Spears meet shields with a sound that knocks the breath out of me. "Hold the line!" someone roars. Mud flies. Men fall. Steel scrapes steel. A lightning crack splits the sky open like someone tearing a banner. The ground answers with a strike that smells of ozone and cooked earth. "By the gods—" a voice cuts off in half. Bodies go rigid. I hit the ground hard. Mud fills my mouth. My head slams, and everything goes white for one shotgun second. "Get back! Move!" a captain shouts. "Who threw that bolt?" I don't know where my couch went. One heartbeat I'm folding laundry, then a sky-sized dagger falls and I am somewhere else, laying on wet grass. "Stay down!" a soldier hisses inches from my face. He presses the point of a spear to my throat without aiming. "Are you with Widewall? Say your name!" My hand scrabbles for the world I remember. "I—" I say. My voice sounds wrong to my own ears. "I'm Mae." "Mae who?" he demands. Mud pulls at my sleeves. I taste blood. "Mae Beck?" I try the name. It comes out like a child trying a new word. "She's not one of ours!" someone farther back yells. The shout passes along the line like a flame. "Not ours, not his, not hers—hold!" another voice orders. Men push past me, spears up. Faces turn toward the place the lightning struck. I force myself up. My legs wobble like