I could find my way across the city by the flavor of the buildings. How densely they were packed together, the style of them. I had a sense of which materials had come from where, with a lot of the prefab building segments having come from Cheit, a lot of crude materials from Shin, and outright raw materials from Earth N, with processing and industry set up within arm’s reach of the destinations for the end-products they made.

I saw my destination, at a point where the neighborhoods ceased to be places I’d flown over fifty times and became familiar. I felt the same hollow feeling from earlier, recognizing the stores, restaurants, and the peninsula that was Hollow Point, just over the water from our headquarters.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but what I saw felt off. Rain on the ground, leaning against Tristan and Byron’s car. Tristan out of costume on the fire escape stairs, and Ashley standing in the doorway.

I floated close, because Victoria catch-up was an interruption that stood to make it harder to grasp the immediate situation and its demands.

“Please leave,” Sveta said. Her voice was tense, breaking slightly. “Give us a bit.”

“You’re not getting anywhere. It’s my headquarters too. Take a break and wait for Victoria or make a decision.”

“Victoria can’t do anything about this,” Sveta said.

“Then who do I call?”

“Nobody.”

“Jessica?”

“Ashley, Swansong, I—I said nobody. Jessica’s not even doing therapy anymore. She’s not caught up. It would be too much to ask.”

“Then who?”

“You’re not listening to me! You can’t fix this. This isn’t the sort of thing you fix,” Sveta said. Her voice broke at the end of the statement.

“Isn’t that a decision on its own?” Weld said, distant, barely audible.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Sveta said. “I’m saying it’s not her business. That’s all.”

“My headquarters, m—” Ashley said.

“You’ve said that,” Sveta said, bitter, annoyed.

“—my friend,” Ashley said. She took advantage of the pause that followed. “My, hm, cousin?”

“Cousin?” Sveta asked. It was like the statement had shaken her from her train of thought.

“We’re all Armstrong’s, in our way. Should I call him?”

Armstrong. The PRT director who had de-facto adopted Weld, who had supported Ashley from a distance when she was Damsel of Distress, living in a small town. Who had accepted Sveta with open arms and, I wasn’t even sure Sveta knew, provided a good chunk of the cash for Sveta’s now-destroyed prosthetic body.

“I didn’t even think about Armstrong,” Sveta said. I could hear the pain in her voice. “Can you just leave, Ashley? Please? Tristan, I’m guessing you’re in earshot. Can you—”

I flew in, touching Ashley’s shoulder. She backed out of the way of the door.

Inside, it was cold, the door had been open for at least a few minutes.