“Heyyyy,” Kenzie said, sounding very lighthearted. She swiveled in her chair, and her face was hidden by her mask.

“Hey,” I told her, quiet.

“You got dosed?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Dose me?”

“I… that takes a lot more discussion, first,” I told her.

“Okay. Um, I’m keeping tabs on things. We’ve got a whole bunch of capes trying to make sure we cover all the bases, contact everyone we need to talk to.”

“Where are we at?” I asked.

“Thirty percent. Thirty percent of capes, as far as we can tell.”

“That many?”

“The Wardens decided they had to force a few.”

I snapped to attention at that. “What? Who?”

“Capes in prison. The most dangerous ones. Monokeros was one of them. They had a dialogue about it, and they decided there was too much danger.”

“That the heroes all die and the villains stay?”

Kenzie nodded with vigor.

“Okay,” I said. “Just the most dangerous ones, then? You mean monsters, not villains.”

“Yep. Um, Rain? Love Lost and Colt joined up.”

“Makes sense,” Rain said. “Good.”

“Is there a list of names?” I asked. I approached the desk, while being careful to stay out of Kenzie’s arm’s reach. There was an organization of names, floating in three-dimensional space, connected by diagrams that looked almost like Capricorn’s constellations.

I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“It’s organized by points in space, so…” Kenzie said.

“My sister?”

“Oh! I got video footage!”

“I don’t need to see—”

But she was already pulling it up. Already projecting it onto the wall.

I watched, tense, as my mother and father stood on one end of the room. Marquis and Panacea stood on the other.

“No audio, sorry,” Kenzie told me.

I didn’t need audio. I could fill in the words very easily.

The protest, the little head shake.

Doubt. Worry. It made sense she wouldn’t want to do this, wouldn’t want to make that point of contact.

Ironic.

It was Darnall who entered the room. He remained at the door, and the camera didn’t show a good view of his face. But it was clear he was talking.

I could see it. The shift in stance, the break in protests. It didn’t take that many words, possibly because he and she had exchanged so many words over the past twenty-four hours. I hadn’t had nearly enough sessions with the man, but I could imagine his tone, though the exact recipe of words to break through Amy’s stubbornness eluded me.

Unfortunately, Marquis could see the shift in posture and expression as well as any of us could.

I watched the recording as Amy took a step forward, and was blocked by an eruption of a fence of bone.

She touched it, and the wall broke. Marquis dropped to his knees.

She walked unimpeded to my parents. It was my dad who brushed hair away from her face, touching her forehead. I saw Amy’s posture change.