Another image. More feral than the other Titans, bent over, with a crown of golden hair, a mane running down his back, and hairy arms, which were lengthened to rest on the ground, ending in claws. Its skin was like onyx, muscular and lanky.

“The Nemean Titan. Formerly Victor, a member of the Shepherds. A thinker–stranger with theft of competency, both ambient and focused. Anyone who passes within a certain range of the Titan loses all faculties except their power use. This includes ability to walk or speak. We have reason to believe it becomes permanent if they aren’t able to evacuate in time. When his movements cause the air to ripple, the air carries the effect, and we can assume other things may spread it too.”

Victor. I’d run into him a few times as Glory Girl, but never in a direct confrontation. Twice when he’d been with a group of Empire Eighty-Eight’s people, too many to tackle, gone by the time I’d had a chance to get reinforcements. Once when he’d been alone, after a call had come in for police to check on the head of a digital startup who wasn’t returning calls or showing up to work. The police had called for some backup and I’d been on patrol, so I’d accepted. It had been Victor, breaking into a man’s home to steal his computer know-how, spending more than twenty-four hours doing it, so as to leave the man with nothing. Victor had escaped out the back as the cops banged on the door, and on foot he’d been adroit enough to evade my chase from the air, with only a few stumbles when I’d used my fear.

The court case had been something I wasn’t involved in, outside of a short few questions and the usual defense’s suggestions of unreasonable force… which hadn’t really applied when I hadn’t even been able to catch Victor in the first place. After that, it had been something I heard about every couple of months, until it came out that the whole thing was an attempt by the startup guy to bail on his own project and claim the compensation and disability insurance, with Victor as his paid hire.