I looked around to spot the other, and it wasn’t hard. Bigger than Titan Eve, Titan Oberon was a hulk of a figure, bent, muscular, and always poised. Off to our east or southeast, staring off over the water. He clenched the fist I could see, relaxed it. Moved his arm. Restless, he paced a bit.

We were caught between the two.

Others were fighting for their lives. Titan Skadi was in the midst of an attack this very moment, because that was what she did. Titan Fortuna was plotting, with the Simurgh gravitating toward her. Hunter, a girl I’d tried to help, was now Titan Arachne.

I wondered if my sister even felt bad about it, or if she’d convinced herself she wasn’t in the wrong.

It made me feel sad even to think about it, and that sadness reminded me of the fire, and how it hadn’t been sad. Uncomfortable in places, yes, but… not sad.

I’m going to have to kill you, I thought, looking between the Titans. Pull out any and all stops.

I’d asked for guns. That was my requisition from the Patrol, my long-shot ask, that I wasn’t positive they’d be able to fulfill. Guns. Not handguns, not rifles, not assault rifles. The kind of guns that got mounted on trucks. That needed powers to be carried.

You hate guns, Victoria, I found myself thinking. You hate what they represent. Symbols of the breach in the compact between capes and civilians.

My breath fogged in the air.

Why did it feel like every step forward cost me something or forced me to compromise in some respect? Had my starting point been so awful, that I had to wade through this mire to get to better?

Or was it a sign we were on the wrong track? Because this wasn’t our way to victory, or because we weren’t supposed to win this time?

The ideas sat heavy with me as I dropped out of the sky, landing on frozen dirt, then made my way back to the fire, where I tried to make my peace with them.

Radiation 18.3

“Here, think I got it,” Kenzie said. She pulled a clip off her belt, which I realized was a repurposed hairpin. She stuck it in the snow, and let the three-dimensional map expand around it. The corner of the image flickered where it was closer to the fire.

A zoomed-out, three-dimensional view of the Fallen compound. Two feet across.

“You’re missing some craters down here,” I pointed down near the southeastern entrance to the compound.

“Geez,” Rain said. “I lived here, and I’m struggling to make heads or tails of it.”

“You’re looking at it upside-down,” Kenzie said. She moved her hand and rotated it. “It’s not a very good map, either.”