“Let me finish,” he said. “Swansong’s presence her raises an interesting question. She bears a startling resemblance to not one, but two murderers who are supposed to be in lockup right now. I have to worry about how many there are. We also have a little girl who was terrorizing her parents with threats of extortion, and then yourself, a heroine who didn’t save her hometown, didn’t save her boyfriend, didn’t save her many family members who were killed during the various major incidents, and who couldn’t or wouldn’t stop her sister from, as you put it, breaking down, putting lives at risk. I do my research, Victoria.”

I drew in a breath. The faint noise of audience was enough to take the oxygen out of that breath. I tried not to let it throw me. This was fine. Expected. Just… more of a gut punch than anticipated. I needed—

Hamza interrupted my thoughts. “I could believe that Lookout, this child here, wasn’t to blame, if this is the company she’s been made to keep.”

“That’s not fair,” Lookout said, and her voice was almost lost in the noise of the crowd. The audience manager was motioning for them to shush, and a red light flared near the ceiling. I imagined it was an order to shut the fuck up.

The noise level made it hard to jump in with a rebuttal.

It was a bit of a reversal of the dynamic I’d observed with the show. Three different show identities, between its face as a friendly talk show, an intellectual panel of experts, and a pit for enemies to be targeted and torn up.

“You named a lot of points. Would you like to name one or two of your favorites for us to address?” I asked.

“The point is that you, as a group, and parahumans, as a collective, are deeply flawed and unhealthy,” Gary Nieves said. “Two children in black raincoats conduct a ritual with peers that were chained to a radiator and a bed, respectively. Through this ritual, they get powers.”

“That is not how you get powers,” I said.

That got me a few raised eyebrows.

“Metaphorically, then? They seemed to believe it worked for them.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Parahumans are taking on positions of leadership—many corner worlds, many of the refugee groups outside of America, and many of the roaming factions are controlled by parahumans. We already know of one whole Earth which is under the sway of a parahuman and her court. I can tell you that as someone who has had to deal with parahumans from the fringes, every single one I’ve met has deep-seated problems.”

Tristan had to twist to get a good look at Gary. His head bent at an angle, getting close to the points of golden spikes at my shoulder, in his attempt to see the man. “This was after Gold Morning?”