It shook more concrete free of the rebar. Damsel had to step behind a damaged wall, and still got plaster dust on her when the concrete punched through one portion of it.

“Sveta, Rain, focus more on distraction,” I said.

“Okay. Harry, harass?” Rain asked.

“Just… bait it to attack and move. Circle around.”

Cradle, off to one side, was watching everything. He didn’t move, didn’t try anything.

Is this thing like Cradle? Lurking in the background, before stepping in to do some horrific violence?

“Damsel,” I said.

“Don’t you dare give me orders,” she snapped. Her claw cut light furrows into the ruined wall it was still touching.

“Tattletale, then?” I asked. “Can you help Love Lost and Colt with the kids and Byron?”

Tattletale had stood but hadn’t moved from her starting position in her room, which was the furthest from the monster. Her dream was furthest removed from the mall, too. Her area, despite being so far back, was bright like a room with a window open and the sun shining directly in, with a stretch of plush white carpet and a white wall cutting it almost in half. Wall and carpet were stained with large blotches of bodily fluids.

“You were going to ask Damsel to try to hurt it,” Tattletale said.

“Yeah,” I said.

She reached to her hip and drew a handgun. She still wore an expression like she hadn’t quite left the dream behind. Sad, a little lost, not looking at us or the many-handed thing. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Ah. Okay.”

“How?” Rain asked. “How’d you bring the gun?”

“Every day since I started working for Coil, back in Brockton Bay. Even before Leviathan, I had it with me.”

“She shot me with it once,” I remarked.

“If I’d known you’d be dragging me into this, I would have shot you with it twice. I thought the worst thing I’d have to deal with was maybe consoling your tinker if none of you came back. No, I get dragged into this.”

“Power didn’t predict this?”

“My power didn’t,” she said, her voice tense. “That niggling little voice in the back of my head did, but I ignored it.”

I looked back at her, studying her. Costume, gun, all was cohesive, complete. Tristan didn’t have his helmet, Rain had a hooded jacket on with no mask, no costume elements except for the solid pads along his jacket sleeves which the mechanical arms he built could normally be mounted on.

Love Lost was in costume, Colt in civilian clothes, still with that massive mane of dirty-blonde hair that frizzed and puffed out to either side. Kenzie wore a black pinafore dress over a t-shirt, but she had sneakers, Chicken Little and Candy wore civilian clothes. Darlene, I noted, had a nightdress on, a bit old fashioned.