I couldn’t fly now. I didn’t have my aura—I reached for it and found nothing there for me.

I felt a mix of emotions at that.

“Why?” I asked him.

“For Noontide and me? Money.”

“Mercenaries.”

He nodded. He tested and shifted his grip on the long-handled axe he carried.

“If you help anti-parahuman types like this, they’ll take advantage of your help now and then they’ll try to come after you later. It’s what happened in Russia, when they tried to control the parahuman population.”

“I’ve been to Russia. Contracted there. I’ve seen it. The before, the after, the attempts to make parahumans into military. Each one assigned to a squad or special force. Pit against each other. There’s nothing you can tell me about that kind of reality I haven’t touched with all five senses.”

“These anti-parahuman guys—”

He scoffed, sharply enough to interrupt, the noise muffled by the mask that covered his lower face. “If you’re saying that to try to bait me into revealing something about who hired me, save your breath. You’re making yourself sound stupid.”

I felt more like myself as I tried to assess the situation. I had to trust that my teammates and Foresight were handling things and keeping the gunmen from going on the offensive, now that the way was clear. There was nothing I could do to break this effect.

“People who would hire you to go this far are going to turn on you. I know the unwritten rules stopped applying over the last two years, but the behavior of people, from good people to the scummy sorts that would sign off on this? That still applies. It will always apply.”

“Are you finished?”

“That’s up to you,” I said, ducking my head a bit. I needed to look smaller. Less dangerous. Talking was making me run out of breath, the thin air working its effect on me. But talking was better than the alternative. “Power nullification?”

“Everything nullification. No powers, no outside help. You, me, and the arena.”

I wanted to pace, to encourage him to do it too, to maintain an even distance between us. It didn’t happen. That kind of pressure and maneuvering required a roughly equivalent power. I had to be something more than a twenty-one-year-old woman, unarmed, against a man five inches taller than me who was armed with an axe.

Maybe a trump power, but I wasn’t betting anything on it. I knew trump powers tended to arise, though not always, when a person triggered in relation to power-based stressors. I knew they tended to feel disconnected from humanity, much like breakers did, just like how movers reported being chronically restless or having trouble setting down roots.

Shaker power, yes. Area or environment focused. Changing the battlefield. Shaker powers fell roughly in line with contextual or environmental threats. They were mindful of those things, usually. Context. Environment.