Dust hangs in the beam of the one working emergency lamp, and I count heads before I let myself count anything else.
Jessica's still crouched at the edge of the hole in the wall, one hand flat against the broken concrete. A few steps back, Gwen stands with Renamon's dark eyes on her, the way they always are after Taomon lets go of a Digivolution. Peter's upright, brushing plaster dust off his shoulder like it's the only thing wrong with him.
"You good?"
"Never better."
He rolls the shoulder once, and it's not a lie exactly, not the whole truth either.
"Ceiling and I have an understanding now. It goes down, I go somewhere else."
Gatomon's still perched near my collar, ears up, tail twitching the way it does when she's listening for something that hasn't happened yet. Along the broken shelving, BlackGatomon paces a slow line, claws out, not fully convinced the room is done with us.
I reach for the amulet out of habit and find it cooling in my palm, the warmth from earlier already fading back toward nothing. Whatever woke it up walked out through that wall a few minutes ago and took the signal with it.
Jessica doesn't move from the breach.
"This isn't nothing. I already told you that."
I cross the floor toward her, boots crunching over rubble that used to be a wall.
"You told me it broke clean. I heard you the first time."
"Then why do you still sound like you don't believe me?"
I don't have a good answer for that, so I look at what she's looking at instead. The edge of the hole is too even for something that got thrown through it by accident, rebar bent outward in a pattern that almost looks deliberate if I squint.
"Because I want it to be the other thing, a monster that panicked and got lucky. That version, we won something tonight."
"And this version?"
"This version, we got played."
Jessica straightens, brushing concrete dust off her palm onto her jeans. She doesn't say I told you so. She doesn't have to.
"MetalTyrannomon didn't fight like something trying to survive. It fought like something on a schedule. The second that seal held, the lights cut, the doors sealed, and it had somewhere to be. That's an exit strategy."
"Somebody built that exit strategy for it."
"Somebody knew exactly when Taomon's seal would work, watching close enough to time a blackout to the second."
Neither of us says the name. We don't need to. This is Vanko's lab, filled with Vanko's machines, and the only person who benefits from MetalTyrannomon walking away clean instead of getting caught is the man who isn't standing in this room with us.
Gwen's somewhere behind the collapsed shelving, out of sight.
"Guys. Come look at this."
I follow Jessica over, stepping around a server rack that's folded in on itself like a dropped tin can. Gwen's crouched by the base of the far wall, one hand hovering over a scorched control panel half buried in debris, its casing cracked but the internals oddly untouched.
"This isn't damage. This is a shutdown sequence. Somebody keyed the blast doors and the power cut off this exact panel, and the timing lines up almost to the second with when Taomon had it pinned."
"Almost to the second."
"That's close enough that I don't believe in coincidence anymore."
Gwen glances up at me.
"Somebody was watching this fight in real time and pulled the plug the moment it stopped going his way."
It's still not a name on a piece of paper. But it's Vanko's building and Vanko's enemy standing in the middle of the wreckage feeling stupid for calling this a win five minutes ago.
I don't say any of that out loud; I stand there instead, turning it over, the same way I'd turn over a bad grade I already knew was coming.
We didn't win a fight tonight, I think. We survived a demonstration.
This thought isn't comfortable, and it doesn't get more comfortable the longer I sit with it. Vanko's whole existence runs on proving he's smarter than the people who count him out, and if this was a test, we just handed him an expensive answer key.
Gatomon's ears flatten against my shoulder like she's picked the thought straight out of my head.
"You've got that face."
"What face?"
"The one where you're about to say something depressing."
"I was going to say we might've just lost tonight without noticing."
"Yeah."
Her tail stops moving entirely.
"That face."
My phone goes off before I can decide whether to keep talking, buzzing hard enough against my leg. I feel it before I hear it. I pull it out expecting Tony's name and get exactly that.
The message underneath it isn't the kind of thing Tony sends when he's just checking in.
Something hit the Tower. Get here.
I read it twice like the second pass might change it into something less alarming. It doesn't.
"Ethan?"
Jessica's already watching my face, the way she watched it in Vanko's storage yard an hour ago, like she can read the shift before I say a word.
My hand tightens around the phone.
"Something happened at Stark Industries. Tony wants me there."
"Define something."
"He didn't. Something hit the Tower, and I need to get there."
I'm already moving toward the hole in the wall, toward the cold night air on the other side of it.
Gwen's already pulling her tablet back out, thumb moving fast.
"It happened while we were in here."
I don't argue with it. The realization lands the same way Jessica's theory did five minutes ago, undeniable the second somebody puts it into words.
MetalTyrannomon didn't need to win against us. It just needed to keep us busy long enough for Vanko to move on the only target that ever mattered.
Beelzemon's already at the hole in the wall, one hand braced against the broken edge. Jessica's a step behind him, not needing to be told to move.
Gatomon tightens against my shoulder, claws finding purchase through my jacket. BlackGatomon falls in beside Peter.
I don't know yet what's waiting for us at the Tower, how bad it is, or how long Tony's been dealing with it alone. I was standing in a wrecked lab, congratulating myself for a fight I never won.
I know we're already behind.
I climb through the hole MetalTyrannomon left for us and run toward the one place I should've been watching all along.
***
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