Clearly pissed, inexplicable in mindset, he gathered his things. His messenger bag had a flap over the top, protecting it from the rain. Grabbing an umbrella, he headed for the door. Out into the late-morning darkness and the torrential wet. The wind that stirred in the room saw others standing back or catching papers before they could blow away and scatter. The cool wind made me very aware of my soaked clothes.

“If you’re heading somewhere, call me.”

I patted at the damper spots with the towel.

“What the hell, Chris?” Rain asked.

With no apparent powers in the mix, Chris’s paranoia had somehow disconcerted the team more than me revealing the Wretch. No warped perspective at play there—I understood it. A destructive, invisible force with an alien or dark subconscious driving it wasn’t a threat to the team or the dynamic in the same way that a problematic thirteen-year-old was.

Kenzie offered her interpretation. “Chris gets to a bad place now and again, and he doesn’t have anyone because he doesn’t want anyone.”

“That’s not an excuse,” Tristan said.

“No,” Kenzie said. “But I think he’s great, he’s so fun when he’s cool, and I think he deserves a chance to work through whatever’s bothering him.”

Tristan sighed. “This wasn’t okay, here. Right? I’m not out of my mind?”

“It wasn’t okay,” Sveta said. “But we’re all going to have one bad day, sooner or later. Days our powers screw us up, the past catches up to us, or life kicks us while we’re down and we can’t explain it to the group.”

“Do we need to go after him?” I asked. “Is that an invasion?”

“Leave him be,” Sveta said.

“We need to figure out how we’re going to handle the meeting with the Lady in Blue,” Tristan said. He drew in a deep breath and heaved out a sigh. “You’re up for this, Vic?”

“I have to be.”

⊙

Eight out of ten of our computers and phones were refurbished salvage. Old tech polished off with new software and new logos. The new software included an emergency alert system, each phone and computer now with a warning front and center, or a warning in the top corner, the image depicting water droplets with snowflakes embedded in them, rows of icicles in the background to fill in the white space.

Because our phones and systems throughout the region were being leveraged to get the warning out there, all services were slow. The alert was obnoxiously persistent, popping up with every one degree change in predicted temperature. Not a good thing when we needed battle updates.