“They barely see us, because they’re so caught up in their own agendas. They are in conflict, though. If we have an advantage, it’s that we’re more or less unified.”

“Some of us are more aggressive,” Natalie said. “Others are focused on society and how society approaches them, or protecting the world from them. I’m sure a few are trying to profit.”

“But we’re united in the fact we want them gone. If that’s even possible.”

“People seemed to think we got close with Oberon,” she observed. “I wouldn’t lose hope. It’s a difference from your situation and ours. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, if you can get past the train.”

I frowned.

Mulling it over for a minute, watching Kenzie use tongs to hold a bit of metal to the flame that jetted out around the monitor, I ultimately decided to confess, “Tattletale doesn’t think there’s necessarily a light at the end of the tunnel. Only more trains. This is our reality now, unless we can change things at their core.”

Natalie took that in, surprised at first, forehead creasing in worry above the large, round frames of her glasses. Then she nodded. Taking it as fact.

“There might still be a solution,” she said. “A magic bullet… and shooting every time one pops up.”

“Getting to the source of it all,” I said. “If there is one. The problem is it takes resources we don’t have. We got… I don’t even know, seventy-five percent of the way with Oberon and Skadi, with our teams fresh, every hero alive and committed, and that last twenty-five percent would have left us unable to answer the next Titan. Then you add in that we need to stall them and hold them at bay to keep them from connecting up and we potentially need to dive into the cracks, and we need to deal with our own shit.”

“I wish I had an answer to that,” Natalie said. “Except maybe it’s not in Breakthrough’s capacity to do it. I’m doing what I can, I’ll watch Kenzie and run any errands, pass on messages, be your sounding board, whatever I can do. I’m trusting that people more capable than I am can tackle it. If it’s not Breakthrough, and that’s very possible, maybe it’s Valkyrie, or Bonesaw, or someone else with power and the ability to change things on a major scale.”

My sister.

I frowned, looking away.

The fighting wasn’t going well. Kenzie was coding, with lines connecting blocks of code across what looked like three dimensions and six different monitors. The monitors on her far left and far right showed the encounter against Titan Ophion. Mr. Bough.