My boots hit the snow-dusted ground. With the impact, I made the transition from being weightless and able to move myself in any direction at will to feeling gravity assert itself on me once more. I felt another weight, the kind one referred to when they spoke of heavy hearts, burdens, and social pressure.

Eight hours of intermittent snowfall hadn’t covered up all of the blood.

The fact that the ground was hard and had ice here and there made the footfalls seem that much heavier. Ice crunched and I could imagine boots coming down to crack stone. Even dirt, which should have absorbed impacts, allowed for audible footfalls in the relative silence. The only noise came from the wind and the light midday traffic, on a road that would take three or four minutes to walk to.

Foresight had sent four of their ten members to us. It might not have sounded like much, but they were good.

Brio had his standard look going, pirate and ninja combined, without any of the explicit signifiers of either, all with gold veins running through it. He was all presence, loping swagger, and casual competence. I’d seen him before in coat, eyepatch, and far too many belts, and seeing him now I realized that he’d been dressed casual then. He had more belts, including some strapped to his leg and arm, and every one of them had a use, keeping a small arsenal in place. His right hand and forearm were through the bars of a steel riot shield with a viewport like a Foresight logo, and his left hand rested on two weapons—index fingers extend out at the base of a gun, and the heel of his hand at a sword. His side of the riot shield had a decorated sawed-off shotgun fixed to it, pointed at the ground, and some ammunition strapped in.

Crystalclear was keeping Relay company. Crystalclear had updated his costume, and it looked good—the black of it made the quartz-like crystals that jutted from him look that much more distinct. The crystal growth was more exaggerated than before, but I was assuming the simplest explanation—that the crystal was better than skin and scalp being exposed to the cold.

Relay, meanwhile, was wearing a more ‘cloth’ costume, the long sleeves mostly separate from the body, a series of overlapping folds extending down his body to the ankles. There were a lot of gaps in the cloth, and through those gaps I could see the sheen of metal, form-fitting enough to be chainmail. Single spikes were visible here and there, when he moved in the right way—one at the gap where the sleeves would have met the shoulder, another at the blindfold, extending up the forehead, and another at the wrist, like a blade hidden up his sleeve. He was the ‘rescue’ combo-teleporter and long-distance communicator.