“To a crime?” he asked.

“No. To… whatever it is that happens. Gold Morning happened and it was a long, long time before we got anything even close to the full story. I don’t know if people even believe the story we got. Whatever happens next, these guys are going to be on the periphery of it and if I’m on the periphery of them then…”

“Then you might be able to explain, when people want an explanation,” he filled in.

“I go back and forth on whether it’s worth it,” she told him. “I like them, I feel sorry for them. A lot of it is interesting, I really feel like I helped and am helping with Lookout. I’m even happy to help here, as stressful as it is. But I can’t shake the feeling that things are going in a bad direction and I can’t stop that. I like a lot of the people individually but… the collective and the momentum of them all worries me so much.”

“What I can tell you,” he said. “Is that seventeen years ago, I got interested in all of this because I thought powers were neat. Then I saw the people behind the powers and that’s when I truly committed.”

“Different times?” she asked.

“I don’t know that they were. Around the time I joined the PRT proper, the Siberian killed one of the greatest heroes. Alexandria publically executed a person with powers that wouldn’t stand down; controversial then, but nowadays we don’t think about it.”

“I think about it a lot,” Natalie told him. “Not that, specifically, but similar events.”

He nodded, giving her a sympathetic smile. “Collectively, we don’t think about it enough. My era and my first days outside of power testing labs and in the PRT were marked by the Simurgh appearing, and people starting to talk about the possibility they’d keep coming, and that we wouldn’t win in the end. Europe saw political upheaval, Russia enlisted parahumans into its military and started hunting down those who wouldn’t enlist, activists across the United States were emboldened by leaders with powers. That momentum and feeling of being small and behind is… not new.”

“But everything’s so fragile right now.”

“It is.”

“One bad winter we’re not prepared for could cut our population in half.”

“Yes.”

Natalie wrung her hands. “Billions of people are lined up against Gimel. Shin is scared of us, Cheit wants to take over, they’re the big ones.”

“And we have good, capable, intelligent people on our side. Great minds that saw us through the end of the world are watching, waiting, and preparing. This team you’re looking after, I think it has some genuinely good people in it.”

“Good people doesn’t necessarily mean they do good things.”

“Did they do something that concerns you?”

She shook her head. “Nothing that I could point to and say ‘that’s wrong’. A lot of things I spend time agonizing and wondering about.”

“Try talking to them? When there’s a chance.”