“You’re a mercenary group,” I said. “Heroes for hire. You take bids for the most pressing jobs and you do your best to achieve them. If you fail, you refund. Right?”

“Right. We have a pretty decent track record, considering the difficulty of some of these jobs.”

“I would like to improve that track record,” I said. “You’re a tinker, right? You didn’t get the tech from someone else? I know some tinkers do that to stay out of trouble.”

“It’s my tech.”

“Page seven,” I said.

The representative members of the other teams were all gathered, listening and waiting.

“Tinker notes,” Accesssion said. He twisted around to show his teammates.

“Doesn’t mean anything to me,” Mamori said.

“It’s nice,” Accession said. “But you wouldn’t have everyone here if you wanted to trade tinker work.”

“If you think that’s something you can use, you can have it, courtesy of Lookout here. You can also have a turn at looking at the tinkertech of every person here. If you get on board, agree to some rules, you can get an edge.”

“We make okay money. This is stuff I can buy,” Accession said. “I can get it without selling my soul.”

“No soul required,” I said. “Only cooperation and information. We’ve already set up an infrastructure, some loose jurisdictions. We’ve grouped teams by who they’re willing to work with and the ground rules they’re willing to follow. If you’re violent vigilantes, fine. So long as you’re working for the good guys. We’ll pair you with the other violent ones and we’ll leave you to it as long as you aren’t crossing any critical lines.”

“We’re not violent,” Accession said.

“No. But if you’re willing to shoulder your share of the city, we’ll pair you up with people you can get along with.”

“Other mercenaries?”

“No. Mercenaries are competition,” Tristan spoke up. “Volunteers. Selfless guy heroes who are willing to lend their help to ensure a job is completed all the way.”

I glanced at Withdrawal, who was standing off to one side, glowing teal tonight, not pink. He’d welcome the chance to get some experience, to help out good guys. Hopefully we could get him contacts.

“What’s the catch?” Accession asked.

“If you arrest any of the massive scumbags? Anyone on our lists? Let us interrogate and disappear them.”

“Disappear?”

“One of our teams has the means of imprisoning them indefinitely. Reasonably safe, reasonably humane. But we’re not sharing. The more people know, the more they can figure out how to break ’em out or try to capture them like they did with the parahuman prison outside of Greenwich.”

“That’s it?”