“Some of us, probably,” I said. “But the reality is that Scion, the strongest of us, who used powers to generate himself a body and who gave himself a set of powers that none of the rest of us could touch… we beat him. We were nudged here and there to take part in his games, to fight amongst ourselves we were given powers and limited in ways that didn’t let us even try to hurt him. He was insurmountable and we… surmounted.”

“We won,” Tristan said. “If you have any doubts about how we were ‘programmed’, look to the scholars for answers. It’s subtle if it’s there at all. Focus instead on the fact that when it all came down to it, we concentrated our efforts, looking past petty squabbles. It took a nameless cape to grab us all and drag people from every corner of reality to reinforce. That cape tried to keep us, but when we broke free, we kept fighting him, and we fought as one.”

I nodded at that.

A nameless cape. Taylor Hebert. Skitter. A bug controller from my hometown.

We were too spooked at the idea that we might draw her attention and start that whole engine back into motion to mention her by name.

Best to leave it alone.

“We won,” Swansong said. “We defeated the embodiment of that impulse. We can and will defeat it in ourselves.”

I could see it in the audience and in the hosts of the B-TV evening show. A split, even a fissure, running through them. In the gloom past the bright lights, there were people who might’ve been grateful, yes, but there were many who were angry.

There was always going to be a backlash, the band-aid ripped off, the hurts reawakened.

Beacon 8.12

The television studio had been flipped on its head for the time being. The hosts were quiet, the audience was loud with chatter, and the stage wasn’t so bright with the lights on above the audience. We weren’t the focus and we could breathe and we were simultaneously under an immense pressure—not trying to find the flow of things and steer with it, but caught with nothing to keep us afloat, the waters rushing away to gather strength for the incoming wave.

It would have been easier if the show had continued. Instead, monitors intended more for the hosts showed the ad break and a countdown until we were live again.

Lynn, Hamza and John Combs were all talking together, with two members of the studio staff leaning in close. The audience talked about what they’d heard.

Ninety seconds.

“Are you doing okay?” I asked Lookout, my hand over my microphone.

She nodded, doing the same with her microphone. “The pressure’s off me, right?”