Gary shook his head. “We give this pass even to a walking, talking, potentially unhinged bioweapon? Allowed to go free. Come on, Victoria. How do you feel about that? You should know as well as anyone what your sister is capable of. One person, who could singlehandedly wipe out Earth Gimel. Or, if she so chose, the whole population of an alternate Earth.”

“I know as well as anyone what she’s capable of,” I said. I felt too aware of where I was, the amount of air in my lungs, the beat of my heart. I felt overwarm for the first time, the stagelamps overhead hot as they shined on me. “I grew up with her.”

“You grew up with her and you parted ways with her. You no longer communicate,” Gary said.

“I don’t know why you’re all so obsessed over her,” I said. My voice sounded too breathy, as I tried to sound casual or dismissive and ended up with a voice that sounded hollow instead.

“She put you in the hospital—” John Combs said.

“We’ve gone over this.”

“—and you needed special facilities,” he continued. “Because she went to the Birdcage, the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, and she left you with eight arms, ten hands, three heads with one additional face that had no head or skull to go with it, two—”

I used my aura, hard, and I wasn’t sure it was purely by reflex. It was the closest thing I had at hand to slapping him across the face.

In the doing, I hit my team, and from the sounds of it, I hit the audience.

I was keenly aware of the silence that followed. Of the noises from the audience that had been affected. Lookout’s eyes were wide behind the mask she wore on her fake, projected face.

Gary spoke, “That, for the benefit of our audience—”

“Please be quiet for a second,” I said, my head lowered a fraction.

“—was a power use. Antares has the ability to project emotions, and she just gave everyone here, including our audience, a moment of abject terror.”

“How dare you?” Hamza barked.

“How dare you?” Capricorn retorted. “Opening up someone’s old wounds and getting affronted when they react?”

“How dare you?” Hamza barked, again. He puffed up, chest expanding, and glanced over his shoulder at the staff in the background.

No. This was all wrong. This was everything I didn’t want to happen.

“You wanted to get real?” I asked, looking at Lynn.

I was drowned out. Hamza was blustering, saying something. The audience was getting louder.

Lynn looked right past me as she turned to the camera. “We may have to take a short break.”