Wildwing expected arguing and challenges to his authority, but once his pack of strangers had started moving, however slow their progress was, they did not stop. There was unmistakable muttering between them, but they were complying. That was better than arguing and wasting time. The Saurians must have known where they all were. They had to keep moving.

He still had seen no hunter drones. He could not tell if that was a promising sign, or suspicious.

He would steal a glance over his shoulder occasionally. As if perhaps he had simply gotten it wrong, and had been just tricked by the light or delirium. But it didn’t matter how many times he tried to blink fatigue out of his eyes, the image did not suddenly resolve into someone else. It was still his own face glaring back at him. Slightly different, but an unmistakable distorted echo.

His first thought had been Chameleon. Wildwing had not seen him since Tank and Grumpy had been deposited in cells. He knew from his team that the shapeshifter could do a convincing impression of himself. But, Chameleon had proven many times to be a coward when faced with the slightest provocation. Wildwing had come at the double with everything he could muster, and it didn’t vanish with a teleporter, did not change to a larger shape to fight back with, and did not have any concealed weapons.

And if Chameleon was supposed to be a convincing mimic, why was this afterimage just slightly wrong?

There was the other problem, too. A facsimile of a person does not have friends, and this one did. They could not both be Chameleon. They all could not all be Chameleon. For the millionth time, he desperately wished for the Mask. He could have eliminated so many questions. Not all of them, and probably not to a degree that would have satisfied him, but enough that he could banish some of his unease.

Wildwing did not know the layout of the Raptor well enough to have it memorized. His hazy recollection was also not helped by its state of relative disaster. ‘Down’ was a simple directive, but became complex with the state of the ship. At one point they had to backtrack several hundred feet, as a gash several feet wide ran through the corridor, presenting a deep black pit full of many sharp objects if they pushed forward.

The Mask would have known the way, he told himself, and then told himself to shut up.

He looked, dubiously, at the state of an elevator, and then at its surroundings, and decided that despite his declaration that dead trying to escape was better than dead in a cage, he preferred neither. Ships had other methods of crew movement—maintenance shafts and emergency hatches—in case of catastrophic failures like this one. They would use those instead. This proved to be too much for Emily, who could not grip a ladder tightly enough to support her own weight. Wildwing became impatient, and she refused his help with such exaggerated vehemence that for a moment it seemed she would throw herself down the shaft in spite before accepting a hand.

He listened for any other clues he could. He listened for dripping water, just in case there was an ocean on top of them after all. He listened for a whistle, or a change in the air currents, anything that might signal a vacuum, just in case he had completely missed all his guesses and the ship somehow had limped to space.

The hallways expanded, no longer tight and adorned with sharp decoration. The ceilings grew further away with each deck they descended through. The debris became larger to match, with whole panels of steel ripped away, consoles sheared from their place of operation, and beams snapped.

The airlock that separated the rest of the ship from one of the cargo holds refused to budge, insisting on a cycling of the chamber that could not possibly happen with the Raptor in its current state. The manual override was there, but it still took three of them to force open the huge door once the lock released, just wide enough that a person could pass through.

The second airlock door was already open.

There were all the hunter drones he had been missing, standing within the cargo hold, all with weapons pointed at him. And Dragaunus himself, standing among them.

He wondered how long the overlord had been standing there, waiting impatiently for his dramatic confrontation.

Wildwing’s first instinct was to raise the laser rifle, for what little good it did him. He had no armor, and no shield, no backup, and no way to protect the people with him. It was, at best, the aggressive posturing of a cornered animal. He squeezed the trigger, because he likely would not get a better chance.

The discharge was swallowed and dispersed by a personal shield, inconsequential. Dragaunus didn’t even have the decency to flinch.

“This has all been very moving,” Dragaunus said, with false solemnity, hands clasped before him. “Worthy of poetry, to be sure. But I’m afraid it is time for this amusement to end.” He looked up, smiling with his rows of yellowed, sharpened teeth. “I have a deal for you.”

“Oh, good, I was just thinking I have too many kidneys.” Tank spat.

Dragaunus continued, with only the slightest twitch of the face to indicate that he disapproved of being interrupted. He made a showy gesture with an arm, and the cargo bay doors behind him opened.

Revealing a street, and the full dark of night. With cars parked along the road, and street lights, and, across the way, a store front. The hot air of the Raptor rushed out, and the cooler air of the evening replaced it, with just a hint of the vaguely distressing, and entirely too welcome smell of fried food.

