I headed over to talk to Kenzie. Natalie followed, because safeguarding Kenzie was her job. It seemed like a conflict of interest, given our prior arrangement, but I imagined the pool of people who could be told Kenzie’s identity as Lookout was narrow, and the system was overloaded.

“Sorry to hear your caretakers left you frazzled,” I said.

“They’re super nice, and I trust them,” Kenzie said. “I think whenever hero stuff comes up, they don’t know what to do, so they give up. It’s like in books when a girl says she has woman troubles and the adult guy gets flustered and gives her whatever she wants, except I don’t think that happens in real life. How do you end up forty and not know basic stuff?”

“Uh huh,” I said. “There was a seventeen-year-old in my Patrol block who didn’t know the ordering of the alphabet after T. You’d be surprised.”

“Well, it seems problematic to not know how hero and villain stuff works,” Kenzie said.

“I don’t think anyone knows,” Natalie said.

“The basics, though,” Kenzie said, as she typed at her keyboard. “Is it okay if I bring Rain and Ash over here?”

“Bring?” Natalie asked.

“Projections,” Kenzie said. “Basically a prettied up video call. It lets them be here, even though they’re really over there looking at their laptops.”

“It’s fine,” I said.

Kenzie nodded enthusiastically. She began working.

Two cameras came to life. They floated to different heights above the ground. Then the dark sides of the big projector box came to life, and the images appeared, frozen in space.

“When you said projections, I thought they’d be see-through or flickering,” Natalie said. “They look real.”

“Almost,” Kenzie said. “Calling.”

There was a beep, and Rain’s projection started moving. The physical movements below the neck were fairly generic, but the faces seemed true to life.

“I wish I had a better idea of what my body was doing,” Rain said.

“Welcome to my life,” Sveta said.

“I can’t tell if you’re joking. If you’re not, I’m really sorry.”

“I’m joking, don’t worry,” she said. “Dark joke, but hey.”

Ashley’s projection took on a semblance of life. She looked around.

Tristan was the one who started us off. “People are interested. We’re lining up help, and what we’re thinking is we’ll use that help to track prison staff when they’re outside of the prison—especially those who are making suspicious movements. Any clues you can give us help.

“This kind of tracking sounds extreme,” Natalie said.

I answered, “Standard cop-style surveillance. Lots of waiting. No peeking in windows, no trespassing on property. If they go for a drive late at night, we have a flier or speedster track them. Maybe thinkers poke their heads in.”