“It’s not my point,” Prancer countered. He sounded heated in his own way. “My point is that deals were struck, in the midst of all of that. Cradle came to me, he made the offer, asks for a cut of traffic if he removes an obstacle from our way. He shakes my hand, and we go on our merry way. Then I find out what happened and I’m… angry at the Navigators, because it’s their fault that it came to that. Irrational, but I’ve become pretty fucking familiar with irrational lately. Familiar with angry.”

“Your point being?” Swansong asked.

“That he made deals with other major villain groups. With people in those villain groups. And I’m willing to bet he shook their hands too,” Prancer said. “The guy with tinker hands and arms and an emotion power shook Bluestocking’s hand. I remembered Snag. I know Snag could make stuff happen through his tech. I got to wondering.”

I looked between him and the villains of the villain group.

“I had a little scab on the side of my hand. Like a needle went in,” Prancer said. “I’m wondering if anyone else here had anything like that.”

“Cradle touched my arm,” Moose said. “Seemed weird at the time. We talked about it, it’s when we first started thinking something might be hinky.”

There was a long pause.

“Yeah, he shook my hand,” Bluestocking said. “If you were right, then alliances don’t matter. He breached the truce.”

“I’m right,” Prancer said. “Rationally, really, none of us would be okay with this. Right? We’re not monsters.”

The question was met by silence. I saw some exchanged looks.

“No,” Bitter Pill, the woman who had turned civilians into hulking rage-filled monstrosities, said. “We’re not monsters.”

When my eye fell on Prancer, he locked his gaze onto mine. “He didn’t have to get every last one of us. Webwork of alliances being what it is… he just had to get enough of us. Subordinates are going to follow their leaders, and they aren’t going to go after all of Frontier Row.”

“That’s a really terrible name, even for this mudpit,” Swansong said.

“Let it go,” I said.

I could have addressed the group, challenged, questioned. I didn’t. No further comments. Instead, I waited, studying the group.

I looked away, and looked back to the phone. Zooming out—lots of clusters of seven traps, some so close together that they looked like they all interconnected.

Fuck. Maybe I’d have to say something.

“Dad,” I called out. “Try nuking the trap in the center? To your left.”

“If you do anything, we’re going to have a problem,” Bluestocking said.

“The sooner they’re free, the sooner we’re out of your hair,” I said. “Provided there’s any validity to this.”