“Cracking seems to have slowed down,” Larue said.

“Call your people back, Director Armstrong…” Citrine said, still at her seat at the head of the table.

The Mayor motioned toward a screen, that same overhead view from before. Now it showed the damage that spanned three-fifths of the city, which itself more or less spanned everything between New York and Boston and New York and New Brockton Bay. Shadows from the dust that had reached the sky above the city cast it in a noticeably darker tint, as though it were night.

“…the only things that are salvageable here are your heroes’ lives.”

Radiation 18.1

We’re coming back. I read the message on the phone screen. Kenzie’s. Tattletale’s trying to convince them it’s safe to open a portal. Powers are safe to use again.

I nodded, trying to keep my focus on the screen. Tensions in the situation room had transformed. For people like Eric, something they had maybe thought wasn’t going to happen had happened, and they were dealing with loss and horror. For me, who had known and already felt some of that loss and horror, it was frustration and loss. That was a bad combination that would lead to me yelling at him, in the same unproductive, obstructive way.

By the cameras, everyone was on their way back. Pulling away from the city, gathering the troops. There weren’t many wounded, but that was because the problems we were dealing with now were threats who tended to simply kill the ones they were in a position to hurt. The map with the teams marked out with bubbles took center stage on the situation room monitors, now with added labeling. Many had been made transparent, flashing, with timers slowly counting up above them.

Not responding to any attempts at contact for ten minutes now.

From the way they were seeming to confirm those various teams or cross them off, there seemed to be a thinker or long-range communicator attached to the problem, reaching out into that devastated section of the city and either getting a response or finding out the capes hadn’t managed to escape the collapse or the Titan in that area.

Eric stood from the table, closing his laptop. Warily, I watched as he got his things, pulling on his suit jacket. He said something to Armstrong I couldn’t hear, then took his leave, walking past me with an extended look that went head-to-toe and back again. Like he was searching for something.

“Victoria, can I borrow you for a minute?” Armstrong asked.

I nodded, approaching him. He indicated an unused laptop, and I grabbed it.

“To go over your notes. I highlighted parts.”

Getting into the parahuman science stuff. My self-report from the dream excursion, and the situation notes that I’d put in the share folder.