic signal. Meanwhile, Haralda's own shield looked dull, inert, with even the umbo in the centre failing to catch any of the limelight.

"We're missing something," Haralda announced. "Let's be off. I'll cover our retreat, so whatever you do, don't stick anything sharp into them. Don't attack if there's any chance you could get stuck."

"No," said Connie, struggling as the others held her back. "We can't just leave him, man! I'm done with walking away!"

"Come on, sister," pleaded Saheel. "We need to think this through."

"And I think we ought to show them who's boss! It's just going to get stronger and stronger! How can you just walk away after what they did to Tarquin?"

Haralda fixed her gaze on Connie to perform The Look. She didn't know exactly what The Look looked like, seeing as practising it in the mirror would have been suicide, but she did know that naughty children chose to give up their playtime in place of being sent to Madame Gunmetal's office. It got results.

Connie doubled over, rebooting, but soon enough sprang back and said, "Fine."

They made a break for the stairs. The mound raced them, rippling with energy and poise, and propelled themselves forward on a torrent of flesh. They pounced, but Haralda was ready.

As deputy head, she'd given a talk on self-defense after a kid went ham on a teacher. She'd made one half of her staff sling punches while the other half tried to intercept them. At the end of the day, she invited them all to strike her, and using just her arms, she taught them how to keep their torso free of bruises.

How would this be any different?

The American woman swung at Eirlys, but Haralda caught the blow.

Saheel hosed down the Irishman with the Holy Water Pistol, pumping madly on the piston below the nozzle, but the torrent wasn't strong enough, and the Irishman burst forth — Haralda got between them, and the shield went all fuzzy in her hands as he struck it.

Before the Scottish man could even think about attacking, Haralda was in front of Connie, swatting his fist out of the way.

If only she could've kept this up. The shield was light enough, but it was large, and twisting it all around tired out her arms. They had to move.

"The lift," she shouted, intercepting the adonic Faust before he grabbed the real one, who was already sprinting away.

They made it clear of the beast, making straight for the lift, and Haralda turned, satisfied, before the Frenchman latched onto her neck.

She choked. The plot points of My Reverse Harem floated up and out of her mind into the Frenchman, graphic enough to give him pause — she twisted away, and barreled into the lift. Gosh, she'd get to read that masterpiece again? Her heart thumped in her chest.

The six outgrowths rushed over. Kari hammered the buttons to close the doors. On the other side, they scratched away at the metal with sharp fingernails, and it sprouted goosebumps along Haralda's arms.

NO TERRESTRIAL LAYER EXISTS

"We need somewhere to escape," said Haralda, "And we need to make our Djinn glow. Can it be done?"

"We'll have to vote," whimpered Saheel. "We'll have to make those things even stronger..."

With the piercing sound of metal being rent, torn, and twisted apart came a gap in the elevator doors. Six pairs of eyes peered through it. Haralda plugged the gap with the shield, but it would only take a few seconds for them to fully prise open the doors.

Connie kneeled next to Kari. "How did you get it to glow? What's the secret?"

BANG. They were punching dents in the door to soften it up.

Kari was absorbed in repeatedly depressing the ground floor button.

"Kari!" said Connie. "We don't have much time, here, man!"

Kari said, "...I came to terms with my part in their deaths."

"What? How the hell are we supposed to do that? Most of us don't even know who the hell they are!"

The beast ripped off the elevator doors, and now Haralda could do nothing but thrust the shield out in front of her, pushing back their advances, hoping to delay them while the group pressed their backs to the wall...

With dismay, she realised the monster wasn't making a serious attempt to breach her one woman shield wall — they were biding their time until she tired.

"Eirlys," shouted Saheel, pumping away at his pistol, keeping the Irishman back, "This is a crazy idea, sister, but when I had all those bullets in me, I had a hallucination of my university days, and it felt so real, so vivid that it couldn't have just been a memory... I was living it again. Is there anything we can do with that?"

Eirlys, who was clutching some kind of gun to her chest, said, "Um. Create six terrestrial layers, that take us to the day when each of us were responsible for a death. We relive the day. We find out the truth."

"Yes," gasped Haralda, her lungs burning in agony. "All those in favour?"

6? — MAJORITY REACHED

Kari pressed the first button as soon as it appeared, and the elevator whistled down the shaft. Haralda collapsed. Above them the beast exploded in power, expanding to swallow up the top of the tower, and they were engulfed by the sound of endless tonnes of bone crumbling apart into fragments. The shaft, visible from the open door, was a blur.

With a ding, they reached layer 1. It was Haralda's shoebox of a bedroom, and if she stepped out of the lift she would find herself straight on her bed.

"They'll come down after us with time, sister," said Saheel. "I recommend we—"

"Split up and look for clues, right," said Faust. "In our teams, I suppose."

Haralda nodded at Kari, hefted her Clipboard Shield onto her back, and prepared to step out.

"Wait," said Connie, breaking out in a sweat. "What if we find out we don't like so much what we've done? The audience, man, don't you think they're going to judge us if we've done something really awful? Is there any way we could show that, like, that we've atoned? That we're different people, and we've learned from it, and we'd do the right thing if it happened again?"

"It's not like Tarquin really did anything wrong," said Faust, "But they killed him all the same. Still, it would be nice not to have done myself in."

They stood for a while in thought, trying to ignore the incessant wailing and gnashing of teeth a mile above them. The rumble slithered ever closer down the shaft. The traffic outside Haralda's window started to pick up, and soon the drivers were honking and swearing at each other because, for their liking, it had picked up a little too much.

Finally Eirlys said, "Remote controls."

"Yes, sister," said Saheel, beaming. "That's the ticket."

"Pause, to stop and think; to remember. Rewind, to experience again. And record, to act differently."

"And an arrow telling you what you did next wouldn't hurt, either."

"Wow," said Faust, "...Look at you two go, again. Wasn't there a film about that, though?"

"Is it worth the risk of making that thing even stronger?" asked Haralda, meeting their eyes as they nodded. "All those in favour, then?"

6? — MAJORITY REACHED

With the shield at her back, communication tile on her wrist, and remote in her hand, Haralda stepped out with Kari into her bedroom. The group shared a terse goodbye, and then the door closed and the lift sailed downwards.

"Right, young lady," said Haralda. "Time for us to get to school."