Jeanne Wynn and her assistant. CEO of Mortari, second of the large construction groups. Jeanne might be too. She’s a more serious candidate for mayor, she’s running, she and a lot of others think she’ll win.

Crystalclear was bothered that he was getting filled in on things he already had some knowledge of, but felt disconnected in other things. He’d known about Jeanne. She had recently put up her proposals online, for how she wanted and expected to run things if she won.

The person who won mayorship of Gimel, if they weren’t killed in an uprising, would likely go on to be leader of Gimel as a whole.

We suspect the assistant is a parahuman.

He was, Crystalclear knew. He resolved to communicate that when he could.

Others were named and identified by Relay. Mr. Nieves, another prospective mayor, though he didn’t have the footing the others did, his chances were better than Ms. Kiley’s. Mr. Buckner was at the forefront of the burgeoning media enterprise in Gimel, bringing television to the masses.

Stay put and stay silent.

The voice wasn’t Relay’s, but it was easy to imagine as Relay’s, with it being so vivid.

Crystalclear had a confused and fractured memory of his early childhood. The woman he remembered growing up with was not the woman he’d spent his late childhood and adolescence with. His aunt had explained the situation for him, saying his mother hadn’t been well, he’d been taken away from her for his safety.

She had said a lot of things over the years. He had believed most, and because other things had occupied his attention, he hadn’t given the remainder enough focus.

Normally, trigger events emphasizing isolation, loss, cut ties, and betrayal tended to lead to master powers. Or, rather, master powers tended to go to people who were going to deal with those situations.

Any attachment he had felt to his aunt had faded over the years, long before he had triggered. She hadn’t cared. So long as he behaved and didn’t cause a fuss, she had been happy to not have to devote much attention to him. There was nothing lost, so that aspect of things hadn’t factored in.

So, naturally, he had avoided causing a fuss.

It had only been later that their fragile reality had come crashing down around them. The police were closing in on him, he was no longer young, and where a young, clean cut white boy had flown under the radar, a teenaged white boy with pimples hadn’t. It had turned out that his aunt wasn’t his aunt at all. Her only relation to him was that she had stolen him from his real mother.