“A mass breakout of the emergency prison, mind control, your sister showing up and her leaving with Chris? Yeah, distracting. But go on.”

“I’m thinking about how we deal and how we adapt. The lines, the boundaries and the secrets. Jessica wanted me to look after the team, and… Chris happened.”

“You can’t blame yourself for failing to help someone who actively resisted help,” Sveta said. “You tried. You showed up at his place, asked his guardian some questions about how he was doing, and she responded with worry? He blew up, and I think he blew up because he wanted to keep you from looking further. And it worked. Whatever he had going on, he somehow decided we weren’t the answer. He heard what you had to say about your sister, and he still went with her. Fuck him.”

I was trying to be tough, but something in that final combination of words tested my resolve. Maybe it was the emphatic ‘fuck’, so close to the mention of her.

I’d deal. I had to, because it tied into what I wanted to push forward to the group.

“We’ve done that thing a lot of teams end up doing,” I said. “We had that one tough fight. That one scenario where we’re outmatched or we go up against the person who tests or breaks convention. For my family it might have been Marquis. For the Major Malfunctions, it might have been turning up for a routine surveillance job and getting a literal army of mind controlled thralls teleporting into their neighborhood.”

“Going through hell and making it out the other side with the team.”

“Yeah. For varying definitions of hell and ‘making it’. We’ve had our trial by fire. We have our first real loss after losing Chris. All of us have had cause or reason to reveal some deeper stuff.”

“You especially.”

I shrugged the shoulder she was leaning on. “I don’t know. All I’m saying is… we might have to shift how we do this. We’ve protected and defended each other having secrets. We had that ‘it’s complicated’ card that we could always pull. It might be time to stop that. To have no more secrets.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Yeah. But if we can’t trust each other—”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Sveta interrupted. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m anxious about the team, and it’s been worse since… everything those two nights. Not just Chris, but getting a live-action roleplay, complete with all of the feelings of betrayal, as you end up acting like my enemy?”

I could hear the anxiety in her voice at that last line. I gave her a jostle, before shifting my grip to put my arm around her shoulders. She leaned her head against my shoulder, in a way that might have made walking hard if she’d had an ordinary body and balance.