“Yeah,” he said. He didn’t raise his head, instead staring up at the ceiling. “Talking to some of the other groups about allying. It could bring us up to forty-five, forty eight. We’re estimating about ninety, ninety-five in total, that are still alive right now. We could double that number if we included people like the ones you talked about from the asylum.”

“Maybe,” she said. He was referring to the victims of powers. People like Victoria, or Ernesto, or Colony, or Mick the Tick. “I don’t think the others would go for it.”

“So many different factions. So many politics. You are maybe one of four people who get it, who I can talk to without stressing out.”

“I’m glad,” she said, her voice small.

“Thank you for having my back, in more ways than the one.”

“Ha,” she said, dropping her eyes. She hated it and loved it at the same time.

“Hey,” Weld said. “Hand. High five or fist bump, but don’t leave me hanging.”

He was lying on the bed, arm extended above him, hand out and distorted, so the upper half resembled a fist, and the lower half had the palm.

Three tendrils slapped across his palm. A bunch hit the fist a second later. Two remained attached, as he kept his hand up there, holding on.

“I’m not good at this leadership thing,” he said.

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

“I screwed up in about fifteen seconds when talking to my first team, back in Brockton Bay. I’m not sure I’m doing better here.”

“You inspire,” she told him. “You inspire me, you inspire all of them.”

“Inspiring isn’t the same as leading.”

“You lead just fine. People love and respect you. We trust you. You just… you don’t love and trust and respect yourself enough.”

“Do any of us truly love ourselves? Our ‘tooth and nail’ faction aside?”

The group had banded together in the eastern United States and celebrated their Case Fifty-Three nature. To an extent, they celebrated it at the expense of non Case Fifty-Threes. Their recruitment had come with stern rules.

“I like us,” she said, and it was so close to saying what she wanted to say that she felt a little dizzy. Small vital organs pumped and beat behind and beneath her like a trail of thudding hearts.

“I like us too,” he said. His voice dropped, “But I don’t like me.”

Those thudding hearts shriveled, bile churned inside her, and despair threatened to consume her brain, insofar as she had an actual thinking-organ. To see this wonderful, amazing boy so lost and struggling, even knowing it was because the week had been long and fruitless, it almost physically hurt.