She’d named a few of the other Case Fifty-Threes. I looked—Gregor and Shamrock had long since moved on. Faultline seemed okay leaving just the mercenaries who were hanging around the area to watch us.

“Why?” Tattletale asked again, for emphasis, her right eyebrow piqued.

“It limited things to the people who really wanted the powers,” Sveta said.

“Yes, but it also ensured that the people who got the powers respected the impact of it. If your team is willing to pay my price, then I know they’ll walk away from that payment just a bit more mindful. Every time the pocketbook smarts, you should think of him.”

“How much?” I asked.

Tattletale paused. Her eyes searched me. “Not money. You seem fairly confident you can pay. That’s interesting. Do you have a sponsorship?”

“What do you want, Tattletale?”

“I’d ask for access to your information network—”

“No.”

“No,” she said. She nodded. “I want a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”

“No,” I said.

“Let me clarify. You have a way of imprisoning the parahumans we all need gone. ‘Disappearing’ them. Fine. Undersiders are exempt.”

“Scared?” Swansong asked.

“Yeah, a bit,” Tattletale said. “Vicky has a grudge, and I wouldn’t one hundred percent put it past her, in a theoretical future where this worked you streamlined the process, and you had me at a disadvantage. Frankly, the idea of teenagers being the ones to arrest, judge, and condemn should scare anyone. And yes—let me interrupt you before you get started or figure out if you’ll say something. I know you’re not making all those decisions. I know you have lawyers and you’re talking to the city. I also know who some of those lawyers are and the kind of people we have running the city right now.”

That last line was punctuated by a serious look Sveta’s way.

I saw Sveta nod slightly.

Tattletale continued, “It’s still scary. I want exemption for my people. If we help you here, you don’t do that to us.”

“We don’t do it to you?” I asked. I thought for a second. Most of the Undersiders could go in a regular jail. In a theoretical universe where the villain team that took over a city was well and truly arrested. Take Rachel away from her dogs, put Imp in a sealed cell with the right kind of monitoring, put Tattletale in jail and limit her human contact, limit Parian’s access to materials…

I looked at the others. Byron nodded slightly, then switched out to Tristan, a nod.

“Can’t guarantee that another team won’t push for it,” I said. “You meet us halfway. Stay out of the kind of trouble that makes people want to ‘disappear’ you.”

“Okay,” she said. “You have twins and a clone on your team. You should know how shards map things out.”

“You’re talking about agents? And they use DNA.”