I stepped into the bathroom for a break, because I hadn’t had the chance during the road trips, then decided to run the shower. There was a chance I wouldn’t get the opportunity, and I needed my head as fresh as I could get it.

And it gave me a chance to breathe, without looking weak or anything in front of the team. Clear the sinuses, clear the mind.

I wanted to help Kenzie and I had no idea what to do, except to give her support.

Once I was done with the shower, I toweled off and pulled on the same clothes as before. Clammy.

“It’s a plain of red crystal,” Damsel said. She’d apparently been prodded to give an explanation. “Except the crystal is alive. The cracks are veins and the shifts in the landscape that look like tricks of the eye aren’t. If the mountain suddenly looks like a valley, it is one.”

“How often do you see it?” I asked.

“In the first year after Gold Morning? Twice. Your Swansong saw it three times. More lately. It’s picked up. I saw it five times in the last week.”

“I’m feeling a bit intimidated,” Rain said.

“You should. What we have here in this world is the tip of the iceberg. What they have there is the rest of your iceberg,” Damsel told him.

Kenzie was scanning Darlene and Chicken Little with a drone the size of a football, while the pair held hands. She aimed the drone at a cube the size of a microwave and blipped data to it like she was shooting a bullet from a gun. The cube changed color.

“Where to?” Rain asked.

Kenzie looked, and a projected dotted line marked the boundaries for the cube.

“Got it,” he said.

“We can try bringing others in,” Kenzie said, looking over the red cube with the scanned data from Syndicate. “I think I can lasso people with this, transmit sensation and awareness. It probably knocks us out.”

“I’d be careful,” Rain said. “Remember what I said about Snaggletooth? Cradle hired someone to invade the dreamspace and try to screw with the rotation. They got mauled.”

Chicken Little stopped spinning around in Kenzie’s computer chair, birds moving from his shoulders to various perches nearby. “Mauled as in…?”

“Mauled. Taken to pieces, uh, the details are graphic.”

“I hang with Imp. I can handle graphic,” Chicken Little said.

“Chunky bits were still dripping and settling into puddles a good five or ten minutes after it left,” Rain said. “It’s big, scary, and it apparently beat Snaggletooth in something she specializes in. I think I need to go in alone. At least for the test run.”

“Aw,” Kenzie said.

“Yeah, no, seriously. Though I won’t be completely alone. I talked to Cradle, Love Lost, and Colt. They know what we’re trying, they’ll be on their guard. They say they’ll cooperate.”