“I want to call in my brownie points. Every time I’ve been good or helped or put a smile on your faces, or did what I was told, or made a machine to help Tristan talk while deep in his brother, or held back or shut up or any of that, if I got any points at all I want to spend them now and I want to go.”

“Codenames,” I told her. “Golem’s trusted, but…”

I saw her put the brakes on, which was really my point. We were being really sloppy, even with Rain’s introducing of us to Bullet Time, and Golem was trusted, but I was tired and the shitty thing was that when I was sick and tired, I became more like my mom. Rules and petty manipulations.

Her having to stop to rein herself in and check her words meant she wasn’t rambling or getting worked up.

She visibly slowed herself down, but she looked anxious.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” I told her. “We’re being pretty loose with those rules. That was a kneejerk thing from me.”

“Okay,” she said.

Tristan made it back, and handed Kenzie a glass of water, which she downed. He took a paper towel he’d wet and folded, and pressed it against her forehead while her head was tipped back to drink the water. She lowered the cup from her mouth but kept her head back, eyes closed. She sighed, full-body.

“I want to go,” she said.

“Really? You seemed a bit wishy-washy about it,” Rain said.

Kenzie’s eyes opened, and she moved her head fast enough she nearly lost the paper towel compress, catching it with one hand. All energy, almost alarmed at being misinterpreted.

“I was kidding,” he said.

“You want to do this?” Golem asked.

“Possibly,” I said. I looked at the others. “Probably. Unless we get an objection as strong as Kenzie’s desire to go for it.”

“Let me run it by people,” Golem told us. “Decide in the meantime, and don’t leave so fast you don’t tell us something about Contessa.”

“Deal. Thank you,” Tristan said.

“The other group of heroes are five minutes away,” Kenzie said, as she brought up an overhead map of the city. “We’ll be six minutes behind them.”

“If we go,” I said. “Look, I don’t want to be paranoid, I know we technically met Contessa’s predicted outcome of having two members of Breakthrough out of action for the long term, but I’m not positive, I’m worried. Nothing says we were out of danger the moment Teacher ran. I know this is a touchy subject so soon after Swansong—”

Kenzie drew her shoulders in together a fraction. I put my hand on one of those shoulders.

“—but one of us could still die as a direct consequence of the events we set in motion during the fight.”