The eggs. Tricks and ploys that came from a place that just didn’t seem like they were human places, because they were so divorced from compassion or rationality. A plague that turned friends into strangers. The Dolltown surgeries.

I clenched the hand warmer in my grip as I dropped out of the sky, landing amid the others, my good foot down, the knee of the leg with the injured foot bent. My hair slapped down at my back.

We had a small army of our own, I reminded myself. Byron, Sveta, Ashley, Brandish, Flashbang, Rachel, Chastity, Foil, the Harbingers, and Moose.

“He made an egg,” I said.

“Good for fucking him,” Rachel said. “What the hell does that mean?”

“A shelter. A bubble made of parts he took from people, attached together or suspended in place. It looks like he’s inside. Or he chopped himself up and he’s part of it.”

“That’s insane,” Moose said.

“It’s—yes.”

“That’s what Paris meant?” Foil asked. “We’d want to shoot because he’s in there, but we can’t?”

I nodded. “They’re organized in the old Russian style from back in Earth Bet. Squads of soldiers with parahumans in charge. Even down to the armbands and badges. It makes the squads extensions of the parahumans, force multipliers because they know their parahuman and they work with them.”

“It’s not the worst idea,” Swansong said. “If you find people you can trust.”

“Or forcefully conscript into military service and force into a given squad,” my dad said.

“That too. I’d have to take over a world first. Probably better to settle on finding people I can trust. I think I can do that now.”

I gave Swansong a warning look. Stop needling your sister.

She simply smirked at me.

“We don’t know how long they’ve been working together like this,” Byron said. “They might not have the level of trust you’re thinking of.”

“Some are IDs I recognize,” I said. “Eyethief, Mukade, Barfbat. So you’re probably right, Cap.”

“I knew a cape once who was from there,” my dad said. “Joined the New York Protectorate.”

“From Russia?” my mom asked.

“Yes. Bunter.”

“Your drinking buddy. He was cute.”

“What’s the relevance of this?” Damsel asked, hostile.

“We talked about what it was like over there,” my dad said. “Maybe it applies?”

I rubbed the hand-warmer between my hands as I thought. “Capes over there tended to break down into the ones who were conscripted, the ones who became fugitives of the state, the weird middle ground ones—”

“Almost always spies or state-supported capes,” my dad said. “According to Bunter.”

I nodded. “—and the villains who were fugitives of the state who managed to establish themselves. The whole dynamic was very anti-parahuman. Setting up capes so they rarely cooperated, each squad was primarily expected to deal with capes, whether they were home-grown or not.”