I folded my arms. I looked down at Chris, and I saw that he was half-asleep.

He saw me looking, and he said, “The world was invaded by aliens. People don’t know it, we don’t like to think about it, but they’re here, they’re a part of things. Getting along with the most accessible of them makes sense.”

I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t sure how to articulate it. My own agent had a hand in my life. It was the wretch, the sapience behind the forcefield. I had seen what Amy’s had done to her.

Thinking too hard about it stirred up countless ugly feelings, and those feelings choked out and clouded the words I wanted to articulate.

“Let’s leave them be,” Rain said. “Let’s assume we’re not going to have our second exercise, and walk me through how things went.”

“Alright,” Tristan said.

As the discussion continued, I didn’t take my eyes off the pair in the distance.

Glare 3.4

Kenzie sprinted toward the wall, and took a flying kick at it. The wall broke, split at a diagonal, the upper half sliding down the split until the corner stabbed the ground. Kenzie backed up swiftly before the section of wall toppled and fell to the ground.

“I’m clearly the strongest member of the team,” she said.

“You’re the lamest,” Chris said.

“Can I try it again?” Kenzie asked, ignoring Chris. “Rain?”

“Be careful,” Sveta said.

“I will. I want to test stuff. Can I try it again?”

Rain stood from the rock he was sitting on, and held one hand out to the side. The silver-white blade he created had a slight crescent shape to it. He swung his arm and threw it, for lack of a better word. It traced an arc, more a boomerang in flight than an arrow or thrown weapon, and cut deep into the wall that Tristan had left as a permanent fixture. A silver-white line was left along the length of the wall.

Kenzie raised her flash gun, and she shot the wall. Nothing happened.

She approached the wall, and she had her eyehook snake out from where it was attached to her belt, pincers open, slapping against the wall. She pushed with the eyehook.

“Hurry,” Rain said.

Kenzie continued using the eyehook to push, to no avail. She moved the hook around to the wall’s edge, grabbed the length of the eyehook, and pulled, adding her strength to the mechanical arm’s.

Stone slid easily against stone, and the wall was pulled down, cleanly cut where the silver line had been drawn.

“I could do this all day,” Kenzie said.

“It’s not a bad power,” I said.

“I never said it was bad,” Rain said. He sat back down. “It’s mediocre. On certain days, it’s a little better.”

“Better how? Size, speed, effectiveness, number you can throw?”