Light blue. It was the late afternoon, I had to remind myself. Waking up early and the sky being so overcast it was black was throwing me.

I heard a rev. Byron picked up speed as he reached road that wasn’t icy.

“Careful,” I murmured.

The mere mention of the protocols and this course of action was supposed to be cause for a leader to quickly step down. If their second-in-command was the one to raise the issue, the third-in-command took over, to prevent the protocol from being weaponized by the compromised.

A really good team would default to the core approach for whatever the threat was. Defer command to the most capable person believed to be uncompromised, or to HQ if comms still worked, then stick to the protocols for dealing with strangers, or the protocols for dealing with masters.

I was aware that in this case we were dealing with a master. The protocol? Take them the fuck out. Second priority, right after the thinkers, who were ASAP-level. Ninety-nine percent of the time, taking the master out of consideration also dealt with the control.

I felt nervous at the idea that Byron might be driving, his own mind going a mile a minute as he reminded himself of protocols and options, figuring out a game plan, with eliminating Goddess as his end-goal.

It was wind and a thin layer of moisture that saw Byron lose his traction, his vehicle sliding over the dotted yellow line that marked the division between lanes. No ice here, but it didn’t matter.

I landed on the roof, ready to act if I had to—it meant having the wretch down, my hood flapping violently, the pins in my hair pulling at the roots until I ducked my head lower, droplets of moisture stabbing at my face—it wasn’t freezing rain, at least; it stabbed only because of the speeds involved.

There was no incoming traffic, the turn he made to get back in the right lane felt too drastic, forcing an overcorrection the other way. He came perilously close to steering into one of the memorial posts—there weren’t many here, but someone had situated one near the corner of an intersection.

Before I could activate the wretch, grab the car, and try to force a correction, he got things back under control. There wouldn’t be handprints in the car exterior.

We drove around the north of the portal. A slice of sky revealing the barren world on the far side, the sky nonetheless blue, the weather relatively calm there. To our south, buildings were illuminated, people trying to go about their days, waiting for the weather to clear. To our north, some artificial lights and the headlights of vehicles illuminated the spaces where farmers were trying to save crops, and where people were hurrying to handle the weather in tent cities.