“This is where we have to read between the lines,” Rain said. “He does really interesting things with biology, and apparently it’s things that outside parties can use. He creates extra mass and stores it elsewhere, he has tissues that heal quickly, he has natural weapons, and he can have materials in his biology that are as durable as a steel alloy. He dropped a hint once. That it was a tinker that sold him or rented him out so others could study his power, or a tinker enclave that kept it all in-house. I don’t know.”

“He talked about brain scans,” Tristan said. “Also the feeding—the forced reactivation I mentioned before.”

“Yeah,” Rain said. “The initial change or manifestation of powers—I won’t call it triggering because I don’t think he remembers triggering, it broke his brain. He doesn’t have much in the way of old memories. He might have tried to survive on his own for a bit, but he got caught and used by third parties.”

“He never fully recovered?” I asked.

“Nah,” Rain said. “But he was working on it.”

“There was a girl from my hometown who got caught and used for her power. I missed the chance to be there when she got out, and I never got to talk to her,” I said. “I hope she ended up okay.”

“It might be happening a lot more than we imagine,” Tristan said. “Resources are scarce, the wealth divide is pretty nuts. Some people got lucky, like Byron and me, we had stuff from back home we were able to salvage and sell in lots, and a lot of that got spent on, uh, insurance. Most others started on the ground floor, wealth reset to zero, and people like some of these monsters out there, they hate being on an even playing field. They’d prey on others if it meant an advantage.”

I took a bite of my neglected wrap, thinking.

“Does he want revenge?” our Ashley asked.

“He never gave me that impression,” Rain said.

Tristan drummed his fingers on the table. “We should keep an eye and an ear out for creeps like that. The kind of people who would traffic in changers for their power, catch tinkers like that girl from your town, Victoria.”

“She was a thinker, but yeah.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe we can get some answers in retrospect. Figure out how to deal with him if we cross paths again. Give him some peace of mind, if it’s eating at him, or get a better idea of who he is and where he came from.”

“Seems risky to pick up prisoners like that,” Sveta said. “Prisoners trigger or second trigger. Or escape. Chris escaped.”

“Yeah,” Tristan said. “Thing is, money? If you have it, it’s easier to make it. If you have more of it than most people, then your money will grow faster than most people’s. Right?”