“It’s a gift,” Kenzie said, while she busied herself with her phone. “For giving us a ride. It gives you a cool effect, but probably only for thirty minutes. Use it to look intimidating and cool or if you have an event and want to look cool for the cameras or some junk like that. It was supposed to be for a friend, but I swapped out the aesthetic tiles and mapped in molten glass and regular fractal glass patterns. Just press the button when you want to use it—not here! Not here, or you’ll give us away.”

“Uh, okay. Thank you.”

“And use it before the next year is up. Then dispose of it somewhere far from any people, or deplete its battery. Just to be sure nobody gets hurt.”

“A-alright. Thank you.”

“Here,” I said. I had my wallet in my jacket pocket. “Money for gas, and for the windshield, while we’re at it.”

I forked over the bills. Etna handed me back a twenty-five New Dollar bill, waving it off as too much.

Kenzie got Rain to pull out his phone, because he’d apparently let her tinker with it, then had it display a feed from an external camera outside the forest headquarters. I could see us—or the general area where we were, though we were too small and muted to be easily made out.

Her own phone showed the interior. The villains were settling in. A few were working on first aid.

She motioned for me to get my phone out, then positioned herself so she wasn’t looking at any of the phones, instead staring out toward the cabin.

My phone flickered, then showed an image similar to the interior shot. All villains were highlighted in yellow, their names above their heads, while the rest of the place was there in shades of blue. X-ray vision.

“I’m going to point out again that you’ve got way too much tech packed into your eyes, Lookout,” Precipice said.

“I used the concepts from the contact pads you showed me, to have eyeballs outside the head, remember?”

“I remember.”

“And then I figured, why not just have eyeballs inside my head like a normal person? Phase them in, each one on a different channel, with the contact pads going straight on or near the brain? Fake optical nerves, minimum connection issue. Like how you talked about your stuff working better if you planted the pads nearer to the spine or the median nerves of the arms.”

“I have about six different problems with that,” Rain said, his voice low. “Seven, now that I think about it. How hot are you running?”

I put my hand on her forehead. “I’m not feeling anything.”

“I’m not running any side routines on my brain,” Kenzie said, sounding exasperated. “Look, first of all, we have a job. If I zoom in, focusing in on the car… the trunk is still in there.”