“Did it help to get things off your chest?”

“If it did, it was outweighed by how much that sucked in general,” I said. “I don’t know if it helped. Ask me again in a week, when I’ve replayed these conversations and those expressions over and over in my head a thousand times.”

“For what it’s worth,” Tristan said, “thanks for coming, Victoria. I think someone as powerful as Bianca is used to getting her way. If you hadn’t been here, the meeting wouldn’t have happened, and she would have plowed forward—probably triggering the trap.”

“They’d shut off the prison portals, cutting it off from everyone and everything,” Sveta said. “Except maybe the man who can apparently travel between dimensions.”

“At least now we have Cryptid on the case, and he’s guiding the game plan,” Tristan said.

“That doesn’t make me super confident,” I told him.

“It’s better than what it looked like we were going to be doing with her,” Tristan said. “We’ll find a way to help Goddess and we’ll do it while avoiding hurting the other teams.”

I walked over to Ashley and Rain, my arms folded.

Rain was walking over to Tristan, noting the gear, his attention on tables and tinkerings. Lost in thought. It had to be a tricky situation, to be so far away and so relatively helpless. He’d be more helpless if they figured out he was spending hours a day in front of his computer and logging next to no hours online.

And then there was Swansong. Ashley. She stared at a point on the table like she wanted to kill it.

“You’ve been quiet,” I observed, to Ashley.

“I’m trying not to think, so I don’t fall into her way of thinking. I think I’m slowly losing.”

“It’s fine, we’re fine,” Kenzie said. She had removed her helmet. “Chris is gone, which sucks, but we’re all mostly okay.”

“I don’t think we are,” Sveta said, her voice gentle. “But we have a way forward. We’ll have to rely on Chris to handle his end of things. In the meantime, we do what we need to.”

Tristan was still pulling off his armor. “We should touch base with the other teams. If we’re going to get information, it should be soon. Byron, I owe you time, but can you do me a favor, and let me swap back to pick up my gear before you leave to go anywhere.”

Tristan blurred. In frame and the color of the clothes he wore, he changed. The momentary blur faded.

I saw Byron with his eyes wide, like the deer in the headlights. I knew, with the same certainty that I’d known she had us. He was unarmored and unarmed, and wholly his usual self—which was also the self that would look most alarmed by the status quo.