“They’ll return to it, probably,” Capricorn said. He leaned one forearm across on one knee, his weight shifted hard to the right—he sat at the leftmost end of our row of four chairs, so he had to work to get in close enough to talk to us and not be overheard. “They prepared for a show with your family as an example scenario. Right now, they’re looking for a way to right their ship, and that stuff they prepared is a tool at their disposal.”

“Ugh,” Kenzie said.

“It’s not the end of the world if it happens,” I said. “It sucks, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want anyone attacking you. But we planned for it, we have a strategy, there shouldn’t be any big surprises.”

She nodded.

“Let’s think other approaches. Do they hit any of us on credibility?” I asked. “Me keeping my powers covert in Patrol block?”

“Weak,” Capricorn said.

“Maybe. They just need to cast doubt,” I said. I eyed the timer on the monitors. Two minutes, twenty-one seconds.

“It’s weak doubt. Capes keep identities secret. You have a reason for doing it,” Capricorn said.

“Okay. Who else do they target? Bait one of us into talking, then attack them?”

“Mute my microphone,” Swansong told Lookout.

“Done.”

“If they choose me, I deflect. I’m only here in spirit,” Swansong said, with a slight smile on her face. “I’m one of several clones.”

“Good,” I said. I glanced at the countdown. I put a casual smile on my face, in case the audience was fixated on me. Best to look confident. “Capricorn?”

“I’m vulnerable. Not so much credibility as… dark. Going back to my murder charge. Making me out to be a bad guy.”

“We talked about that, briefly. I would have liked actual details, so I can back you up, but…”

“But my brother wants it left in the past,” Capricorn said. “If it comes up, I’ll deal with it.”

“Don’t hand them the ball,” I told him. “Morality, that stuff, don’t bring it up, they’ll use it to launch into the topic.”

Capricorn nodded.

I looked at the clock. One minute, fifteen seconds.

“Attacks on us miss the point,” Swansong said. “They could do worse?”

“How?” Lookout asked.

“They could make us leave.”

Kicking us out during the ad break? My initial thought was that it would fail. On rumination, though… what would we even do? They had the platform, and we hadn’t had a good chance to lay out what we wanted to say. They’d cut to ad break shortly after my pronouncements about Gold Morning.

If we were ejected… it’d be a complete and utter mess. Point missed. They’d get raised eyebrows, but we would be the group that had put out some problematic info and then left before owning it or taking the time to defend ourselves.