I left them to it and headed to the truck.

“Be careful of traps,” Rain called out to me.

“Will do,” I said. “Thanks. Costumes on.”

I double-tapped the sun badge I wore. The projection around me fell away. I pulled my two segments of breastplate from my bag, where they protected my laptop, and set them in place.

Behind me, Sveta had dropped the human shape, and wore a mask. Rain had donned his circuitboard mask.

I hoped the other group was doing okay.

The truck still hummed with activity, the heaters blasting out warm air that steamed up the windows.

There was a bag of fast food, a cell phone, and a sketchbook on the divider between the seats, and what looked like a laser rifle was resting with its butt-end on the floor in front of the passenger seat, the length resting against the seat itself. The weapon he’d been reaching for.

No apparent traps, no wires, no ominous noises. I reached for the cell phone and picked it up. No trap, no shock.

The phone was at the lock screen. The sketchpad—I flipped through. Tinker notes.

I could confiscate that. Set him back a bit. If he wanted to work with villains, especially villains who’d been noted for hurting people? Killing? He could lose some ground, suffer a bit for it.

I walked around the truck, heading for the covered back. Let’s see this gun.

I didn’t get that far. I heard a strained grunt, and I turned around.

Rain had collapsed, and Sveta had caught him.

The tinker’s right arm had a band around it, encircling the bicep. Everything past the band was electricity, in the rough shape of a human limb.

I flew to them.

He reached out with the electric arm, touching Sveta. I saw Rain jerk, while Sveta seemed to endure it.

“Doesn’t work!” she grunted out the words through clenched teeth. She let Rain slump to the ground and reached out, catching the guy by the one still-human wrist.

A metal band flared at his left arm, the electricity melting the fabric of his coat around the ring, and taking the sleeve with it, as arm became more electricity. Her hand slipped away.

Immediately, she was reaching again. This time seizing him by the neck.

He had a collar on. As the collar flared, his head dissolved into a localized storm of electricity, the ‘forks’ of electricity serving as hair, something flatter and more interconnected for the mask. Where the lenses had been a bold electric blue before, they were now two dark ovals against the backdrop of frothing energy.

Where energy arced from one of the rings to the other, it traced lines across his body and turned flesh to this alternate state.

Using tech to go breaker.

A shame that his head was breaker-state, because this time, me using my aura didn’t even make him flinch.