A narrow woman with short black hair shot through with gray was speaking, face displayed on the screens. I recognized her but couldn’t place the name. I was so bad with non-parahuman names.

“What’s her name?” I asked, to change the subject. “Woman in the window.”

“She wrote a book, didn’t she?” Rain asked.

“Yes,” Ashley said. “I read it, but I forget the name.”

“What’s the book?” I asked.

“Deconstructing power,” Ashley said. “I like deconstructing things—”

She made an intentional spark with her power, a flicker of shadow twice the size of the flame a lighter might’ve made, and loud enough I worried heads on the ground five floors below us might turn our way.

“—and I like power. It was fine. Wasn’t a very good deconstruction or look at power, I think.”

“It’s apparently made the author popular,” Byron observed.

“Other person on the screen,” Rain said. “Gary Nieves.”

“Ex-candidate for mayor,” I noted.

“He’s been a voice surrounding this general sentiment,” Rain said.

“Paying attention, huh?” I asked.

Rain nodded. He turned his head slowly, glowing eyes of his mask surveying the crowd. “I like paying attention to what ideas are taking hold and how. Makes me feel more secure, like I won’t be blindsided by that stuff again.”

Speakers planted outside the bookstore that was hosting the informal presentation, dialogue, or debate had Gary Nieves’s voice now, distinct from the woman’s.

The crowd was reacting. Little by little, step by step, they were being hyped. Finding courage.

“What’s he saying?” Byron asked.

“I don’t know, but I want to know,” I answered.

“Let me,” Sveta said. “I can go incognito.”

She pulled off her mask, then pressed it to her stomach. Skin pulled away in strips, and then fat, muscle, and other structures were their own layers. All the organs were there, but as necessary parts were pulled away, the organs went still, shriveling, moisture sucked into other surrounding spaces.

The mask was wrapped up by the strips, then drawn into her stomach. Strips then fell back into their natural order, with one or two misfires before something tidy was managed. Only a slight bump suggested the mask’s presence.

Then, more dramatically, she did the same with the remainder of her costume. The costume was salvaged from her damaged prosthetic body, forming armor that she wore with curling, wavy components to it, all painted either in a dramatic fashion with bright reds, yellows, and oranges, or in deep, cold greens and blues.

It took her some doing, to pull in the armor and wrap herself around it. There were places it protruded through the skin, but it was set deep enough inside her that that when she pulled her coat out of her bag and pulled it on over everything, her silhouette was normal.

“Pretty cool,” Byron said.

“It’s uncomfortable. I’m going to head down.”