I felt her forehead thunk against the side of the orb.

“Okay,” Byron said. “I’m officially passing the baton… we both know you’re good at this part.”

He blurred. Once I realized what he was saying, a second or so later than I should have, I could understand it.

I nodded.

“Yeah,” Tristan said. He started striding toward the assistant warden. Without turning to face us, he intoned the words. “Damage control.”

Gleaming Interlude 9.z

Day Zero

As soon as the words left Tristan’s mouth, he regretted them. He saw the looks on the faces of his teammates, and the magnitude of what he had just done hit home.

“Liar,” Moonsong said.

Tristan had dealt with his share of adrenaline before, but in this moment, he wasn’t sure if he felt the adrenaline from the fight bottoming out or if he felt the adrenaline of this moment ramping up to a ridiculous extreme. The system shock, the shock of being called out, and the tension of the moment made him tremble.

“No. You’re lying!”

“Easy, Moon,” Figurehead said. He reached out and she pushed his hand away.

There were tears welling in her eyes, and he couldn’t even call them crocodile tears this time, because there were tears forming in his own eyes.

If he changed back now—

No.

The line had been crossed. If he took it back now, it wouldn’t change the fact that Byron would know. Byron would start thinking about what to do.

Tribute was filling others in. Steamwheel was mostly out of costume, wearing only her mask. Her suit had been disintegrated, hadn’t it?

Furcate stood off to the side, staring.

That hurt. It threw him.

He couldn’t tell Furcate, he realized. They’d never been someone he could really talk with, but they’d been an ally. He couldn’t tell Nate. He couldn’t tell anyone.

Figurehead dropped to one knee, hand clapping down on the metal of Tristan’s armor. The half-hug and supporting touch was walled off by thick, elaborately decorated metal, to the point he could barely feel it.

“Tristan,” Moonsong hissed his name. He could feel his heart stop. “Look me in the eyes.”

Tristan reached up, fumbling as he tried to pull off a helmet he had put on and taken off a hundred times. His movements were so ineffectual that Figurehead helped, and Tristan accepted without complaint.

There were no bystanders, and the group was clustered in close.

He looked her in the eyes.

“He was my brother,” Tristan said. “I love him, but—he’s not in here anymore.”

His vision momentarily blurred as a tear covered the surface of one eye. He rubbed it away. She didn’t rub anything away, letting moisture streak her cheeks beneath her mask, dark with makeup. He saw her expression—anger dominated it, and that anger terrified him.