“How’s Lookout?” I asked Tristan and Sveta. “I haven’t heard from her.”

Tristan explained, “She was pulled away to consult. Tattletale is there too. All the thinkers and information gatherers. She sent us a message. She didn’t…”

He indicated me. I shook my head.

“Might have been that you were too busy fighting in that moment.”

Or the flashback. I zoned out for a minute there.

The fighting was renewing. Oberon was fighting Skadi. They were close enough to one of the defensive lines that capes were participating.

I wanted to go and I was exhausted at the same time.

“On the down-low,” Sveta said, leaning in closer, until our heads were almost touching. “Weld is pretending to be mad at me.”

“Pretending why?” I asked. Tristan looked equally curious.

“Heavy stuff that happened once. Information I didn’t pass him, before the Irregulars went bad. It came up in the moment, he acted like it was a surprise. To open a way to communicate with the Case Fifty-Threes. Get them on board, when they might have run for it otherwise.”

“This is, uh, stuff you talked about in group?” Tristan asked.

Sveta nodded. She looked almost sick just with that gesture alone. I couldn’t imagine actually talking it out with Weld.

I couldn’t imagine being where she was now, hearing Weld be actively hostile, when she’d been close enough to have that talk with him and stay together with him after the fact.

“How’s your control?” I asked.

She showed me her arm. The tendrils misaligned, until she put visible concentration into it to pull things together.

“What if we put a bandage or something around it, to keep it right?”

“Bandages are a problem if I need to use my power,” she said.

I nodded.

“Are we doing this? Giving chase? Getting between Cryptid—Lab Rat, and Titan Fortuna?”

Tristan was already nodding. Already planning on it.

Sveta visibly hesitated.

“Yeah,” Sveta said.

I’LL BE RIGHT WITH YOU. The golden text appeared outside the reaches of my ordinary vision. MEETING DONE. CRACKS ARE SET TO SPREAD SOON. IF THEY SPREAD IN THE NEXT TWENTY MINUTES, RAIN IS IN POSITION TO MAYBE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. HOPEFULLY!

That would be what the powwow with the other thinkers was about, then.

My power still felt shaky, my grip on the gun—fuck. I started fixing it right away. I wasn’t even sure if my other powers didn’t have subtle differences, either.

For all of us, Tristan, Sveta, and myself, the following minute was a quiet one, our minds in overdrive, anticipating this coming situation, trying to find a way through.

I replayed previous conversations with Contessa in my head. The decision she’d posed for us. The fact she’d been unwilling to make it herself. Was there a weakness there? A way past the Titan and to Contessa herself?