Delaney seized Sloan around the waist and surrounded them both in a bubble. The light pelted the barrier and drowned the surroundings in a yellow haze. The moment it subsided, Delaney burst the bubble and both fanned out in search of the mysterious rooftop girl, who was no longer on the rooftop. Instead, she plummeted at them surrounded by swirling silver discs that revolved around her body in a ring. Three discs detached from the greater formation and span at Sloan and Delaney. They ricocheted between the narrow alley walls, their speed compounding as the buzzsaw sharpness of their molecular edges hit the brick and mortar. A disc sailed through Delaney's midsection and bifurcated her rather cleanly. Sloan flung herself against the wall as a disc whizzed past. She felt no contact, but her side split open and her blood flooded onto the garbage.

The girl hit the ground. More discs whipped out and split the bubbles with which Delaney had carried Bloomington and Woodbury. The girls each fell atop a spinning disc, which quickly retreated behind the greater formation. One hand gripped to her side, Sloan directed her gun, but before she could fire the silver discs flipped and rearranged their pattern to block off the alley in an overlapping array of circles. Sloan could not even see her target through the massive bulwark.

A girl with mirror barriers. Her power counteracted Sloan's perfectly. Other barriers Sloan could penetrate with sustained fire, but a barrier that reflected her light back at her—what could she do against that? She confronted the wall of discs in search of a creative solution to the mismatch, the kind of solution Clair would fathom after mere seconds of cunning calculation.

But seconds passed and Sloan thought of nothing. No strategy entered her mind other than the overwhelming desire to shoot. As if in recognition of her failure, the discs broke their formation, collapsing in on each other (or merging together, or something) until only one spinning silver circle remained, which followed its master as she scurried up the alley wall and disappeared over the edge, the plates carrying Bloomington and Woodbury sailing alongside her.

By the time all three were gone, Delaney had put herself back together. She waved her staff and healed the gash on Sloan's side.

(Chapter 16)