The Shepherds had benched some members.

The teams under the umbrellas of the four primary teams like the Navigators or the Major Malfunctions were now sending people to shore up numbers and support. People they saw as friends had gone in to wage a war and those friends hadn’t returned. They’d go the extra mile now.

It was more convenient to not have any friends at all.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Jeanne said. “I heard things were resolved.”

“More or less,” Capricorn answered. “We’ll see how things are tomorrow or next week.”

“I’m sorry it came to that. I hope my efforts were some assistance.”

“They were, thank you.”

“I’d like to start,” Cinereal said.

With that, she had the attention of the room.

“A few hours ago, our precogs and danger sensers gave us our best numbers yet for an attack on Teacher’s facility. Many members of Warden leadership, Advance Guard, Foresight, and the Shepherds entered. We received regular status updates—”

She indicated a digital map of the facility. Second by second, it showed dots moving through the building. Rooms changed color from red to green as they were cleared. Some turned to bright green as they became base camps and retreat points for the attacking capes.

“—until around this point. Radio signals became intermittent, then stopped, all in the span of seconds. We made enough progress to attack what we’ve termed the gallery, with the character assassination groupings. Buildings were scattered and to the best of our knowledge the people and groups that were being used to access our media and track us from remote locations were captured or disrupted. We need to make a push, at the very least to establish what happened.”

“Mortari is willing to offer its assistance,” Jeanne said. “I’m going to put this as bluntly as I can. We have assets, resources that took weeks, months, or years to gather together. We are giving you these assets. In another world, we would have liked to keep these in our back pocket until another Scion-level event, should something like that happen. Or if the Kronos Titan were to attack. But we’re not, because we believe this is essential.”

“What resources? More murderous kids?”

The voice came from the lone Case Fifty-Three in the room. Sveta Karelia.

“If you’d stand?” Jeanne asked, looking to another end of the room.

Behind Number Four, four rows of capes stood from their seats. All wore crisp uniform costumes, derived from a singular theme.

“You had more vials,” Sveta said.

“We tracked them down some time ago.”

Sveta shook her head.

She might kill Jeanne, like she did Doctor Mother.