“They’re set up to deal with us,” I said.

“Did it work?” Moose asked.

“The setup? Yeah. For the specialized task. When they got hit by Endbringers they turned on the people who came to help, though. For later attacks, they didn’t have the help. They ended up trying to use airplanes, tanks… but we’re digressing.”

A digression that was at least helping me to get into a better headspace.

“Bunter was a squad leader,” my dad said. “There was a drawback to that setup. The squads end up subservient. Power imbalance. Every cape has their quirks. Preferences, eccentricities.”

“Some of us are the sad kind of insane,” Chastity said.

“That, yes,” my dad said. “When you surround yourself with people who don’t balance you out, you can spiral. The neuroses get worse, the bad habits get more problematic. Negative personality traits are magnified.”

“Which is fine if we’re dealing with them one-on-one, but this is a lot of people,” Byron pointed out.

“I counted ten squads of ten soldiers and one cape each, all inside,” I said. “Three more patrolling around the outside, one last group on the roof. Looks like they rotate. It’s a lot. Even if you remove all soldiers from consideration…”

“How?” Ashley asked.

“How did they afford it or arrange it?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. It’d be nice to ask Precipice if he knows particulars.”

“He was researching his cluster before all this started, and he took notes,” Byron said. “From the time of their trigger, Love Lost and Snag moved into doing cape work for hire.”

“They have good reputations,” Moose said. “They do the work, they’re smart, they follow any extra orders and they adapt to changes in plans. Cradle was networking with tinkers. He developed some of his first devices to work with other tinkers before he developed for himself. Made special armpit-length gloves that were really easy to plug your own tech into. That sort of thing. Not many tinkers do that and a lot of them want it.”

“Especially in a time like this, post-apocalypse,” Foil said.

“Yeah,” Moose said, smiling. “No workshop, no stuff. They want to get caught up, get notes, get prep—”

The movement of a beam of light in our vicinity cut off all conversation.

We were far enough back. The light was a halogen bulb being turned on the field, aimed at one squad.

By mutual, unspoken agreement, we didn’t resume the discussion.

“Sveta’s keeping an eye out. We discussed how to crack this, but… it’s a lot. The army we could deal with, but not while everything’s set up like it is in there. We could deal with the setup, but not without dealing with the army first.”

“Traps,” Rachel said. “Don’t forget the traps.”

“Yes,” I said.