Snuff picked up speed, until there was a reckless edge to the driving. I sat with my right hand on Sveta’s Rain-made right hand, my body twisted around so I could watch her out of the corner of my eye while keeping a closer eye on the car that followed.

“I’ll contact our teams,” Tattletale said.

“Thanks,” I answered.

My attention was split, but none of the subjects of that attention were any easier than the others. Sveta, who I wanted to hug or help somehow. The group behind, who I wanted to slap across their faces. The hurt Old Man, who lay with his feet near me, this time.

I didn’t know what to do. It was possible a door had permanently closed here.

Sveta, somehow, was more pressing, but I wasn’t sure what to do about that, either.

“Take Dorsey,” Tattletale instructed Snuff, as she brought her phone to her ear.

Dorsey, I knew, was a route that would let us make a last minute diversion to the Bunker. We were going there, I was willing to bet. Dragon. Jessica. Colt. Love Lost. Cradle.

We, I hoped, could talk about things there that we couldn’t talk about in the open. I could grill Engel on details. We could make plans, gather notes on Teacher’s base of operations, things Tattletale had picked up. I really hoped it was the case that we could talk there, because if it wasn’t, then we really had no options.

A general plan, a set of options. It didn’t make me feel better, but it helped suspend me in a place where I wasn’t sinking into feeling worse and worse.

Not until I let myself. Made myself.

Except for noting it was something about to happen, I didn’t devote a thought to any of the broader, bigger subjects, or imminent subjects of meetings. Earlier, Sveta had brought me back to reality by touching on details around me, and now I abandoned that reality. I turned to thoughts of the hospital room, darkness, and some mixture of stray animals and vermin transmuted into pale, reaching flesh. I remembered watching the clock endlessly until I could hear the tick of it, and the pain I held in my chest mirrored that heart I’d been given that had been made to be broken.

For the course of this journey, there was nothing I could do to change what Teacher was doing. I found myself mired in other thoughts, so dark they could be called black.

Teacher’s move here was to drive a permanent wedge between parahuman and human. With distorted, false, and misleading evidence, they would see us as monsters. Not immediately, but soon.