“I don’t know, Victoria Dallon,” he told me. There was something less crisp and confident in his voice, more momentarily lost, that left me feeling like he genuinely didn’t know. Maybe even to the extent that it wasn’t something he’d truly considered before now.

I wanted to be angry and I couldn’t. It just hurt. I felt the loss of those family members very pointedly right now, especially with Crystal away.

He went on, “But if there’s even a possibility, I’d be willing to do anything reasonable to make it up to you. It’s the sort of effort that keeps me moving forward.”

I nodded.

I wasn’t even sure how to feel about that. I understood the idea, even if I hated that he might be responsible for the renewed feeling of loss I was dealing with right now.

I hadn’t come here with the plan of guilting him and using that—but he was offering help and… fuck me, we needed it.

“The prison complex. We have teammates there,” I said.

“I don’t think we can release them. Things are volatile. Unless you have new evidence you’d like for us to push through.”

Kenzie needed this. The team needed it.

I shook my head. “I don’t think you could or should, either. My question is, can you get us in to visit? As a group?”

Beacon 8.2

Defiant walked over to the Dragon-craft, knocking on the frame of the hangar door. He wore power armor—armor heavy enough it needed engineering to move around—and the rap of metal gauntlet on metal frame turned more heads than necessary.

He wasn’t the kind of guy who cared. That hadn’t changed any from when he’d been Armsmaster. I knew most of what I knew of him from Dean, with a little from chance encounters.

There were tinkers who were barely restrained. They were excited about what they did and they needed only the slightest excuse to go on at length in their attempts to explain their work. Then there were tinkers who were drawn into themselves, the work and the inspiration all happening in their own little world. Kid Win had been more the latter. Chariot had been, but he’d been a special case, with reasons to keep secrets. Armsmaster, obviously, but that had been what had set me on this train of thought.

Lookout was the explaining, excited sort, naturally. Bakuda, from what I’d heard, had been the sort to go on at length, even while in captivity, but she took that to an extreme, like it applied to other things than her tinkering. Bonesaw… yeah.