“He’s here,” Kenzie piped up, in a little announcement that made Bullet Time give her a curious look. “He brought, uh, what’s her name? She went by Kid Cassandra while doing contract work, the Heartbroken said Tattletale coined the name to annoy her. Then she wanted to change it because she’s barely a kid anymore.”

“I don’t think she confirmed a name change,” Bullet Time said.

“Names are hard,” Kenzie said. “I’ve been through, like, five.”

“Guys,” I said. “I kind of want to check in on that. Do you mind? Is this in a secret holding area or something, Kenz?”

“No. Just an office,” Kenzie said.

“We’ll come,” Sveta said, her voice firm.

“Good talking to you, Precipice,” Bullet Time said. “Show me your stuff later. No tinkering, though. I’ve learned my lesson after giving a tinker carte blanche to ramble at me.”

“Sure,” Rain said, smiling.

“You made a friend,” Tristan said, as soon as we were out of the dining hall. “And you weren’t just talking business, were you?”

“We were talking about Nieves before,” Rain said. “That led into talking about hobbies. He machines his own guns, no tinkering, I do some metalwork, knifemaking, trapmaking, except I barely have time these days…”

“A chronic problem,” Tristan said. He had less time than any of us, because he was giving his brother his time to speed up the healing process.

“Yeah,” Rain said. “That led into talking about my workshop, and the view from my workshop, swimming in ice cold lakes—”

“Macho stuff,” Tristan teased.

“I—maybe. We were sharing stories but it didn’t feel like one-upping one another. It was nice. He’s very different from me. I was rural, he grew up in one of the areas that got designated H.O.S.V., like Brockton Bay almost was, after Leviathan. Is that right?”

“Yeah, it’s right,” I said. “Mayor went to testify about it, said not to, that things were recoverable. If he’d said the opposite, maybe the city would have had all power and water shut off, to encourage evacuation.”

“He grew up in a place where they did that,” Rain said. “Except his family was among the people who stayed. He said he shot someone before he was Kenzie’s age.”

“I shot someone before I was my age,” Kenzie said.

“Flash gun doesn’t count.”

The conversation continued, and I wondered at how we were glossing over the reality. As of right now, we were making small talk and letting Rain geek out over making a friend, when it wasn’t something he did a lot, and we were ignoring that the topic of H.O.S.V. was very close to what we were collectively doing in this moment.

Naphtha was striding down the hallway, coming in our direction. He stopped us. “Changers?”

“No changers in our team,” Tristan said. “Why?”