Traitor, I thought, with no venom to the thought.

“But it isn’t easier. It wears on you, you have to worry about being caught. People will like you from a distance because you’re cool, you’re dark, you’re edgy. Then they hate you to your face, even if they don’t talk about it because they’re afraid. I went hero and… they hate us anyway?”

“Might be because so many people chose being a villain first, because they thought it’d be easier and more fun, even if it meant stepping on the civilians along the way,” I said.

“Oof,” Etna grunted. She sounded genuinely wounded as she said, “That’s fair.”

“It’s fair but a little mean of Antares to say,” Sveta said, poking me. “She’s in a mood.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I really do think it’s great you joined the side of the heroes, and I think the costume looks cool.”

“Thank you.”

“That’s not just me saying it because Tress is jabbing at me. I don’t have the energy to be fake.”

Etna made an amused sound, which had the benefit of not being another conversation aborter. At the same time, Sveta stopped poking me.

“Turn right,” Kenzie said. “Then head pretty much straight until we’re out of the city.”

As Etna turned right, I let my head go left, resting it against the window. I partially closed my eyes, tuning almost everything out.

The buildings to our left grew thinner, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in a vehicle to watch the city go by, that hadn’t been me with the Patrol. Jasper, heading to the community center.

As the buildings got thinner and further between, I could see past them to the city proper. I could make out the slice of the highest density portals all mixed in together, like a pane of glass that had broken, each segment a different piece of sky, many of them brighter than the sky we had here. The wind that came through seemed to repel clouds and storm, as they emanated high-pressure air.

Was that going to be the entire city? How much of the rest of our world would follow it?

I didn’t sleep, but I wasn’t wholly awake either. Kenzie used the windshield to start talking about glass and lenses with Etna, and Etna didn’t seem to know how to disengage from a conversation with a tinker who was deep into her subject material. Kenzie needed the distraction and we’d exhausted our collective conversation starters with Etna inadvertently shooting every single one of them down, so I didn’t expend the energy to steer Kenzie away.

My thoughts turned to the upcoming conversation, ways to handle it, and from there they spun off in a bunch of different directions.