“They might have faced the facts and realized where they stand,” I murmured, before turning my eyes back to my chip bag. “They’re anti-parahuman, but there’s a limit to what humans can do. They might be hiring help.”

Love Lost took a seat. Colt was doing the talking, of course. Nailbiter hung back. The enforcer in this situation.

“Why?” Rain asked. “Something big?”

“I’m focused less on what and more on who,” I whispered. “What the hell would they be up to, that they’re hiring the parahumans they hate so much, and they’re hiring the most violent and reckless of them?”

Polarize 10.8

We were on a villain’s turf and I was getting a sense of what that meant, as I marked face after face that now seemed serious and focused enough that they seemed to grasp what was going on.

A pair of officers in uniform had been keeping the peace in the place, patrolling and watching out for trouble, telling the occasional person to go outside to smoke, or grilling twenty-somethings about what they were drinking. Now, for lack of a better way of putting it, they were standing guard, both a set distance from Love Lost’s meeting with the anti-parahuman guys.

They weren’t watching Love Lost, but they were watching the anti-parahuman group. One stood in the middle of a walkway, which meant that a group of people who were getting up from a table had to walk the long way around, instead of cutting right past the talk in progress.

There were others I was less sure about. A pair of people like the guy who’d butted in and asked about ‘Blood Atoll’ were milling around now, with an aura like they owned the place… or like they were working for the person who did.

“In the game we were playing,” Rain said. “I don’t think we got to it, but there’s a second stage, right? The monster?”

“We talked about it briefly,” I said. “I didn’t pick up on all of it. I figured I’d learn by doing, or let you guys do it.”

“I was always more of the gamer,” Sveta said.

I nodded.

“We’re managing our little town, nine by nine grid, then the monster strikes,” Rain explained. Even wearing a projection, his expression was problematically serious. He glanced at Love Lost, emphasizing what he was talking about. I worried that she would see him and see something in that expression. Fortunately, she sat so we were two couches away, her left shoulder pointed at us, her face only visible from the side. She sat so her platform heel was propped up on the table’s edge.

“Sure. The monster,” I said.

“We have to account for where the monster was, and where it was poised to act.”

“While K gets an obnoxious number of points,” Sveta said. “Elbow him for me.”