Thoughts flickered through my head. Of my mom telling me how that greed was a weakness. One of many lessons. Some, I felt, had contradicted others. I was divided on whether that was because they had, or if it was because I’d been too young to properly digest, and what hadn’t digested had warped slightly with time. What was right and what was wrong when hurting others. What school was supposed to be for me, given my inevitable career and lifestyle. Greed was a weakness and if the villains had something they prized then a lot could be done from standing between them and that prize.

That was what Spright and Shortcut were doing.

There were other thoughts. In trying to get my parents to talk about Amy, the Wretch had typed out one word, asking for the story we’d never really gotten to hear in full.

M-A-R-Q-U-I-S.

My dad had told the tale. Somewhere in there he’d said something about Marquis’ prize—Amy. I remembered because anything to do with Amy had been something to fixate on, back then. I remembered because there was something to the story that connected with what my mom had said, about the villains and their treasures. Connecting those dots had helped bring the already vivid mental picture of the scene to life.

Fuck me, why was it that a memory about clarity and communication left me so painfully uneasy? Beyond the fact that it was the Wretch in the scene, that the momentary peace I’d felt only highlighted how brainwashed I was.

It was the communication itself—not the thing being communicated or the context—that gnawed at me and made me want to hit something and destroy it.

Kenzie’s voice made me jump, and I was already on alert, watching to see if Spright or Shortcut got hurt.

“You’ve got a Cryptid inbound. Don’t freak,” Kenzie said, over the phone.

“Don’t freak?” I asked. “He actually made it here?”

“He flew. Then he switched forms—he warned me it was an awkward form, in case I saw on camera. And he yelled at me a lot about not watching him change, even though I wouldn’t ever do something that invades his privacy as badly as that.”

“Lookout. This form? I’m trying to keep control over this mess. I need all the details you can give me, and I need to know if we need to turn Cryptid away before he engages.”

“He doesn’t usually use it because it’s screwed up,” she told me. “That’s all I know.”

That wasn’t helpful.

Way off in the distance, barely distinguishable from the spots in my vision, I could make out Sveta’s unnaturally pale face.

On the roof of the residential building, I saw what had to be Cryptid’s form.