Mindful in the sense that there was a kind of forced casualness that he wasn’t selling. He put his cloth-wrapped gun down, and when Kenzie moved closer to him to poke at one of Rain’s little arms, his hand was too quick to reach for the weapon again.

Help, I thought. My mother stared out the window, and if she was tense, it was hard to tell because she had a natural rigidity to her posture.

There was only quiet chatter, careful conversational forays into that dangerous space between Breakthrough and Shin’s parahumans. So often, there was a measured reaching out, a safe topic broached, and the conversation would continue until Chris said something or someone said something a little too biting. Marquis wishing he had a cup of tea leading in its way to Ashley rebuking him for not being discerning enough. Then silence.

A minute where Marquis only talked to Spruce, who was back in the far corner. Where Golem approached Rain. Vista had her visor off, and hopped up onto a table to sit on it, close enough to Ashley that when they had a murmured exchange of words, she could reach up and stick her finger into the black smoke eyeliner that was projected around Ashley’s eyes. Ashley didn’t flinch.

A minute where I had to try to get my shit together. My mom had written about needing help. Miss Militia had suggested we might need to use our powers and she was on her own out there. The guards with guns weren’t staying in their lane, moving themselves and their guns around, necessitating that little bit of extra attention.

And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t wrap my head around all of it. Any of it.

I saw movement, saw a face in the corner of my vision that served to backhand the warning bells in my brain before I’d even fully processed seeing it. Then I did finish processing, pieced together that it was Marquis, and I saw how similar he was to Amy. In hair type and even the way the hair fell across their shoulders, in face shape, and the cast of eye and nose.

He looked so casually confident, wearing a red velvet jacket and a black silk ascot that ninety-nine percent of men would not have been able to pull off. He had a cane topped with a cat skull that looked like it was mostly bone, with inlay only for decoration.

She—I glanced. She was wearing a red blouse under a black cardigan, and she wore a brooch that seemed like it was meant to mimic her tattoos in style, like stained glass in gold bands with panes of red. Worn over the heart, vaguely heart-shaped. Ankle-length black skirt with red trim.

One thing at a time, then. For now it was peaceful. My team had other bases covered.