“She was protective of her work in a curtained-off section of her lab. She wouldn’t let me approach, and my first thought was that we had people in more distant camps who had struck out on their own. Some parahumans, one couple, a jolly fellow who fancied himself a survivalist and who was taking an optimistic view of the situation. He would stop in every day or two, and he hadn’t stopped in for two days. We sent out people to get in touch with him after Valkyrie’s arrival, and they couldn’t find his camp.”

“Worrying,” I echoed the sentiment in her words.

“Terrifying. Crushing. Riley adopted her ‘Bonesaw’ persona, acting younger than she appeared—and with the surgeries she subjected herself to, she’ll never appear older than twelve. Laughing off my questions, being furtive.”

Another superhero team was running down the hall, far below us.

Jessica didn’t elaborate, didn’t explain the whole business.

For a moment, I was terrified that was it. I was left to draw the worst conclusion.

“She was my responsibility. I can say what I might say about workload, stress, the inherent difficulties of that situation, but I could have and should have kept more of an eye on her. The burden of guilt was on me more than it was on one very ill and traumatized young woman in a new and difficult situation.”

“That’s not being fair to yourself.”

“Maybe not,” Jessica said. “But that was what I felt in that moment. In working with people with criminal inclinations, part of my job is to protect society, and working with five people with powers, only two a real and present concern, I’d failed to protect a tiny, primitive microcosm of society. I got angry. Desperate. I tried to make her show me. And somewhere in the midst of it, she lashed out, I grabbed her, or the other way around.”

“Are you okay?”

“She dug her fingers into my arm,” Jessica touched her sleeve. “And used contacts on her nails to manipulate my nerves, trying to make my arm turn against me. Tensed muscles until they tore from bone. I still don’t have the strength I did, I still have constant pain, and that may be a reminder of my lowest moment, furthest from the person I wanted to be.”

I had a half-dozen questions I wanted to ask, but there was no perfect order.

“Was it? Had she done something?” I asked.

Jessica shook her head. “Everyone accounted for. Everyone checked over. Nothing questionable. If I had to guess, she was protective of her work because it was all she had to show for the prior timeframe and as you say, it was fragile. I’ve gone over that conversation a thousand times in my head, since, and I think she might have misread my tone, or misread my impatience as my wanting her to leave it behind.”