Swansong nodded, more or less in tune with my line of thought. It would be bad.

“Shit,” Capricorn said. “Let’s hope it’s too late for that.”

The lights around the audience went dark. Little boxes mounted above and in front of the audience glowed yellow, a word illuminated in the sudden gloom. On the televisions, the countdown was in the final twenty seconds, as an ad for a show on the same network played.

Only seconds. They couldn’t kick us out if there were only five seconds left.

Kaylar, our friendly assistant in the cheap suit from earlier, practically skipped as she left the conversation with the hosts. My heart skipped a beat.

How would we handle this? Did we stay despite being asked to leave?

Three seconds. Two. One. The audience went quiet. The lights and focus were on us, but the wave of response hadn’t hit yet.

The monitors shifted to the show’s logo. ‘Hard Boil’. ‘TV-B’. Staff hurried away from their huddle with the hosts, glancing at Kaylar.

On the monitors, they segued straight to a video recap.

We weren’t on screen.

“Guys,” Kaylar said. “Just doing my job here.”

“Hi,” I said.

Her job was either to tell us we had to vacate, or—

“Are you doing alright? Do you need anything? Water?”

We shook our heads.

“It’s going well so far. Keep it up!”

With that, she was gone, fleeing the stage before the focus came back to us. She’d occupied our attention in the moments the clip was playing on the screen. Silhouettes of a couple, the lighting from behind enough to show the very edges of their hair, heads, necks, and shoulders, but hide their faces and identifying details. Julien and Irene.

“…always difficult,” Julien said. “She told the teachers stories. Babysitters too.”

“We sent her to camps. Things after school, what was it? Piano? Art? Computers?”

“Yeah. Soccer, but she wasn’t one for sports, especially team sports. She didn’t make friends at any of the classes or camps. Never brought anyone home from school. We gave up on taking her to those after a while. She wasn’t getting anything out of it.”

I looked over at Lookout. She glanced up at me and smiled.

I gave her shoulder a rub.

John Combs’s voice could be heard, interviewing the pair as part of the pre-recorded clip playing for the audience. “I’ve wondered whether people know, even before it happens. Were these parahumans quiet, strange, or aggressive? Did you think she might be different back then?”

“Quiet and strange. I never thought about powers or that she might be the kind of person who gets them, but it makes sense in retrospect.”