Her voice creaked, and the words hurt. The creaks and unevenness of her voice mirroed the emotion that threatened to pour out. “There’s nothing good waiting for them if they live this life. We’ll reverse it when everything’s done.”

“There’ll never be a day when we’re done,” Nailbiter said.

Love Lost shook her head.

There had to be. She would expose and then deal with the worst capes, everyone who was willing to break the rules. She would kill them, starting from the worst offenders, the Fallen, moving on to Teacher, to the people who would have worked for Beast of Burden.

She would take them all down in a blaze of glory, if she had to. She had plans in mind.

She did up the mask, sealing her mouth shut. Her breath filtered through, cleaner and easier than if she were breathing through nose and mouth.

With claws, she gestured, her intent pushed into the movements of her hands, trusting that the people who followed her knew what she meant, because they’d had to learn to.

Pick them up. Let’s go.

⊙

The dream came like a bad trip.

A day so sunny it was delirious. Ever and two of her cousins were in the backyard.

The topic of Lee was carefully avoided as she listened to Lee’s sisters talk. She kept one eye on Ever and one eye on making sure refreshments were served.

“Do you have a lighter, Nicole?” Ever’s Aunt Didi asked. “I’m going to cheat and grab a smoke.”

“I’d have to search,” Nic said. “It’s been a long time since I smoked.”

Ever was watching more than playing.

“Matches, perhaps?”

“I do have a lighter, now that I think about it, it’s for the barbecue.”

“That works,” Aunt Didi said.

“Keep an eye on the kids?”

“Of course,” Aunt Didi said.

Nic had to rummage around the barbecue and the associated drawers before she found the lighter. It had a band of stars around it for remembrance of those lost to Endbringer attacks. She hadn’t bought it for that reason, it had just been on sale.

She was in the midst of handing it over when she looked for Ever and saw that her daughter was gone.

“Where’s my daughter?”

“She’s somewhere over there,” Aunt Didi motioned to the far end of the backyard. Ever’s two cousins splashed in the pool. “She’s fine.”

The backyard was long, and the trees that were scattered on the one end were dense on the other. Her heart pounded as she ran, and with the pounding was a distant rattle, that seemed to grow ever closer. With the shouting of the kids in the pool was an echo, overlapping cries of a crowd.

The pounding in her chest grew worse when she found her daughter, paradoxically.