Tattletale shook her head. “The connections we know about were set up outside of this space. To create a bridge over there like we have here, we would probably need Darlene to wake up, find Teacher, and use her power on him.”

“Other ideas, then,” Tristan said. “There has to be a way.”

“Can we hack it?” Rain asked. “Form a connection from within? If we can use crystals to access functions, isn’t it possible to get one of these areas or things to form a bridge?”

“Could,” Tattletale said. “Or it could be a safety measure that says sections can’t be bridged without the big golden guy handling it.”

“Put a pin in that. Other options,” Tristan said. “You motioned toward the lights. Teacher?”

“If it’s about connections, and finding a bridge, we need to figure out a place to cross over that’s reaching out outwardly,” I said. Focusing on the abstract theorizing helped. “My power has an aura. I could see that radiating out and connecting to others.”

“But it’s not on, and they aren’t nearby,” Tattletale said. “Love Lost, Colt, and Rain are out, we’ve been to their… I dunno, their centers of power, the key processing units that handle their powers, as those powers have currently manifested? Yes?”

“Yes,” Rain said, looking back.

“Yeah,” Colt said.

“Capricorn twins are structural, no reaching out there. Sveta reaches out but not in the sense we want, with continuous, lasting connections to other parahumans and their power sources. Chicken Little… same idea, I don’t think it bridges any gap between him and another parahuman. Lookout would bridge to her tech. Darlene we’ve seen. Damsel’s focused on destruction. From a pure, shard-focused perspective, that leaves… me?”

“Does it though?” I asked. “I know you’ve given up some details, but I don’t know specifically what you do.”

“I get information, I pick up extra info, abstractly related. I can aim it, both at people and at certain topics I want to fill in. It’s constant and ongoing, which is what we want.”

“I’m worried that isn’t a strong enough connection. I’d rather pick Decadent,” I said, indicating Candy. “You’ve used your power on capes? You oversaturate them with happiness and hallucinated sensory inputs, but there’s a lasting suppression effect, right?”

“Yeah. I’ve used it on family, non-family,” Candy answered. She clasped her hands together, looking less secure than I’d seen her in a long while. “Bunch of people. Bunch of capes.”

“Has your power hit them… in the powers? Taken away their joy of—”

“Of being artificially beautiful, yeah. Of running, for one super fast guy. Um—”

“You hit that Gammarod dork,” Darlene said. “Who got hard-ons while irradiating people and giving them probable cancer.”

“What.” Chicken Little said.

“—And that other one Papa worked with sometimes,” Darlene went on.

“I barely remember that one,” Candy said.