Two overlapping sections of the plastic sheet peeled apart. Tempera ducked through, and put the tacky sides of the plastic back together. She was dusty from plaster and streaked with paint that wasn’t from her power. She wore overalls, a black t-shirt for a top, and had a different pattern to the paint she’d applied over her eyes with fingers, more like she had applied it to her fingers and pressed them to her eyes as a series of vertical bars, each bleeding into the one beside it.

“Hi, Victoria,” she said to me.

“Hi.”

She looked at the secretary, “We know her. Can I take her back to the room?”

“Let me get her information, and I’ll buzz you two through.”

I took the clipboard with the paperwork, and I filled out the information, checking my phone to remind myself of the specifics of Crystal’s address. She took the clipboard, read it over, and let us through.

We walked down the back halls of the hospital, past individual clinics and their signs and separate waiting areas, past patient rooms and nurse’s stations. Tempera indicated the turns. We didn’t rush it, an unspoken agreement that we’d take our time, have a chance to talk.

“There was one attempt on her life. We were worried there would be another,” Tempera said.

“Are you standing guard?” I asked.

“I am keeping an eye on things, but mostly by accident. I’ve been helping with the construction. I like getting my hands dirty,” Tempera said. She smiled as she held up one hand, which was covered in wet white ‘paint’ down to the elbow, the paint turning black before transitioning to her light brown skin. “Look at you, though. You look tidy.”

Tidy. It was an amusing choice of words, when Tempera looked anything but. I smiled. “Looking around to see if any teams are looking to fill positions.”

“And?”

“Only one was actually posting any openings, a corporate team, Auzure. Foresight and the Attendant were open to interviewing me. There are two other big teams; one gave me a hard no, and the other is folding into the Attendant and won’t exist soon, they didn’t give me a response yet, and with how the talk with the Attendant went, I don’t think it’d work out.”

“They’re pretty conservative. In a lot of respects. A lot of the religious capes went to the Shepherds and will be part of the Attendant. I’ve been paying close attention to that.”

“Yeah,” I said. “One or two of the sketchy people from Empire Eighty-Eight, too.”

“Empire Eighty-Eight? They sound familiar.”

“They had a presence for a while. A few years back they broke up into two other groups. The Pure and Fenrir’s Chosen.”

“Ah. I know the Chosen. They were linked to the Clans, I think?”