The screen showed a bunch of squares and lines, identifying faces, then framing each face. The camera was pointed one way but somehow depicted the face from another angle. Lips were covered by another, bolder square, and then weird arrangements of letters and symbols appeared. Each was like a dial of letters on a lock that might read A-A-A-A, with the lock-cracker changing each letter in turn.

In this case, the lipreading technology spat out words that included a ‘DINAH’ and ‘CONTESSA’. Names and a royal title.

Seemingly disinterested in anything that wasn’t a mention from her friends, Lookout had Candy use the trackball to switch over to another camera shot, focusing on a grid of security camera images. The prior image was visible at the very edges of the screen, with a dotted line feeding into a bubble that read ‘logs’.

“What do you mean?” Lookout asked, again.

How was Lookout this energetic at this hour, this hurt? Candy had been in the one big fight with Nursery and Lord of Loss and all the people with guns, and she was exhausted. She’d forgotten what she was even going to say, but now Lookout was staring at her with large eyes. In the gloom of the room, the whites of the eyes were contrasted with black skin, the orbs capturing the movements of lines and windows from the computer screen.

“I mean you know she likes Chicken. If you get in the way, she will literally tear—”

Stupid choice of ways to put it. She was tired.

“Tear me to pieces. Mm hmm.”

“Because she likes him a lot.”

“Yeah. I’ve liked people that much.”

“And you like him,” Candy said.

“I do. And I like her, and I like you, and I like my team—”

“You know what I mean.”

Lookout stared at her screen.

Candy elbowed her.

“I’m being good,” Lookout said, quiet. “And I won’t get in the way.”

‘I’m being good’ was the kind of thing that made far too much sense to Candy. She’d heard similar things from a lot of her siblings and ‘cousins’, which was their term for the sisters and brothers by another mother. She’d even heard the line about being good from some of their quirkier and more messed up unpowered siblings.

It was a simple thing to say that said a lot.

Candy moved her mental evaluation on whether Darlene would find herself strangling Lookout or being best friends with her one bit toward ‘best friends’.

“What happens if he decides he likes you?”

“I always thought maybe he liked boys, like one of the Capricorn brothers or like my d—like some people I knew did. Do. He was a big fan of Rain. Both with and without the fake face.”

“No,” Candy said.

“No? But—”