“Yep,” he said. “You nailed it.”

He’d watched what Nailbiter was doing too. Good.

What else was there? There were other icons for other fixtures of the area. A town hall, drawn like an old Washington capitol building, flag above it? I had to assume it was co-opted, but it wasn’t relevant here. A hospital? No medical needs.

Business? Not here. But I saw a couple of the library’s staff at the fringes, standing by the public access computers, watching the lounge and the active meeting more than they were watching the library. A matter of fifteen or so feet from our couch, I could see one burly guy with a shaved head, folded arms, tattoos, and a librarian’s apron on. I wasn’t sure why the library staff had aprons, exactly, but it was so. The guy looked very menacing while wearing a denim-blue apron with a book embossed on the chest, a small notebook in the pocket.

Standing guard, like the police were doing. There hadn’t been any apparent communication.

“Business?” I asked.

“Is there business in that quadrant?”

“I dunno. Maybe a bookstore?” I asked.

“Yeah. I get you now. I wouldn’t be surprised. Question is… what do you do if things have gone that far? Panic?”

“Stay out of our game monster’s way,” Sveta said.

“AKA: panic,” Rain said.

“Staying out of the way is prudent, not panic,” I said. “Panic is dangerous in its own right, and it leads to mistakes.”

“Yeah,” Rain said.

Nailbiter’s squad of tent city thugs were still making their way across the floor. One walked down the aisle beside us, and I tried to act nonchalant. Rain and Sveta seemed to do okay too, because the guy passed by without incident.

Across the lounge, past a sea of couches shaped like quarter-arcs and quarter-circle tables, I saw Nailbiter continuing her own investigation. A teenager had her hand over her head, drawing out a line with an extended finger.

Talking about Sveta’s whip.

They had to know we were here, now.

The discussion was ongoing, and we didn’t have ears on it. We had no surveillance tech that really sufficed, now, no camera overhead that could detect sound waves or however the ‘sound camera’ worked. We had to operate by context, reading body language while trying not to look too obvious.

The problem was, Love Lost seemed utterly unbothered. Cool, calm, collected. Steely, even. I could look at the apparent leader or negotiator of the anti-parahuman group, a woman with very black eyebrows, blonde cornrows at either side of her head and a thicker braid along the top, and I could see her frustration, but without a good read on Love Lost, I was only seeing one side of the conversation.