He refreshed. Some of the site elements lingered, while the map reloaded. I bit my tongue rather than comment or complain.

“I’ll have you guys hooked up to my internet in five or ten minutes,” Kenzie said. “Things will be faster then.”

“Please God,” Tristan said. “Thank you.”

I looked at the other pins on the loading map.

“Domestics, assaults, threats, noises at late hours,” Sveta recited, listing pins.

“Those are rare,” I said. “At least compared to some of these others we see over and over again. Look. Robbery. Dealing. It’s about resources. It’s about people feeling the cold and not feeling ready to face months of it, of darkness and food shortages.”

“That’s not law and hero stuff,” Sveta said. “That’s infrastructure. We can’t do much about that.”

“Drops in the bucket,” Chris said. He was standing beside Kenzie’s chair, watching.

“I could help a little if they let me give them tech,” Kenzie said from her workstation. “But they won’t. Speaking of tech, second box going live. Additional systems, monitors, and information, no super internet just yet, sorry. We’re booting up in five, four, three, two, one—”

There was a pause where a second or two passed. She kicked the box to her left. Projected images began to fill up more of the walls. News having to do with capes, with politics, with crime and industry. Some terrible newspaper comics popped up briefly, before being replaced by more pertinent things.

“And zero,” she said. “Tinker internet hookup next to come.”

In one area, according to a headline on a news ticker, Mayday was getting a hard time. The territories that Advance Guard was managing were seeing civilian pushback, citing Mayday’s lack of leadership in years before Kenzie had even joined his team.

I glanced at her, but she was busy enough that she didn’t see it. I watched as it lingered on the ticker before other news pushed it off.

The map had loaded incompletely again, with more gray than before. Tristan groaned loudly in frustration, walking away.

“We can’t make this about riot duty and supporting a crumbling infrastructure,” I said. “We can’t be extra police officers, with some extra capabilities and a lot of access and procedural stuff missing. It’s inefficient.”

“We stop going after criminals?” Tristan asked.

“We go after the key ones, prioritize the worst, and the ones our team can break up. The courts are under enough strain as is. They aren’t going to appreciate us sending petty drug dealers their way.”

“And there’s subversive, hostile elements in the city,” Sveta said. “Earth C’s soldiers.”

“That’s the big reason we’re needing to coordinate,” I said. “Them. The Fallen. Maybe Love Lost’s group. Possibly Prancer’s remnants, depending on how resentful they are. Those who aren’t playing along or who pose too big a risk.”