Theirs was the Wardens’. A series of terse messages telling us to wait at a set location. I sent them messages and mentioned the texts from Shin, which got us a reply with only a repeated ‘Wait there’.

Ours was an eleven-year-old girl.

As much as I would have liked to have the backup and convenience of Kenzie arriving first, a part of me was secretly glad that the Wardens’ response time would be better than that of an eleven-year-old who needed to ask around for a ride. It took us five minutes to get to the building specified, a storefront that was available for lease, that was more than a little too close to the mess of the portals in the city’s heart to find anyone willing to invest. The key to get in was inside a mini-safe attached to the door, the Wardens supplied the four digit code. It got us out of the cold and it gave us some privacy.

Natalie arrived with the Wardens. A part of me wondered if they’d sent recognizable faces because Breakthrough had achieved the special status of needing specialized, practiced handling.

I felt okay with how that had gone, all considered, but okay was a far cry from perfect and I felt like we needed a lot of perfects to get things back on track. I was tense, even considering the positive emotions of seeing Vista, Golem, and Miss Militia.

The Wardens settled in a short distance away, while Natalie hustled across the divide to our side. I put my arm on her shoulder and murmured, “Thanks for coming.”

“They called, said it’d help,” Natalie said. She was wearing her puffy jacket, and her hair, which was normally cut in a pixie style and kept combed very close to her head, was even more close to her head with the moisture of the wet snow.

“Okay,” I said, my eye turning toward Miss Militia.

Vista had a heavy scarf draped over the parts of her costume which exposed skin, and wore what looked like a very thin jacket for the cold weather. The visor hid the details of her eyes but showed light and shadow, and the heavy eyeliner was still a thing, apparently.

Miss Militia wore her outfit in her red white and blue, form-fitting and color-swapped version of military fatigues, a flag scarf covering her lower face, and something between a hood and a scarf covering her head. When she pushed her hood back, snow fell to the plain, unadorned floor of the store.

Golem, I saw, had removed or hidden away the kind of silly looking fans or ‘fins’ that were part of his costume, a series of different common materials. Nice looking armor that was obsidian black with hands and arms etched in it in a way that only showed in the right light. Each panel was trimmed in silver. He wore a serious-looking mask.