My family wasn’t far from them.

My family—

My mom. Crystal. My dad was there, but he was working his way around the edges of the crowd, toward a side hallway. Marquis was with him, and where Marquis was…

Sure enough. Amy. Being escorted out and away. I saw my dad look back at me, then back toward my mom.

I did too. I saw Aunt Sarah there. Beside her, a face I’d seen in photographs for the bulk of my life. Uncle Mike. Lightstar. Looking less than happy for what I could guess were about ten different reasons.

That was where we were at, then.

Villains joined the crowd, capes were out of retirement. The major teams of Advance Guard, Foresight, and the Shepherds were here, plus or minus a handful of core members, but plus the reserve troops, their B-teams and reserve lines, the capes they’d been using to manage whole tracts of territory with one underlying ethos.

We’d had all of this, we’d had more, really, and we couldn’t stop this from happening.

Now we were in a worse place. Out in the cold, driven by desperation.

And we had to do better.

Radiation 18.2

Some of the capes in the midst of this briefing were as scared as they’d ever been. Considering that a majority of capes had been through Gold Morning, that said a lot. But they stood tall, they stuck near friends, they wore their costumes and those costumes, in many cases, afforded a kind of courage.

Legend was the best person to start the briefing. He was known to everyone, and he was known to everyone in a clear-cut way. It was a small image problem the Wardens had, that capes like Chevalier and Valkyrie were in two of the top three spots in the organization, yet if the average person was asked what they did, powerwise or in daily responsibilities, there would be some headscratching and debate. It made them feel out of reach.

Legend was a strange, inverse case. The kind of people who understood Chevalier’s ability to combine multiple items and keep the best of each, or Valkyrie’s ability to tap the powers of those who had died near her… also understood that Legend had done some sketchy stuff in his tenure with the PRT. He’d left, and he’d left for good reasons.

Regardless of whether a person in the crowd was in that camp or not, Legend was reassuring. He knew his shit and nobody who could count without using their fingers would deny that. He’d been through more city and nation-shattering events than some capes had been in regular fights. If any of them knew about the clandestine conspiracies he had played his parts in, they had to accept that he knew deeper, more secret shit too, and that only meant he had more information when he laid out the facts.