Tristan could take on this tone, very much his ‘butting heads’ mode, where he got argumentative and stubborn. I knew Tristan had issues with it, and Ashley had seen it as more of a point against Tristan when pushing to be team leader. I’d have been lying if I said I hadn’t run into it as a frustration more than a few times.

Here? Now? I didn’t mind. It forced me to make sense of things.

“Or, last option, they were evacuated between the first wave attack and the second wave attack, but there was still a reason for the evacuation.”

“It’s option one,” Imp said.

Okay, not a Tristan rebuttal.

“The evacuation?” Precipice asked.

“Those two got so close to right, but you’re all missing the obvious. Teacher’s an asshole.”

“And?”

“And evacuation into an incoming enemy force is the point. Yes, he risks losing assets, but think of how much it slows our side down to have a constant filing of innocent personnel coming through every hallway, every room, potentially mixed in with armed security forces and people with powers.”

I could imagine it.

Getting a sense of how that initial attack had gone.

“What’s the chance, you think?” I asked Imp. “Tattletale said you’ve fought him before. You know him.”

“I’m touched. One hundred percent, this is what he did.”

I winced inwardly at the ‘one hundred percent’. Tattletale had never been one to give any guarantees, and hearing one from Imp made me suspicious.

But I went with it. “They’re still evacuated. He didn’t pull them back to resume normal operations. Either he was anticipating the second attack, or the first wave is still mounting their attack elsewhere. We should move on, see if we can’t catch up to the other group.”

“I can seal off this section,” Capricorn said. “Does mean we’re cutting off our retreat.”

“We have ways of getting through barriers. Precipice, Swansong, Caryatid,” I said, motioning for others to come.

He began drawing motes around the door. The squads began gathering. People who had hung back moved forward, like Caryatid and our newbie Mortari capes. Withdrawal was perched on his stilt-like limbs, syringe-gun at his back filled with a neon yellow liquid. Heartbroken who had scattered drew closer to Imp, and I could overhear her asking Roman and Juliette about the count. Roman was ahead by two, apparently. Breakthrough gathered closer to me.

“It could be a trap,” Swansong said, once she was close enough. “On a lot of levels.”

“Yeah. There aren’t any great ways to handle that, though. We have a lot of powers, we watch our backs and stay aware of any greater machinations,” I told her. “We cross our fingers that we have the powers to problem solve our way through whatever he slings at us.”

“Samuel!” Imp raised her voice. “Regroup!”