“You’re saying that a lot.”

“Fuck a lot of this.”

I nodded.

Nothing I could use. No sign the anti-parahuman groups were in play—if they were, we’d have to deal with them.

But it was something.

I looked around and I found paper. I scribbled down a note.

“What are you doing?” Precipice asked.

“A note. We have her family photos on this computer. I know you and her are at odds. I know she’s threatened your life. But I don’t want to play it that way. Take illicit money? Screw up her deals with murderous mercenaries? Fine. But if she wants the photos, I’ll send them to her. They aren’t hostage. They aren’t part of a deal.”

There was a pause while I scribbled it out. Precipice was silent. I underlined ‘not hostage’ on my note.

“Is that okay?” I asked.

Precipice nodded.

I penned out a final line. I said it out loud as I wrote it, “We want… to talk. Breakthrough.”

I underlined it. The willingness to talk, to communicate. If we couldn’t get there, then there was a very real possibility that Love Lost was on our shortlist of people to trap in an alternate world, not disclosing to anyone what we’d done with her.

Just… too angry. Too violent. Even in talking about rest, she talked about guns and claiming her corner. She talked about being mad. She thought she could take thugs like Sidepiece and Kitchen Sink and drag them off to a corner world, where they wouldn’t bother anyone, and she could wrangle them there?

I just… didn’t see it. We’d have to talk it over with others. Try talking to her first, to see if any middle ground was possible.

I closed the laptop and took the cords. There was a messenger bag that we could slide it into, along with the other things, including the storage drives. Precipice took the claw-whip framework that was meant to fit over a hand.

“It’s not set up with location detection?”

“Nothing my scanner sensed. Maybe there’s a ping it responds to, but for right now I think we’re okay to bring it. It’ll be useful.”

I nodded. I’d trust him in this. This thing with Love Lost, the cluster, and the dynamic, I knew he was well versed in it.

“Are we good to go?” I asked, as we headed down the stairs. I paused as I saw the cash that was gathered in bags. The pile covered a countertop that could have had three medium-sized microwaves set side by side. A mix of currencies.