“You stay with me, camera girl. Goddess’s orders,” Monokeros said. She didn’t look the slightest bit worried that the rest of us were poised like we might use powers or throw a punch, given an excuse.

“Okay,” Lookout said, to Monokeros. Then she said, “I liked that book, even though a lot of people didn’t.”

“I listened to the audiobook,” Damsel said.

“Yes! Yes! That’s great, you’re great, and of course, I’m stating the obvious by saying that—”

“Of course. Glad to see someone with a brain.”

“We need our brains focused on figuring out what Teacher’s disaster scenario is, not in, uh, asserting the obvious,” I said.

“Two people with brains. I’m starting to see why she likes you all.”

I kept talking, “I’m glad you guys are developing a friendship, but let’s think. The sooner we work it out, the sooner we can help our teammates. That includes Swansong and Tress.”

“It might be famine,” Rain said.

“Famine?” I asked.

“She said it was hollow, and it was something Goddess never experienced or knew. Inevitable, if he sets it up right. And it destroys her. She was probably going after the feeling when she destroyed the food stock… but if we get desperate enough, people are going to dig out the food, contaminated, they’ll ingest the drug, and…”

“And Teacher gets everything he wants,” I said.

“It’s a siege. Not catapults and walls siege, but a starve the other guy out siege,” Rain said. “People back at the compound were always taking measures to plan for scenarios like this.”

“There’s nothing but wilderness around us,” Byron said.

“To feed an entire prison? Indefinitely? Knowing that you can’t roam too far when the bombs could reactivate at any time? Maybe, but I don’t think it’s that easy. I can totally see Teacher picking off people who go hunting with portals and hit squads.”

Okay, I could buy that. It made sense.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Lookout said. “I have the keys. He might have broken down the front door, but so long as I’m lensing the space-map, it’s my door. Any doors he puts down are going to end up fizzling.”

“It might be your door, but there’s nothing stopping him from dropping a mountain on top of it and then taking his time working out a solution later,” Byron said.

“Like you did with Lung,” Damsel said. “Clever.”

“That was my brother, actually, but—yes. Kind of.”

“We need Goddess,” I said. “And we need to deal with this without getting tied up with the max-sec guys, Kingdom Come, Blindside… I’ll get her.”

How do you defeat someone with world-spanning powers? You make sure she never gets a chance to fight.

I flew over to where Goddess was talking to Seir. I saw his expression change as he recognized me. I ignored it, focusing on Goddess instead.