His eyes were half-lidded. I’d seen him awake and I’d seen him unconscious. He had slept through eighty percent of my visits. Seeing Byron had been my thing on day three of being sick, with me keeping my distance because of the illness.

“Oh hey,” Vista said, her voice pitched to be quiet, so she wouldn’t disturb Byron. “Hi boss.”

“Hi, Vista,” Defiant said, matching her tone.

“Hanging out?” I asked.

“I was up all night with patrols, I came by and stayed for the movie,” she said. True enough, she did have circles under her eyes that had nothing to do with the thick black eyeliner she’d applied.

Kenzie hurried into the room, getting the keyboard.

“We’re trying it?” Rain asked.

“Yeah,” Kenzie said, double checking with Defiant.

She was doing a lot of double checking.

She set the keyboard on the foot of the bed, reconsidered, and had Rain stand up, before placing it on his chair, scooting the chair over.

“You’re not using your power, right?” she asked Vista.

“No, why?”

“Because even if Defiant says there isn’t, I’m worried there’s a teeny, tiny chance this could blow up everything.”

I stopped flying. Rain backed away a step.

She placed her phone over top of the buttonless keyboard, then used it as her console, to activate parts. She slid it over, hit more buttons, slid it over, and hit more.

It came to life, light shining from the seams.

And orange-red motes began to move through the air, diffuse and smaller than what Tristan normally created.

They settled into a general silhouette, and then that silhouette clarified, until we had an ethereal image of Tristan, just a bit fuzzy around the finer details like individual strands of hair, eyelashes, and a thread or two on his clothes.

He overlapped Byron at first, but as he tested his movement, he slipped off to one side and stood away.

He attempted to cross the room, and he hit an invisible wall. He reached out to touch it.

When he spoke, though, his words came out as audio garbage, all the right sounds if those sounds had been into a blender and mixed in with static. He tried again and seemed a bit put out.

“Fine tuning to be done,” Kenzie said. She shut down the box. The motes began to scatter, peeling away and dissolving. “Can we wake up Tristan, see what it’s like for him?”

Rain reached down and jostled Byron’s shoulder, trying to wake him. It didn’t work. He sounded discouraged more than upset as he said, “I’ll get a nurse.”

Had he sounded very upset, I might have panicked. As it was, I was anxious and uncomfortable with so much about this. Kenzie literally wrung her hands.

Rain stepped out of the room.