Lee could be heard in the background. “Bye!”

“Bye!” Ever said, loud enough that Nic winced. The wince became a smile. Still loud, Ever ordered her, “Get all the bad guys!”

All the bad guys.

The message ended. Nic didn’t lower the phone, even as the automated voice outlined the options available for how the message could be replayed, saved, or deleted.

There was no beating the bad guys. There was no defeating them. A monster had encouraged a little boy to kill himself and he’d tried. Now he hurt more than ever. What was she supposed to do in the face of that?

⊙

Earlier in the evening

Love Lost was still, her jaw clenched, as she faced Cradle. Cradle was distracted, barely aware of her as he sorted through her traps.

Her eyes dropped to the table. These traps would trigger on proximity, arm, and then produce a wavelength that arced between them, forming a carpet around an area. The effect utilized some of her emotion power. Agitation, impulse.

“You’re getting good use out of the tinker power,” Cradle observed.

She nodded.

“The claw-lash?”

She shook her head. The lash part worked, though the left one was being temperamental. But the power that was supposed to channel through that—

She’d hesitated, procrastinated. Traps instead. The swapping rig for her arm.

“Another night then,” he said.

She didn’t respond. Instead, she focused on getting her things together.

He rolled his shoulders, mechanical hands going to gingerly touch each before he reached out to the window of her workshop. As he touched it, the window became a screen, just as clear and distinct as any computer. He dragged metal fingertip against glass, moving the windows on the screen.

March’s schedule and timing.

There were windows with notes on surveillance, with added details from the mercenaries they’d turned to their side, the outreach to those mercenaries timed to coincide with Tattletale’s downtime. Time she wasn’t as active with her power.

It made sense. Everyone had a routine, even erratic types like Tattletale. She lived on information and she got most of that information in the early morning and late afternoon. After a crisis arose, a new enemy or headache, she was slower to move and recover.

Which meant paying attention. It meant exerting pressure.

A lot of things had changed over the years, but those things were constant. Any threat could be defeated with a combination of the two. If the stories she’d heard were right, the man who’d ended the world had been defeated that way.

“No complaints?” Cradle asked.

She had some, but in her self-imposed silence, words had to be chosen carefully, and she couldn’t bring herself to utter the complaint. To say yes, that she had an issue.

The plan was sound. They had multiple thinkers on their side. Their enemy was weak.