“We could demonstrate the powers,” Engel offered. “You’ve seen most of mine. You know Sveta’s.”

Sveta was holding up her phone to her shoulder. A tiny hand pawed through images, caressing the occasional one.

“And his?” Amy asked. “Theirs?”

“I really hope you know Weld’s, because he was around when you were still in Brockton Bay.”

“I wasn’t exactly hanging out with the Wards.”

“Slician slides. More effective movement in tighter spaces. Egg… hatches.”

“Don’t hatch right now,” Engel said, abruptly.

Sveta’s head turned, the phone moving in Dot’s direction, apparently to hold Dot down.

Egg had cracked, head, most of his torso, and one arm demolished into fragments shell, leaking thick yellow yolk. The thing that bulged out of the encasement looked like something between a combination of a morass of worms with hook-legs and a featherless bird, soaked in yolk. The actual configuration was impossible to make up, as it was all curled up into itself.

The giants stirred, restless. Dripping with afterbirth, turning their gaze toward Egg.

Slowly, with lurches and throbs, the pink-black, yolk-slick mass receded. The eggshell exterior closed around it.

Amy didn’t relax until Egg’s head had fully reformed. He did up some clasps that kept the plastic wrapping around his body, and touched the brushing of canary-yellow hair at the top of his head, fixing it.

“Is that you?” Amy asked.

“Nah. She’s herself. So are her sisters.”

“We brought him because we thought Chris would be interested,” Sveta said. “He was nice enough to cooperate.”

“For cloning?” Amy indicated the giants.

“Hell no,” Sveta said. “He’d like it. It’s the kind of thing that always piqued his interest. It’s incentive to talk, and we really want to talk to him.”

HI

I blinked. The black word had appeared on the video feed.

“He doesn’t want to talk to you,” Amy said.

Around the table, Larue, Eric, Armstrong, and others who were looking in hadn’t remarked or reacted.

Nobody else seemed to have spotted it.

DON’T LOOK ALARMED. ONLY YOU CAN SEE THIS TEXT

I flicked through the images, trying to look nonchalant.

I rotated through once, then stopped on the carful of kids.

YEP. IT’S ME. K.
MISS YOU

I changed from the view of Kenzie, over to Rain and Tristan.

I nodded at the screen.

YOU TOO, HUH?

Again, I nodded a bit.

“What’s up?” Eric asked.

“Golem and Precipice make a nice pairing.”

“Huh.”

He didn’t ask more questions, didn’t elaborate.

WANT TO HELP COORDINATE ON THE D/L?
YOU’LL HAVE TO BE DISCRETE

Discreet, I mentally corrected her.

A bunch of Shin capes, capes from the prison and ones I presumed were originally Shin, had emerged from the building. Rain and Tristan backed off. Amy stopped working. Sveta, Engel, Egg, Weld, and Slician walked off to one side, to get a better view.