“One where you targeted us and brain damage, chunks of us left inside each other, and being stranded were possibilities,” Diaz said.

“For me as much as you. More than you. I’m—Love Lost, Colt and I, we’re integrated,” Rain said. “We don’t have a lot of time. The defenses are down, and there’s stuff I can be doing. I just need to find—”

He touched the crystal, then looked over the chasm at the lowest-tallest point of the hill.

“—Down there.”

“What’s down there?” Gilpatrick asked.

“Each island is a separate network. They broke apart and stopped being able to form bridges when Scion died. We want access to that network.”

“How do we get over there?”

“I think…” Rain said. “If I had to choose one part of my experiences I don’t need my—or our agents to keep to use against us…”

He touched the crystal.

The images, stuttering, often frozen, all changed, everywhere near them.

To a woman, not far off from Gilpatrick’s age, but so wispy, frail, and pale that she looked older than she was. Her eyes were cold, her mouth thin-lipped. Even though it was just an image, she managed to look down on everyone present.

“Might get—is getting a bit fucky,” Rain said.

The image spread, taking over the surroundings. It crawled across the ground, so that faces, stretches of face, and the woman’s cold eyes, all took individual facets of the landscape around them.

“Christine Mathers,” Kelly said.

With those words, like she had been invoked, scenes on nearby crystals showed a young Rain kneeling on a bedroom floor, while the woman held him by his hair, jerking his head this way and that while she screamed.

There was no sound, but Gilpatrick knew it was screams by the way her face contorted.

The images spread further. The energy traveling along the ground traced along the edges of those images, formed eyes and skeletal hands.

“And this is with the security, for lack of a better way of putting it, off,” Rain said.

A cliffside near them cracked, then broke.

The images winked out.

The broken section of cliff sloughed off, then toppled.

It crashed violently against the island on the other side of the chasm. Forming a crude bridge.

Still a bit of a jump to get down there, but… Gilpatrick nodded. He could see the way that had been formed.

“I could um,” Rain said. “I have no idea how it would work, but I could try sectioning off your daughter from the island. It might alter your power, but it would also mean it has less material to use for your dreams.”

Love Lost shook her head.

“Okay,” Rain said. “Colt?”

“We have other stuff to do.”

“Okay,” Rain said.