My impression was that Tristan was looking at the money from an abstract, emotional perspective as well.

“I barely have a high school education, it’s not like there’s a lot out there for me, and money is tight everywhere,” Tristan said. “I like the hero stuff. I like the notoriety, and I like being out there. We need a fix, and the two ways I see of us getting one would be if we get the money together to pay the right cape, or we chance into meeting the right cape.”

“Fix?” I asked. “Sorry, I missed something.”

“With how quick you were about cape terms and names, and how you knew Reach, I thought you might have realized.”

“I figured out you’re Capricorn.”

“More to it than that. You know how two brothers can get in a pissy fight over who gets to have the remote and decide what to watch on TV? We’re stuck doing that, except it’s way more fucking intense.”

Two brothers and one power? Or—

Oh, I was an idiot.

“That we are,” Tristan said.

We. “You’re a Case Seventy?”

“I can’t tell you how bummed I am that it isn’t Case Sixty-Nine instead, but no, that number went to a bigfoot sighting or something stupid. A stupid bit of immature humor would’ve been the one good thing in this mess of a thing.”

“Case seventies in North America included Knot, Tandem, Zigzag was one, I think, there was House of Three in Quebec. And… you, it seems.”

“One or two of them might not be seventies, but they get called seventies because they’re close enough. Blurred lines, like you said. When twins trigger, the powers are identical or nearly identical. When twins trigger and they’re touching one another, like you said to Rain, things get blurry, the agent is too stupid or careless to tell where one starts and the other ends, or it wants to fuck with us, and it jams everything in together. Two minds, two similar powers, and one body to be shared.”

“Is he asleep?” I asked.

“No. He’s in here, he’s watching and listening. He sleeps when I sleep, or I sleep when he sleeps, if he’s in the driver’s seat. We trade out for two hour shifts.”

“Can he communicate?” I asked. “Talk to you while it’s your turn?”

“That would be too easy,” Tristan said. His good humor was gone now. He just looked sad. “No.”

No.

Two brothers, and only one of them could be interacting with the world at a time. For the other, it was—picturing it made me think of being in the hospital again. Being stuck, immobile, locked in while the world went on around them.

Oppressive, that kind of thinking. Just as oppressive to be living it.

“I like Byron,” Kenzie said. “I really wish he would stay for the therapy sessions.”