“No— Yes, but that isn’t the defining element. I know because I do not fuck up tea, and I wouldn’t connive to hide my shame and my failings as a parahuman being if I did.”

“Are things going to be okay if I step away?” I asked.

“Yes,” Lookout said. “I’m going to work around the smudge. Maybe we can get something from the edges.”

“Wasn’t what I was worried about,” I said.

“It’s fine,” Swansong said. “Worry about what my dear clone has coming to her.”

“Ooh,” I said, mock serious. “No tea? Oh, no treats with the tea?”

“Thin ice,” Swansong said, pointing a finger at me. “You’ll see who gets no treats.”

“I so want to sleep over sometime,” Lookout said.

I left them to that conversation.

Brio was walking through the storm of still images. Here and there, he would lean into things, squinting as he got in close—not that it was much use. Most of the figures were especially distorted and existed in continuum. I stopped at the edge.

“Technical difficulties?” he asked, as he emerged. He looked at Relay, who was off in the distance, then at Crystalclear, who nodded. Anelace, without looking, raised a hand in response to some message.

“Some difficulties. Sorry. I wanted this to be a better launching-off point.”

“We don’t have much to go on,” he said. “Anything we can get.”

“Did Crystalclear’s patrol of the area—”

A distant crack interrupted me.

It took me a second to place where the sound had come from. There weren’t many good places to choose, with so much flat ground around us, and it was really only the road that worked. My first impulse was that cars had collided. Even that they’d hit our parked cars, that had pulled off the road.

No. It was a gun.

Relay was way out in the field, and I could see the divot where the bullet had hit ground, sending dirt flying out to land on otherwise pristine snow.

I took to the air, trying to get a sense of the scene and what we were up against.

Relay teleported to where Brio had been. There was a moment where there was only a shimmer of light around Relay, who twisted, casting out an arm, pushing the shimmer out. Then Brio materialized at the head of the shimmer, fifteen feet away, bringing his shield up just in time to block another bullet.

There was a second’s pause, and then I felt the impact as the Wretch went down. I flew back at an angle and down, then changed direction before touching ground. I skimmed the ground, hoping that the humps of snow here and there would provide me some cover.

I saw a fence up ahead, barring my way, and headed straight for it.

Who were these guys? Guns, accurate fire at a distance—my first thought was March.