Sveta was, I could see as she looked around, in the company of Engel and Egg. Her fleeting glance in Engel’s direction made the computer buzz and the screen flare with colors that extended beyond the frame of the live video footage. I felt the emotional punch of it, and I was not ready for it.

I scooted back from the table with enough force that I almost fell backward, and I would have flown a bit rather than fall.

“You okay?” Eric asked. I wanted to throw something at him.

“She does that,” Armstrong said. “You get used to it.”

“Here,” Larue told me. He spun his laptop around one hundred and eighty degrees and scooted it over my way. “Take it.”

“The laptop?”

“It’s only a video feed, so I don’t think I’m getting in trouble for giving you acccess. You can control who and what you watch. Lookout gave us the visuals for your team and her kid teammates.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll grab another. It’s fine,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “What if I want to communicate with them?”

“Do it through us,” Eric said.

“Really?” I asked.

“It makes some sense,” Armstrong said. “I wasn’t part of the review, but giving you the ability to exchange messages with them isn’t much different from putting you in command of the team again.”

I made a so-so gesture. “Kind of in command.”

“I know Tristan fancies himself a leader, so I know what you mean. Even so. If they’re concerned, don’t feed those concerns. This will blow over.”

I frowned.

“Okay,” I said.

“Headphones?” Eric asked.

“I have earbuds,” I told him, fishing in my pocket. “Thanks though.”

I plugged in the one bud. Navigating to the right window.

First, I wanted to check everyone was okay.

Kenzie was with her friends, sitting in the center of the back seat, her attention at least partially on a laptop that was placed across her lap. Her legs were crossed, feet up on the seat, hands stabilizing the machine. Her eye darted around, and the camera showed part of her interface, as she highlighted seemingly random words that floated against a backdrop, refocused her vision to look through that assembly of words to the words behind, picked a few characters, then unfocused to pull back two or three more word-clouds to pick out more stuff. The words she chose appeared on the laptop.

“We should finish packing up your headquarters while we’re there,” Tattletale said.

“Can we hold off?” Kenzie asked.

“Are you willing to lose everything you haven’t packed?”

“No,” Darlene said, to Kenzie’s right.

She hit enter with the thumb of the hand that held the laptop’s edge. A box appeared on the screen. Distorted video and audio, loud.

Snuff, driving, cussed. “Turn it down!”

“Sorry! We were listening to music and dancing before we left.” Kenzie held down the volume button for a few seconds, until it was quiet enough that Snuff and Tattletale didn’t look upset anymore.