“Tattletale, but it’s only a… very advanced simulation of a scene from last night. Hologram. Beside her are mercenaries from Palanquin.”

“Don’t know them,” the young officer stated.

“You have to get into murky waters to get a good answer there,” I said. “June twentieth, twenty-eleven. The day that the PRT broke. An event in Brockton Bay. Everything classified, but there was a mass exodus of heroes from the Protectorate and Wards program. It was the day the portal appeared in Brockton Bay.”

I looked over at the horizon. The portal had warped, distorting, and New Brockton had been cleaved in half. A slice of sky that was different from the rest.

“And?” Littlejohn asked.

“Palanquin started traveling the world, opening portals for buyers. They have ties to the Undersiders, not necessarily friendly ties. But they’re tied into it all.”

“And the third group?” Littlejohn asked.

I was so tempted to say ‘ass-clowns’, to borrow his phrasing from earlier. I gave it a fifty-fifty on either winning him over or souring the dialogue, based on my read of him. Not good enough odds.

“Can’t say for sure, but they seem to be the people who are stepping in to fill a recent void, picking up where the last set of troublemakers left off. We were figuring it out when you came,” I said.

“Always something, huh?” Littlejohn directed the question at Capricorn. “I never took the ‘capes’ seriously. Endbringers seemed too far away. It was too many masks and nicknames to keep track of, all kid stuff. Then, y’know. All at once, it was all too serious.”

I nodded, pushing thoughts out of my head and trying to maintain a poker face. The ‘all at once’ for me wasn’t the one he was thinking of.

“Yeah. I don’t blame you. When this stuff is great, it’s goofy,” Capricorn said. “When it’s bad, it’s bad enough you don’t want to talk about it. Most of the time, it’s like I said before. We’re trying to improve things a bit at a time, even when it looks like it’s not getting us anywhere.”

Littlejohn turned his head and whistled for attention. The two officers who had wandered off returned to us.

“Nimmons, move the cars to block off the stop. Park them both so it looks neat and calm. Be ready to move if a truck needs to roll in. Alves? Up on that concrete barrier. Keep an eye on traffic, keep it moving. You could try holding onto a notebook, act like you’re taking down license plate numbers of the ones who are moving too slow.”

They listened and obeyed without objection.

“We got called in because something was up. Reason we’re staying is that it’s a truck stop, and you’re not trucks, you’re obstructing,” Littlejohn told us.

“We can be gone in a minute,” I said.