This time, however, he didn’t follow up by turning it to stone.

I flew after them, catching up.

They were on guard and tense enough that my landing seemed to spook even the more serious ones. Swansong and Foil were among them.

“You’re hurt,” my dad observed.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Come here,” he said. “I can multitask. No stitches in this light, but I can wrap it.”

“I can hold things,” Moose offered, walking beside my dad.

I submitted to the medical care. I tracked the others. Harbingers One and Two were out to the flanks, not seeming to care about the possibility of traps in the ditches. Foil and Capricorn had the rear, Foil sporting a borrowed slingshot. My mom and Sveta were on opposite corners of the group. Rachel had the lead, where she rode her wolf alongside the hound that had an injured Chastity and Cassie seated on it.

Ow—and most pressing, most distracting, my arm and leg fucking hurt. Fuck and ow.

“Distract me,” I said.

“We got two of their capes,” Swansong said.

“I got two,” Damsel retorted.

“We did.”

“I did,” Damsel said. “Final blow’s all that matters.”

Swansong didn’t rebut.

“He caught on,” Rain said. “Spotted us.”

“No idea what his emotion power is?” I asked.

Rain shook his head. “I don’t think he’s been using. He’s still focused on his machine. Upgrading it on the fly.”

I drew in air through my teeth.

“He’s hanging back,” Rain said. “Letting others do the dirty work. The asshole.”

“He might think he’s putting us in a pinch,” my dad said. “Depending on how things stood with the people in the Row, the supervillain town just outside the station, he would be right. There, that’ll hold.”

I checked the injuries at my arm. “Leg?”

I floated up, until my leg was at a comfortable level for him.

“Ow,” Moose said.

“Less commentary. I’m trying not to think about it.”

“Worse than any injury I’ve ever had,” he said.

My mind went to the gouges at one corner of his face. A mistake in using the Wretch. Any different, and I might have dislocated his jaw.

“Less commentary,” I said, my voice firm. “That was you, working with my dad?”

He made a flicking motion with his finger. The shockwave followed, focused and narrow.

Right.

“You okay, Svet’?” I asked, pitching my voice to be heard. “You got cut.”

“I wanted to get the whip,” Sveta said, so far away she was barely in earshot. Her movements were… not a limp, but not so fluid that it looked like her face was floating. Here and there, it would sharply bob or move.

“That’s what you were after?”

“He had devices with him. I thought if I couldn’t get him, I could get his things. Give it to Rain to undo it or decipher it.”