My aura was like a push, fear or awe. Lately it seemed to be only fear, with a few rare, weird exceptions. Monokeros could pick one person and sway them wholly and completely. The Woman in Blue was the best of both, or even stronger.

She’d been making subtle moves, biding her time, and nobody knew exactly why or what that patience served. Now we had a glimmer of what she was doing.

She was after someone, something, or what the prison offered to someone who had absolute control over others—an army.

“Crystalclear is in communication with others,” Chris said. “It’s encrypted.”

“We can get in,” Looksee said. She looked at us. “If you’re okay with that.”

One of the biggest players around was circling around one of the biggest, meanest collections of parahumans around. Cheit knew and planned on turning it into a trap for her, explaining their interest in the place as a form of bait, or they’d happened to be after the same prize.

This was going to turn into a battlefield.

Beacon 8.5

The wind blew my hair across my gloved hand and the glowing screen of my phone. On the screen, a short email chain had me biting my tongue in reality, even though it was an exchange of text alone.

I flexed the arm that was no longer in the sling. The injury was still very much felt.

I’d been idle for too long, because the ‘circle’ dropped down from the top, obscuring part of the screen. Two options were on the circle. On the left, the phone offered the option of trying to draw power by way of ambient, wireless energy, including solar, EM, and whatever else. It would put the phone in a ‘rest’ mode. On the right, a music note and a list of my music, with the phone browsing recent messages and context to try to smart-pick a playlist of music to listen to based on my guessed mood.

The phone left both up as choices, with an upward swipe to go back to what I was doing. Each option grew and diminished as a two-segment pie chart while the phone’s thinking process brought up words and ideas—distance from home, recent browsing.

Just about every part of that whole process was about two steps shy of being hot garbage in terms of accuracy and functionality, but watching it happen and seeing the pie slice of ‘rest’ shrink was a distraction. The countdown appeared, as the phone prepared to make its choice.

I swiped in the last second. The emails.