The lizard smiled. “Your two companions from the cell block can leave, unharmed. But you, you again, and my pretty prize-” this, gesturing at Emily “-stay, right here. I lose some of my entertainment, you save some of your miserable band. It is not the most satisfying conclusion for either of us, but that is the way of negotiation.”

“I seem to recall that you are poor at keeping your bargains,” Wildwing answered, flatly.

“I could just have you burnt to a pile of ash, right now,” Dragaunus observed the hunter drones.

“Sure,” Wildwing agreed, “but I suspect whatever you’re up to requires at least some of us alive, or you wouldn’t have put in this effort.”

“I suppose you think you have a brilliant counteroffer,” Dragaunus sighed.

“That is generally how negotiations work,” Wildwing kept the blaster aimed squarely at the lizard’s chest-plate, even though it did him no good. “You let all four of them go, I stay.”

Dragaunus let out a noise of aggravation now, rolling his eyes. “I can’t tell if you’re not taking this seriously or if you just enjoy being insufferable.” He raised his arms as if pleading theatrically with an unseen deity. “That you think yourself so valuable I would give up months of work for your miserable life.” And then, he turned to regard the little group again, his eyes narrowed. “You overestimate your worth. You can let your two little friends go, or you can all die here together.”

The overlord stepped closer, trying to intimidate. Wildwing thought he might have heard some uneasy footsteps behind him. Wildwing responded in kind, carefully, taking a step away from the group, trying his best to keep attention solely focused on him. He kept his eyes level on Dragaunus, gauging the drones from his peripheral vision.

Dragaunus’s eyes narrowed and he took another step. “You’re stalling. What do you think you’re going to accomplish?”

Wildwing took another sidestep carefully, as if he and Dragaunus were circling around an unseen object, just to make sure.

“Oh, please, what do you think you’re going to do? Make a grand sacrifice?” Dragaunas sneered. “For this rabble?”

Wildwing lowered the rifle, shrugging a little while letting it fall to his side. “I considered it.”

“Perhaps you’ve finally found a bit of sense,” Dragaunus relaxed visibility.

“Your little drone army isn’t actually turned on,” Wildwing smiled. “You don’t have any left that work, do you?” The drones had not tracked him as he moved away from the airlock, despite being the only visible threat in the group of prisoners. They stood, lifeless, silent, arranged to look like an army. Literal tin soldiers.

The overlord’s face faltered, and Wildwing whipped up the rifle, firing through the cargo bay doors, destroying the storefront across the street way. It exploded outward in cacophony of glass and splinters, immediately caught flame, and an alarm bell began blaring.

Dragaunus gaped at the damage, then turned, fists clenched, as if he were considering simply killing them all anyway.

Wildwing slid into dead seriousness, and refused to move. “New terms.”

Dragaunus stood there, caught in indecision, petulant. “You won’t save them all.”

“Run along,” Wildwing said, simply. It looked for a moment that Dragaunus might, in fact, decide that killing him would be more satisfying, but instead he turned and vanished into the shadows of debris on foot, rather than by teleporter.

The lifeless drones still stood around them. Wildwing took the time to shoot apart as many as he could, before the energy cell finally depleted, and he tossed the rifle aside. It was a small achievement, but it meant less resources for the Saurians to work with.

“Come on,” Wildwing said to the remaining ducks, jerking his head to the open doors, and the flames beyond.

“Just like that?” Tank frowned.

“I evened the odds,” Wildwing said. At least, that’s what he hoped was the case. It seemed Dragaunus thought so. He carefully looked out into the night beyond the cargo doors. There were a few curious human heads poking out of windows now, and perhaps the distant sound of sirens. A promising start. There was some traffic at a nearby intersection that had stopped entirely, with gawkers cautiously leaning out of car doors, faces illuminated by the fire.

He jumped the three feet from the bay to the solid ground, and turned. The Raptor appeared from the outside to be a tall apartment building with no lights on, perhaps abandoned, its face now inexplicably marred by a door that was far too large. Even if everything else within it didn’t work, the cloaking device clearly did.

That was going to be a problem with the Mask gone, he reminded himself, and then told himself to shut up again.

There was a rumble, somewhere beneath his feet.

He looked to the others, hesitating. “They’re leaving. Come on. If the ship doesn’t rip to shreds or fall out of the sky, it’s going to hide somewhere else.”

He did not recognize the street; it looked like every other street to him, with no real outstanding landmarks. He could see a great cluster of city lights in one direction, bright enough to obliterate the view of any stars in the sky, and that gave him a bit of hope. It could be any city, to be sure, but a city was better than being in the middle of no where.

Or a mile underwater.