“There is a method to my madness,” Marquis said, sounding pleased with himself.

“This method, it involves preaching about team unity, then picking, in order, the murderer who was stabbed with a screwdriver, and the torturer who did the stabbing?”

“Yes. I’ll let you take your pick,” Marquis said. “We should keep it to five or six each, leave some behind to defend.”

Amy looked at Mark, her ‘dad’, though it had been a long time since he’d ever felt like a proper dad. That he was here really helped, if only just for the being there. He cast the occasional sidelong glance at the pair, but didn’t comment, his head down, hat pulled low against the cold flurry. He wore his costume as a sub-layer, with pants, hooded sweatshirt, and coat pulled over it, so it was there but only barely. He looked like a civilian.

“Do you want to join in? Lead a squadron, Flashbang?” Marquis had a way of sounding taunting in the course of casual conversation, especially when it was with Carol or Mark. Amy almost said something.

“No. I’ll stay by Amy’s side,” Mark said.

“Perfect. That simplifies things,” Marquis said.

They continued making their way through the snowstorm. In the distance, Amy could see the throughway, the wide-laned, raised road that cut straight through the center of the capital. It was meant for heavy trucks and public transportation, but with the influx of refugees, it was being used to move everyone into Shin. It was dark out, still the early hours of morning before sunrise, and some of those people had been on the road when it had last been daylight. Shin didn’t use a lot of gasoline, and had only really started producing and refining it for Gimel at Goddess’s behest, as part of deals struck before Gold Morning. Cauldron, Chris had said.

People milled around the stalled traffic on that raised throughway that took cars over three-story buildings and hills. Those people were Shin service workers with shovels and brooms, weaving between cars to get snow off of the roadway. With the platform being raised, lacking railings or dividers between the edge and the city below, it produced a constant plume of white. A slash of the dull red of taillights captured by the thick snowfall, plumes of white turned dark gray by darkness.

“A slash of human misery and desperation,” Marquis said. Amy jumped a bit, realizing he was beside her. “White snow flowing down and out like pus from the wound. All of it surrounded by warning, alarming red, like blood.”

“Poetic,” she said, “uncomfortable.”

“Always,” Marquis answered, smiling. His long brown hair had collected enough wet snow to make a snowball. Her own hair probably had too, she realized. They had the same hair, especially now that he had gone into exhaustive depth about how she should manage her hair so it wouldn’t be a mass of dull brown frizz.