“Cool,” Jasper said. “Gilpatrick’s this way. We’ve got a bunch of the old squad around, though a lot of them went on to be captains of their own groups. I even have my own. You remember everyone’s names.”

“Jasper. Jester. You don’t need to ask me questions to, um, ground me. Anymore. It’s good, I think.”

“Cool,” he said.

“Thank you.”

Gilpatrick was sitting, a thermos of coffee next to him. I recognized Camisola. He stood, and extended a hand for me to shake.

A firm, warm hand did a lot to make all of this feel a little less nightmarish.

“Hi,” I said, glad my voice sounded normal. “Good to see you, Gil.”

“You all managing okay?” he asked, quiet.

I hadn’t once been able to answer that question in all the time I’d spent with him.

I looked at him, and then at others. The Patrol wasn’t breaking down. They weren’t freaking. They looked a bit miserable, but… it didn’t feel like it felt elsewhere. With my team, and the kids distracting themselves. I knew the Patrol wasn’t on the front lines, but…

“How the hell are you guys managing?” I asked.

Gil glanced at Jester, then at Camisola.

“Guess that’s answer enough,” he said.

Which was fucking unfair of him, when he didn’t end up answering my question.

Radiation 18.8

Crystal landed, startling others on the street. Trying to startle me. She had a small smile on her face, and a sheen of sweat on her skin. Her top was sleeveless, hugging her body, and she wore tight-fit pants with gill-like slits in the sides, each slit framed with a slash of color. It was an aesthetic that hadn’t aged all that well, starting in the early 2000s, when kids’ fashion designers worked costume-like features into clothing, and it carried on as a subculture from there, with its variety of flavors. More in LA or New York than Brockton Bay, though.

Of course, Crystal could get away with it when she was a superhero. More of course, was the fact we couldn’t exactly be picky. The world had just ended, after all.

“Hug?” she offered.

“Sorry,” I said, feeling like I was too quiet.

“Sure,” she said.

Conversation died, just like that. I regretted saying no and I knew I would have regretted saying yes. There had been a day, once upon a time, when I hadn’t had maybes in my vocabulary. It hadn’t been a question of this or that, or ‘should I do X or should I do Y’?

“Good flight?” I asked.

“Great flight,” she said. “I flew over a restaurant, and wow, could I smell what they were cooking. Any other day, I would have stopped there, but I thought maybe you hadn’t eaten.”

“I ate.”

“Shoot,” she said, snapping her fingers.