“It might be best to switch off with your team if you do any long stints.”

“I’ll switch off with Withdrawal,” she said. “If there’s trouble, Finale has our backs.”

“One hundred percent,” Finale said.

I pulled out my phone and scrolled. I found the ‘mugshot’, for lack of a better word. A grim looking man with his forehead very clearly divided where the front of it transitioned to the sides of his head. He might have looked like some renditions of Frankenstein’s monster, but he had a mustache with zero whimsy to it, just a brush on the upper lip.

“This is the person you’ll be keeping an eye on. The people who attacked the stations might be working with him, or they might be looking to force him to do what they want. I’ll send you the details, along with his schedule. Keep an eye out, discreetly if possible. If there’s weird activity around him, pay attention to that. Maybe he’s already being watched by someone else. If he sneaks out at night or goes to meet people, we want to know who. Get all the information you can. Pictures, license plates, addresses.”

“Bit of a problem,” Caryatid said. “I can’t hold bring phones or cameras with me. They get chewed up by my form.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Withdrawal told her. To me, he said, “We’ll do it. You can count on us.”

The conviction and determination caught me off guard. “This isn’t paid work, I want to make sure you know.”

“I know,” he said. “We know. We want to help.”

“If this works out, then we’ll owe you a favor,” I said.

“I don’t even know what we’d do with a favor,” he said. “Just give us a chance to get put on the map. We’ll show the world how awesome Finale is.”

“No, don’t.” Finale was suddenly self-conscious. “I’m lame and stupid.”

“No,” Caryatid said. “No, Finale.”

“But I am.”

“We’ll talk it out,” Caryatid said, gentle and firm. “But we’ll do it away from company. If you’ll excuse us?”

“Of course,” I said.

They walked away, talking. I waited, my hands clasped behind my back. When Finale gave me a look over one shoulder, I smiled. It got me a smile back.

“We got in touch online. All of us got our powers young—it was Caryatid and me at first. Finale a year later. We had different names then, obviously,” Withdrawal said.

“Yeah.”

“We were fine, got along great, she was a bit immature when we were ten, eleven, twelve, but we grew up and she… didn’t. Not mentally.”

“Because of her power?”