Narwhal stepped away, because two people had drawn close in the last minute, hovering and waiting for her to be free. She had barely finished talking when she was turning away, addressing the next thing.

And I could kind of breathe.

This fucking shoebox in concrete space. Fuck. I was just glad Vista had come out of it okay. By all reports, Narwhal was pretty cool in downtime, but in crisis mode, she was as unyielding as her forcefields. That didn’t mean she was unfair. She’d dress down Vista in public, and she’d remember something like this for weeks or months, like she’d remembered casual chatter with Capricorn back at the Fallen raid, but I didn’t think she was the type to hear something like what my mom had said and not take it into account, out of spite or anything.

I looked over at the monsters.

The minions of the Nursery-like monster were spreading out a bit. Not aggressively, but finding spots to sit or stand. Around each, in a loose circular radius, there was a faint haze with a dusky rose tint, and the surrounding environment transformed. Where multiple gathered, the transformation was sufficient that things moved beneath that ground. Large masses, like a tongue licking at the inside of a cheek.

“What are the other key monsters?” I asked. “The monitors show two, plus Dauntless. But there’s four markers on the map. Two in Shin.”

Only Jessica and Darnall were close enough to me to answer. People had backed off, and people from the nearest desk were at the table.

We had something approximating privacy, if not four walls surrounding me so onlookers couldn’t glance my way.

Jessica answered me, “One of them is derivative of Bianca. The woman in blue. Her power works through media and enthralls capes. There’s a separate room of strictly non-capes who are monitoring her.”

“And the fourth?”

“We think it’s Christine Mathers. When the creatures appeared, tens of thousands in Cheit reported seeing a tall, thin woman with silver hair and pale skin. These images of the woman aren’t doing anything except standing on the horizon, unmoving.”

“How the hell did she get to Cheit?”

“Teacher. Apparently Christine Mathers visited Earth Cheit as a guest of Teacher for massive festivals and parades. His co-conspirators in government had no idea what they were dealing with. The Wardens are considering discontinuing the sedation of the real Christine Mathers, but as you can imagine, that’s not an easy decision to make.”

“So that’s… Chevalier. Nursery. Goddess. Mathers.”

“All of them people Cryptid was able to sample.”

“Makes sense,” I said, quiet. “He’d pick powers and capes that insulate him against surveillance.”

“He would,” Jessica agreed.

“How… do you feel about that?” I asked.

“I wish I’d done better, not that I’d done nothing at all,” Jessica said.

And what about Bonesaw? What did you do to her?