“I can’t stand him,” Sveta said.

“I hear you,” I said.

“Stealing my power without asking and then being better at it than me?”

I nodded. I took her hand and gave it a light shake.

“I can’t help but notice that we’re making deals with Tattletale, and we’re making deals with Love Lost,” Rain asked.

“They’re not really deals,” Tristan said. “They’re pretty hollow. We say we’ll leave Tattletale alone unless she does something that deserves being brought in.”

“Which means nothing,” Ashley said. “Why would she accept?”

I flexed my hand. The cold was making the burned and bandaged skin sore. I was overdue for a debriding.

When I spoke, I was staring out at the distant city. “She accepts because she wants to know that she can do what she’s currently doing without being brought in by us. And maybe she gets an edge if someone else brings her in and she mentions the deal. Makes us look bad. But it’s worth it, to get the information, flawed as it might be. She probably had other strategies in mind.”

“Or she’s high on painkillers and her head is fuzzy,” Sveta said.

“Or that.”

“And this?” Rain asked.

“Laying groundwork for later,” I said. “I want to keep an eye on things now. The pressure is ramping up as the hero teams organize, and I’m really curious to see how Love Lost, Tattletale, and March all react to the current state of things.”

Interlude 10.x

A space heater hummed by her feet while her eyes stared at a glowing screen. The room had gone dark as half of the streetlights turned off outside to conserve power, and though the one lamp and computer screen were now insufficient to light the space she didn’t rise from her chair or look away from the screen.

Her hand crushed a plastic chemical packet, activating it. She rolled it between her hands as it warmed up. Fingerless gloves so she could type and a chemical hand warmer helped her hands, the space heater warmed her feet, a blanket warming her legs, and she liked to imagine her power warmed her head. The rest of her was cold.

The person who had the camera would be colder, she knew. She still wished whoever had built this place had been more mindful of insulation.

Most of the mega-city was asleep, but if she imagined the screen was a window that she could open and walk through, then there was a small festival happening just twenty feet away.