But Addison cried, and another of the prenatal nurse’s warnings was made evident, because he’d been told the pitch of a baby’s cry had been keyed by evolution to strike at the heartstrings and drill into the mind. He’d been told it was okay to put the baby down, to walk into the next room, even step out of the house, because the crying could be overwhelming.

He was overwhelmed, he couldn’t walk into a next room. His heartstrings were strained to their limits as they were.

He felt the weight of Addison on his arm, and he focused his mind forward, focusing on what he needed to do next. He and the baby waited for their rescue.

Their world was illuminated by the glowing knife he laid in the hollow above the glove compartment. He could already feel more power building up inside him, and he instinctively knew that when time came, he’d be able to put more power into something. For now, it was an insignificant thing.

⊙

“Dauntless.”

He turned away from the window. The sun was setting, and the forcefields over the floating headquarters gave it some interesting hues, bringing out the subtler colors. Inside, everything was white and black, faintly tinted by those same hues outside. Battery and Challenger were approaching.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Things are good,” Battery said. She smiled. “Listen, Armsmaster and Miss Militia got the latest calendar. We’re the only ones on patrol tonight, so we get first pickings. I’m really really hoping you take one of these. Can you guess which?”

The calendar. The ‘schedule’ was more focused on the week, and that was for Armsmaster to write up and for the Director to sign off on or amend, much like how Armsmaster would get his say about hires and personnel changes in the Protectorate and Wards, but it was ultimately down to the Director.

The calendar wasn’t the schedule. The calendar was a list of events coming over the next month, though sometimes there was notice of something coming months later. Armsmaster would usually pull in Miss Militia and Triumph to help make the top-level decisions. Already, some roles were penned in. Triumph and Gallant were down for the video game thing. Probably because they were the only ones who hadn’t sat in yet. Velocity’s name filled in the blank beside an event at a conference with Maine state law enforcement. No reason given for that. A long way to travel, maybe.

There were a lot of shorthand codes and notes by each entry. One person was to give presentations at every school in the city. The shorthand indicated they needed to write up a draft of what they would present and get it cleared. There was a lot of work, which was probably why it was indicated with a (B)—or pay bonus.