“If your feet leave the ground or if you drop those hands…” Cradle intoned. He used his power, moving to a position where he was bent down. He picked up an oblong stone. A bright line appeared in the air to his right. He swatted it with the stone, severing the stone in half. “This happens to someone or something you care about. Could be the fix you want.”

“And you get away, you disappear, and you leave the world a worse place than when you entered it.”

“I tried. More than you know, I tried,” Cradle said. “Once powers came into it, I physically could not try anymore. Once he came into it.”

“I know people who couldn’t help but kill. But they found coping mechanisms.”

“How long did it take them to figure out?” Cradle asked. “How many deaths?”

I didn’t respond.

“I haven’t killed anyone,” he said. “Not with these hands. Believe me, I’m coping.”

“You’re fucking awful at coping,” I said.

“Aren’t we all?” he asked, and for maybe the first time ever, he sounded weirdly amused.

Then he walked away, Cretan ushering Rain forward. Cradle flickered with every movement, not that it really mattered, considering the only conscious dangers who were crack shots with a gun were on the other side of the walls that bounded the arena and the tunnel Cretan was making to the station. Above them were buildings stretched improbably tall and black sky.

He wins?

Fuck that.

I watched him disappear from sight. I didn’t budge. I avoided looking at the others. I listened.

My middle ear might have been fucked up from my earlier collision, but I imagined a shift in the air pressure. I imagined the timing was right.

I gave the signal, hand chopping down.

Sveta dropped down from that improbable height, her tendrils going to the ground and providing spring before the impact.

I flew, and as Sveta grabbed for every handhold, I threw caution to the wind. No Wretch, no problematic air resistance. I knew what I was getting into here.

But for the rainfall patter of Sveta’s tendrils on the walls of the station, we were silent, as we darted after Cradle.

He stood at the threshold to the portal, and he seemed genuinely surprised to see us. If Cradle wasn’t as quick or effective in assessing me and how to target me, it might have had to do with my emotion resistance. If he had difficulty with Sveta, it might have had to do with the fact that there were no veins for her emotions to run through, her brain maintained a different construction.

The reaction was immediate, Cretan’s power sheltering Cradle and putting a few bends in the path between them and us.

Sveta’s focus was on a few things at once, but she was capable of that. Her mechanical body had trained her.