Scenes of the city in winter painted many of the crystals, growing fainter for those scenes appearing on crystals further from the tear in reality. I watched as they worked, and I saw as they reached out to touch crystals as certain images came up, which seemed to highlight related images on other crystals. Through a relay, they selected certain things, bringing up selections a few feet away, which the next person chose from, until they were affecting what was being managed on crystal faces well away from the aperture.

Others were setting up tech, with monitors showing data that was way too far away to make out. But those monitors were plugged into crystals around the edges.

I watched as crystals rearranged near the portal, and cracks widened.

A chasm separated us from them. Ability and capacity to understand and work in this system separated us further. If we wanted to change anything from the inside, we’d need a system at least as good at that.

We had no powers and we were up against fifty thralls in very much the same boat. If knowing how to function in this world offered us any advantage, then it offered their side a hundred times the same advantage, because it was pretty clear Teacher had granted them some natural ability and awareness.

Frustration seized me, and it came with a panicky feeling that I was not expecting. Not like that, not like this. I was used to danger, used to that fight-or-flight drive. I could fly, and I was pretty good at using it to deliver the fight part of things.

But this—it didn’t come from facing down a cape with an unknown power. It didn’t come from memories of Crawler and acid, or the idea of Amy coming when I didn’t expect her. Those were people, they were things I could stand against.

The panicky feeling delivered a sensation of being paralyzed, of not just being unable to breathe, but being unwilling to.

Paralysis wasn’t a stranger to me. I had to remind myself of that. Suffocating, too. Had to find my way to the right line of thinking. Thinking of flying so high that the air was thinner. Tricking my brain to think of coming down from that high place. Easier if I thought of this blackness as the night sky.

I resumed breathing, resumed moving, turning my head away from that situation while I processed. Why? Another power? Were they doing something?

I hadn’t seen a flash from them. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Rain’s power and it wasn’t Darlene, who was the most active of all of us.

Just me. Wholly internal. The light flickered beneath me and darted off to the distance, in a near-continuous stream. We were fortunate that the group over there wasn’t in a position to see, as the lip of the canyon rose up and blocked their view.