Sveta staggered to her feet. I steadied her. Together, we hurried to that scene. One more person.

I pushed out with my aura. The teleporter spooked in a visible way, and Crystalclear found enough of a grip to pry the guy’s hand open. A capsule pill, that Crystalclear quickly stepped on.

“I couldn’t blast him while he was weaving through real people,” Crystalclear said.

“It’s okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure it was. There was so much about what had just happened that wasn’t okay.

I looked at Sveta, and I saw thin traces of crimson along one side of her face, forming little diamond shapes because different tendrils had slapped against it from different angles.

I touched my scalp. Stitches would be needed.

“You got this?” I asked.

Crystalclear nodded, the crystals on his head catching the light with the movement. “I’ll call for help.”

I flew, and I turned in the air as I did it, surveying. The battlefield first—all traffic still stopped. Civilians scared and scattered. The attackers gone. The cars that Foresight and our other heroes had come in had been trashed. Rain’s projectiles had chopped up some of the enemy’s cover, forcing them into tighter places.

A surgical strike. Capes who, as far as I could tell, had been hired with the role clearly in mind. Weapons, tools.

Finale’s wail formed the bulk of the background noise. I spared a glance, even though I didn’t want to see. Her teammates were hurt, not dead. They looked as concerned about her being upset than she was about them being shot, but they didn’t have a lot of strength to communicate to her when she was this loud. I could see Recycle and Retouch peering around the wall Tristan had made, currently badly chipped from bullets. They looked kind of shocked that things had stopped.

Guns were scattered around Brio, but he wasn’t the one who had used them. Relay sat on the cold ground, staring up at the sky. The weapons had been pulled from Brio’s person and used by Relay. No efforts were made to stem Brio’s blood loss, no efforts made to watch his vitals or talk to him, and Relay had no ability to tend to others. Maybe he told himself that they were all already getting help. Maybe there was more to it.

The camera box was missing a good quarter of its components, because it had been hit by a rocket, or by the edge of the blast. The box and the tree had been used as cover, even though the box wasn’t that large. Fragments of Byron’s wall littered the area.

It meant someone could lie behind it and maybe not catch a bullet. Swansong lay in the snow and dirt with her back to the others.

“How do I look in crimson?” she asked.