Tristan added, “And each group or major location may be targeted by hostile powers. Dragon, Defiant and others at the top know, but…”

“We have to keep an eye on the prison,” Kenzie said. “Ashley and Rain.”

“Yeah,” Capricorn said. “Among other things.”

“I was thinking about it,” Lookout said. She swiveled around in her chair. “It’s a lot.”

“It’s a lot,” I agreed.

“We can pick something to do, and we can go after it, but other stuff is going to come up while we’re doing that, even if we’re really, really good about it,” Kenzie said. “Even if we get the other teams to coordinate and we’re really, really, really fast with getting other teams to cooperate with us, it’s going to be hard.”

“Maybe impossible,” Chris said.

“Why does you chiming in like that make me suspicious?” Tristan asked.

“Me?” Chris asked.

“You’re hanging out with Kenz, no snark, no hostility, you’re being quiet, you’re helping—”

“Because he likes me,” Kenzie said.

“No, it’s because,” Chris said. “I’m not stressed about being in the latest of a long, annoying line of institutions. Don’t put me in a hospital, orphanage, jail, school, I’m good.”

“Good might be overstating it,” I said.

“You two are conspiring,” Tristan said.

I studied their expressions, carefully neutral. Kenzie had the hint of a smile on her face, but she mostly seemed jittery, heel on the top of a cardboard box, foot jiggling.

“I can see it,” I said.

“It’s not a conspiracy. Can I just make my pitch, explain how I see things, and you can correct me if I’m wrong?” Kenzie asked.

“Go ahead,” Sveta told her.

“This is a big thing. I’m going to end up working really hard either way, but if we go the way I was just talking about, where we try to do one big thing at a time and other stuff keeps coming up and getting in the way, we’ll get buried, we’ll start slipping, and I’ll end up working super late to build stuff we super duper absolutely need.”

“It’s possible. We could establish rules to avoid that,” Sveta said.

“Or,” Kenzie said. “We agree we’re in trouble. If things were really terrible in a fight, Victoria would stop holding back and would hit hard to smash people to smithereens. Tristan and Byron would use some of their tougher tricks, like stalactite rain or drowning people in rock.”

“I’ve never had cause to do that. I’m not even sure I could.”

“Sveta—” Kenzie started. “There’s maybe possibly a situation where things were dangerous and you’d leave that body.”

“Let’s not discuss that,” Sveta said. “I don’t want to entertain the idea. I know how bad it could be.”