There were some nods. Most knew this. Withdrawal was sitting in a chair, his agility frame folded up, under and around the chair so it had some spring to it, adjustable on the fly. A notebook was pressed against his knee and he took notes as I talked.

“They used knowledge about the team to bait them, and when they attacked the Navigators, they hit hard. All three members are in the hospital and we don’t know if they’ll recover.”

All faces in the room were deadly serious. Cinereal, already and always serious, drummed her fingers.

Swansong spoke up, “This was either personal or it was meant to provoke. The reason Antares is urging caution is that we can’t be baited by the provocation, and we can’t let emotions cloud our search for the personal.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“What did they do?” Mayday asked.

“They were taken to pieces,” I said. “Cut, torn, dismembered, fingers removed, teeth scattered. A power was used to preserve them before it happened. They’re aware and feel every piece, they aren’t succumbing to exposure, sickness, or blood loss.”

“They were made immortal and chopped up?” Moonsong asked, her eyes wide behind her mask.

“Chopping would have been tidy,” Swansong said. “Pieces were torn off.”

“I’ve talked to Slingstone and Nailfarer,” I said. “They both said that they were attacked by multiple individuals. They were hit hard enough and fast enough that by the time the power use came into play, they weren’t able to discern any particulars. One attacker was large, with a frame like a bear, either changer, minion, drone, or Case Fifty-Three. Another was more precise.”

I hit keys on the keyboard, showing images that the cops had taken, as well as a few that Crystal had spotted with her keen eyesight. It started with the footprints, the shovel, streaks of blood to show how far the spray had traveled, and gradually got to the full show—pictures taken of the gore.

“Dragon identified the source of two messages that went out last night,” I said. “The first was to the Navigators. The second to Super Magic Dream Parade, shortly after.”

“They’re absent,” Cinereal noted. “Are they scared?”

“They’re fearless,” Lark said.

“They’re staying in a secure location. They apparently don’t check Parahumans Online often. They found both the warning email and the message on PHO this morning, on waking up,” I explained. “The bait was a query about a magazine shoot.”

“The first issue of the revitalized Nippon Dirge,” Tristan noted.

I nodded. “Both came from a library terminal in Boston. They bounced the connection across the city, using a non-tinker hack, and by the time we traced it back to the original source, they had cleared security cameras and other footage from nearby locations. We couldn’t look back and try to trace their steps or search out anything weird.”