“Alright. I’ll look into that. Let me continue, I do want to wrap this up. You reached out to command your team in an egregious breach of our rules, we did look at the contents of those messages, and they were more or less in line with what we would have found acceptable. Telling Sveta Karelia to stand down, de-escalating situations, and providing some guidance when the Red Queen went berserk. That was a massive de-escalation, when we had reason to believe Shin wanted a fight.”

“I still need to ensure she has a therapist to talk to.”

“After. We’ll work something out. The Wardens will help you.”

“Because when I tried, a member of the Wardens broke my phone and got aggressive.”

“I’m aware. We will handle that separately. Trust me, Victoria. Please.”

I’m finding trust hard to come by, I thought. My mom with Uncle Neil. My sister. Swansong going and getting herself killed. My dad sticking by Amy without doing anything concrete. Jessica letting me down.

“I’m running out,” I said. “Of trust.”

She gave me a sad smile. Her tone changed, less authoritarian as she wistfully said, “What I wouldn’t give to have had you on my Wards team for that one year, and to see you graduate to the Protectorate alongside Gallant. The past few years have been so unjust.”

I shrugged, swallowing hard. I didn’t want to get into how I’d fantasized about such while in the hospital. “I needed to get knocked down a peg, to course correct. I just… got knocked down all the way, I guess.”

She nodded, then checked her phone for the time. “I’d like to catch up sometime, talk about that sort of thing if you’re open to it. For now… to put it succinctly, I’m worried, the Wardens are worried, but our need for heroes is outweighed by the immediate concerns. There will be repercussions, the Wardens may say no when it comes to access to certain resources or features in coming days. Until you regain our trust. Some of it will sting, but for the time being, we need to deal with the Titans and the city and we’re willing to postpone that sting.”

I nodded.

“We will be looking in more. To keep track, and to ensure you don’t carry on down a worrying road. Not just you, either. Lookout will be sanctioned in other ways. There’s too much concerning activity there.”

I frowned, but I nodded. “As food for thought, though, if you have a thinker that’s clairvoyant and capable of seeing everything within a hundred miles around them, no off switch, you adapt, don’t you? PRT or Warden? You just accept them?”

“Yes. But Lookout makes the decisions to do what she does. There is an off switch.”

“She’s a kid with some struggles who just lost her favorite person less than a week ago. The off switch is really hard for her to flip. You’ve probably seen her file, so you know the history there. Can you let me try to address this?”