“We also require information,” Swansong said. She raised her chin a fraction. She was alone—Damsel was back at the apartment. The lingering influence from her other half still seemed pretty darn apparent. There was more of the imperiousness I’d seen in our initial interactions.

I added my voice to hers. “We’re reconstructing old case files and databases. We’ll need something at regular intervals. It can be old information on current threats, it can be secondhand information, bought from others here and contributed with your own hand. You will have access to these files and databases.”

Swansong added, “You will briefly lose access and other benefits of signing if you provide incorrect information. You’ll permanently lose access and benefits if you provide misinformation.”

She was good at sounding intimidating, at least. I’d have had to use my aura to achieve the same effect.

“Can we look this over?” Accession asked. “Talk it over as a team, discuss with our manager?”

“That would be a good idea,” I said.

⊙

The floor of our headquarters had a Capricorn-created pad of flat ground near the door. From my altercation with Amy. The building felt smaller than it once had, and I wasn’t sure if it was because she had been here, instilling a claustrophobic effect.

We’d reached out to every team that would listen. We’d used the teams that had been willing or interested to get others to the table. Hours of meetings, of handing over packages where rules and tech were outlined. Erin had been in the back with Rain, printing out and binding the next pamphlet so it would be ready for the next people to come in.

Formalizing deals we’d made in abstract before.

It was done. We were tired, and some of us still had our shopping with us from earlier in the day. Others, myself included, had been weathering the initial storm, re-forging connections.

“There’s not much I can do with my stuff broken,” Lookout said. She undid clasps on her helmet and pulled it off—the helmet itself had been re-styled, doing away with the buns. Even with more allowance in the helmet’s shape to let her hair hang free, it now stuck to her face and scalp with sweat.

“Whatever you can do is great,” I said.

Sveta looked anxious as she passed me, making her way to her station where her things were.

“And I should get back to the institution before it’s too late. They might not care much where I am, but—”

“Curfew,” I said.

“You know, I’d be safer at my old place. I have surveillance over there. I’d just need to find some conventional weapons I could hook up to that surveillance.”