The light stopped moving, then turned in the direction of the front gate, panning over the empty yard, over a group of officers who were hunkered down by a building, and then casting a light on the distant scene where, presumably, Lung was engaged in a fight.

I flew closer, just to double check it wouldn’t spin around, and I saw Sveta perched on the fence by the light. I stopped short when I saw the disjointed tentacles poised around her.

“It’s okay,” she said. My eyes were adjusting to the gloom, but the adjustment to seeing her face was helped by the fact her face was as pale as it was. I could see the black tendrils at her face and around her battle damage. “These are courtesy of Rain.”

It was what he’d been talking to her about on the ground.

The ‘tentacles’ were arm segments, repeated over and over. Black tendrils snaked through the connecting mesh, but didn’t snake out, which was the important part.

“Is it fragile?” I asked.

“No. Maybe.”

“Are you okay with it?”

“I want to be useful. I don’t have to be human-shaped.”

“You want to be human shaped.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s something Sveta gets, but Tress will have to put it off if she wants to operate at her best,” she said. She stood up straighter, moving the prosthetic tentacles in the weird, stilted way that I’d seen her walk when I’d first seen her at the group therapy session. She braced herself against the platform, then moved the tentacle down to the catwalk at the searchlight tower’s edge. She grabbed an officer and pulled him along the grating that was the catwalk floor, where the glow from the spotlight illuminated him. He was as young as either Tress or I, black, wearing a uniform. An earring glinted at his ear. “Can you check his cuffs for me?”

I did. One was loose. I tightened it.

“You’re unhurt?” I asked the officer.

I could see his nostrils flare, his lips pressed into a line. He glared up at me.

“Situation normal’s all fucked up. We’re here to help, really.”

No response.

This wasn’t being a hero in a neighborhood, even a hostile neighborhood like Hollow Point or the worst areas of Brockton Bay. We were invaders, people who didn’t belong. Whether it was guard or prisoner, we had few people we could count as true allies.

I met Tress’s eyes. She nodded.

We left the tower, heading in the direction the others had gone. Capricorn was leading the way to Ashley’s cell, the projector compass in hand.

Not that it was necessary. I’d been before.