The cop cars were pulling into the truck stop from the highway. They saw the scene and slowed down. Two cars, each with two cops. Since identifying March’s group, we’d been moving the scene around a bit to investigate and see if we could work out any details. The plan had been to leave in another minute or two, after Lookout’s data had saved.

“Start by calming down,” Sveta said. “We’re good guys.”

“I’ve had serious talks with police officers nine times, and it went bad seven of those times,” Lookout said, her eyes fixed on the cop car.

The officers had come to a complete stop at a point before the concrete barrier properly started. It gave them the ability to hop in their cars and turn off onto the highway. They emerged.

“Can you take down the images?” I asked. “The cops seem intimidated.”

“Not without losing the data. Do we want to lose the data?”

Split second decision: get shot or lose the data?

“Keep the data,” I said.

“What if you dim it?” Rain suggested. “Make it look fake.”

“That I can do. Opacity down. Doing it. Please don’t make me talk to the cops. It always turns out bad.”

All around us, the images of Tattletale’s group, Faultline’s trio and March’s multi-cluster shifted tint and became see-through.

I raised a hand, holding it over my head as I walked toward the officers. Capricorn followed, while the rest of the group hung back a bit.

“Hi guys!” Capricorn called out. Tristan. “We’re on your side!”

The cops didn’t relax. We continued to approach until one older officer who had his gun drawn raised it a fraction. Not quite pointing at us, but if we approached another few steps, then it might well be. A good thirty feet of distance separated us from them.

“What the hell is all this?” the older officer asked.

Tristan turned his head to look, his hands still out to his sides. “We’re heroes. We were trying to track down some rivals, used some power stuff to see if we could see what they were doing at their last reported location, here, and found this.”

“It’s a bit of a mess that we’re trying to puzzle out,” Capricorn said.

The younger guy by the old officer’s side turned around, taking it all in. His back to us as he looked over in the direction of March’s truck, he used the most innocent of tones as he said, “You were the ones on television a few nights ago.”

“We were,” I answered him. “I remember talking about how we wanted to share information and enforce cooperation. If you want, we can give you a tour of this scene, catch you up.”

“No thanks,” the old guy said. He looked at the younger cop that I presumed was his partner. “They’re heroes?”

“Yeah.”