“Doesn’t matter,” Crock drawled the words. She started forward. “I destroy the phone.”

“It’s being broadcast,” he said. He turned it around, checked—and surprised himself, because there was footage and there were clips that… weren’t from his phone.

Breakthrough. They’d recorded things, but they couldn’t say they’d recorded it, or it would damn them. It would be use of parahuman powers while they were in prison, a violation of rules that had been established.

But him? He was safe. He could be a spy, and while that wasn’t great from a diplomacy perspective…

Well, neither was cornering him in a holding cell with a monster and setting him up to die. Whatever their purpose was.

“It’s being transmitted,” he said, still looking at the screen.

“Not possible.”

“You know I’m not lying.”

Crock o’ Shit twisted around, hauling the door open. She started to go, or to lean out, and then reconsidered.

Twisting around, she grabbed him, picking him up like a child might pick up a doll. He grabbed her ‘forearm’ for stability, and found it alternately too hard and too soft, depending on where he gripped. He wasn’t sure which was worse for the situation.

He was carried bodily, held up so high that his feet dangled above the heads of prisoners who ran for cover.

“Crock,” he grunted.

“Shut up.”

“You admitted to a lot. Dangerous admissions.”

“Shut up.”

Her claw tightened around him.

Breakthrough was waiting, close to the door that led from the secured hallways around the prison into the prison proper. The group had assembled. Cryptid and Coalbelcher stood by.

“They have something. A tinkered transmitter.”

“No they don’t,” Cryptid said.

Crock o’ Shit huffed for breath. She slurred the words, “What the hell?”

“They have only the faintest scent of electronics on them,” Cryptid said. “If they had anything, it’s gone now.”

Kamil had learned to read Ashley since getting to know her, too late to save her, but early enough to support her. He could see the posture, the shift in footing, the way she rolled her fingertips into place as she folded her arms, pinky landing first, index finger last.

The evidence would be annihilated, as would, he presumed, anything tying them to the riot.

Crock o’ Shit turned, storming away.

“Where is she going?” Antares asked. “Stop her.”

“Why?” Cryptid asked. But he raised his voice. “Don’t do anything stupid, Crock.”

Crock only growled.

Kamil had figured her out, if only to a small degree. That she had committed a wrong, once, and somewhere along the line, because she hadn’t dealt with it, it had festered.

“I’m going,” Swansong said.

“No.”

“If you want to get in my way, do it at your own risk, Cryptid. She’s going to do something.”

“You’re pretending I care. We rule a continent, you’re prisoners. Guess who gets a say?”