The man with the dyed red hair was someone I’d met before, if only briefly. He was the smoker, and he’d slept sitting up in the armchair.

“Kingdom Come,” I said. “I ran into him at the community center.”

“Yep,” Sveta said. “Might explain why Norwalk went south.”

I nodded.

There was no ID or good resolution on the woman at the door. Too much movement, not enough of a stay.

The images weren’t a snapshot. The woman and Kingdom Come had been captured sleeping. The bald man had tossed and turned too much to be captured at any one point while he slept, so the best resolution was when he’d sat eating. Even though the images froze in time, they were out of sync, each one at a different moment.

“You knew who they were already,” I said.

“I had some idea. This place and the mall were the big locations where they made calls to and from, in the big network of call locations for this group,” Kenzie said.

On the table by the window, the blur had solidified into a concrete image. It was clearest of them all, to the point it looked real. Human faces moved and adjusted, but the rectangle was static in shape, inflexible.

It was the tinker device that had blown up the portal. This would presumably be the one that had successfully been used on the Norwalk portal.

“You wanted to rope us into this by showing us this scene,” I said. “It’s a lead. A big lead.”

“Yeah,” Kenzie said.

“You’re not pulling our legs?” Chris asked.

“This was really tedious to do,” she said. “If I was going to pull your legs or try to get you all on board as a team, I’d have done something easier and more fun. More convincing, probably.”

“Don’t be dishonest to get us to stay together,” I said.

“Okay. I wasn’t dishonest this time. This is real.”

We walked around the room, looking at the culprits.

“Um. Did it work?”

“Yes,” Sveta said.

“Yep,” Chris said.

“Fuck yeah, this worked,” I said. “I want to get these assholes.”

I glanced at Byron and I saw him nod.

Kenzie didn’t smile or cheer. Her expression was intense and unmoving, with something like a blue fire in her eyes as the box glowed before her. “Perfect.”

Torch 7.6

The shopping floor of the financial building gradually illuminated as the adjustable lights and shutters were replicated by the time camera. It made for an unusual picture, where the shutters and the covers for the lights were closed but the light that passed through was painted as especially intense.

Meanwhile, on the floor of the center, the shadows of people passing through streaked the area, darkening it. The yellow of construction vests and hats cut through the darkness of clothing, some skin, and equipment being rolled through as the building was used as a shortcut.