No. All one crack, all with the same label.

Extending impossibly far, from the origin point. By pure happenstance.

“Who?” I asked, because looking through it was too difficult, and I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to, to stumble on a name of someone I knew.

It wasn’t, really. Worse, that it was someone I hadn’t really talked to.

“Valkyrie,” Kenzie said. “They got her.”

I swallowed, hard. I found the notification marked out in gold. The icon in the distance and the corresponding label too small to really see.

Titan Valkyrie.

I felt too emotionally shaky for this.

“We fight,” Tristan said. “Do what we can. Last until tomorrow night…”

The words felt hollow.

This was already too hard. Another twenty-three hours of this?

“Another way?” Sveta asked. “Colt understands the dream, would she have ideas?”

Rain shook his head.

Then he spoke up, not looking at any of us, “But we saw through the crystal. We saw people running around.”

“Can we get a message through?” I asked. “To Swansong?”

“Maybe,” Rain said.

“Fume Hood?”

“Maybe,” he said, again. “Harder. I wouldn’t even know where to look.”

“I might be able to figure out a transmitter or something,” Kenzie said. “Project into the crystal, maybe.”

“I’ll stay,” Tristan said.

The conversation ceased for a moment. We looked at him.

“We should go,” I told him. “This isn’t a fight we win. It’s practically preordained.”

“There are people I know and owe something to on this battlefield,” he said. I looked for and saw them. Old members of Reach. One a member of the flock, now without a Valkyrie. Another a member of the Shepherds. “And the only things I’m good for are marketing and fighting, and there’s no market here.”

“You’re good for a lot more than that,” Rain said.

“I’ll stick with you, then,” Sveta said. “The rest of you go.”

“But—” Rain started.

“But you understand the dream room, you know where to find her. You’re more useful over there. You didn’t have the sense to grab any tokens tonight, so you’re useless on a battlefield.”

“If saving them is important to Tristan, it’s important to me. He’s—you’re kind of the first person who looked me in the eye after I confessed the Fallen stuff, Trist.”

“Go,” Tristan said. “I’m too stubborn to listen to you at this point. I’ve got Sveta and my old teammates to look after. My mind is made up.”

“Your brother,” I said. “He’s along for the ride, you know?”

“I know. Believe me. I protect him most of all.”

I set my jaw, wondering if I could drag him. Would his conscience be clear?

“There’s no time,” Sveta said. “This is getting worse by the minute. You go. We’ll manage.”

We went, in hopes of delivering a message that mattered.

Infrared 19.d