Some capes in attendance were only barely keeping their identities secret. Two of the Shepherds were wearing clothes I wouldn’t have worn leaving the house: stretch yoga pants with patches where they were worn thin, and plaid sleep pants. Both wore their masks, but the one with the plaid sleep pants hadn’t even brushed her hair.

I saw Victor—Brockton Bay native, named for his power, not because it was an actual name. The costume had been changed so it didn’t have that bold red, black, bit-of-white color scheme, but he’d kept the name, I knew. He was talking with one of Capricorn’s old teammates from Reach, and had his girlfriend with. She seemed to be Gospel, an ex-member of one of the smaller religious teams. Rune sat at the opposite corner of that collection of Shepherds. She’d changed her name to Scribe, updated her costume by adding a brimmed hat and a crook-topped cane that she could use to write her symbols, but it was hard for me to not see her as Rune.

Two days ago, the pair of them had been outed. Victor hadn’t really been hiding it, but he’d kind of been exposed to the public years ago, and had more or less dropped off the map for two years after that, long enough for most people to forget. After they’d been revealed as ex-members of the neo-Nazi gang back in Brockton Bay, Victor had been open about it. He’d written a letter about his past life, his attempt to use the amnesty to be better, how he had someone close to him that inspired him to be better, he’d found God, he condemned everything about who & what he’d been, blah blah blah. He’d still been a guy who had a history that was violent and stark enough to have records remaining after the end of the world, who’d done what he’d done when he was a full-fledged adult. The letter had been an apology letter without an actual apology or trace of contrition. I was kind of glad in a way that the public hadn’t really bought it, but his team was standing by him.

Rune, by contrast, hadn’t written any letter. Her silence had been damning, and I suspected that if she hadn’t already been brought here to the Bunker and firmly asked to stay here, they would have enforced it then. She was benched, and she had no friends for the time being. Nobody to talk to her.

Cracks.

Our last arrivals were trickling in. Capricorn sat on a table next to me, strapping on his armor while Sveta provided a hand as needed, to hold things in place or hold straps out ready for Byron to grab them. Ashley had set aside her coat. Rain had stepped over to a storage area to switch over to a proper costume.