“I’m going to try and ask if we—if we can support the people in the crevices. My dad, others. Get a reprieve from Titans.”

“Okay,” he said. “If it’s okay, I’d like to come support you. Next to Breakthrough, you’re the people I know best. How you fight, everything.”

He looked confident, as he said it. Actually sincere.

“You’re not going to be a problem?” she asked.

“No, just the opposite. Really, I’ve got your back.”

And with those words, somehow, that confidence and sincerity seemed to slip. Again, that look in his eyes, that didn’t seem like it should match the situation. Sad and a little wild. It made her think of the Tristan who’d hired mercenaries, the Tristan who had tried to get away with murder.

She weighed her trust for Byron in his brother, against her distrust for Byron’s brother.

For Byron, she pushed those feelings aside, and nodded.

Infrared 19.e

The Titan Skadi loomed before them.

All around them, the civilians were scrambling, and any and all attempts to communicate, tell them to stay put, or man the weapons they’d brought down were lost in the chaos. Humans fleeing across a landscape of red crystal, the periodic image flickering beneath them.

The Titan wasn’t even doing anything except standing there, not fighting for the first time that Moonsong had seen or heard about, and everything they were trying to accomplish down here was falling to pieces.

“Get through the portal!” Moonsong hollered, at a volume that hurt to produce. “Or stay put, we can shield you!”

It didn’t matter. Because at the end of the day, she had a strong gravity-warping power, but she didn’t have anything that made her more physically able than the people who were screaming in fear or shouting to family members, friends, and strangers. Her voice wasn’t any different from their voices.

The unpowered scattered, leaving the work only half done.

The Titan remained where it was, standing in a sea of flickering and shifting images. Slowly and surely, those images got more and more bloody. Like a portent of what was about to happen.

Tribute stood to her left. Capricorn stood to her right. Riveting had her bag out, and was sealing pieces of tech together. Furcate, as usual, was operating under the assumption she’d be more free to act the further she was from the rest of her team, steadily away from the group, her attention on the Titan.

“Don’t stray too far from the portal!” Moonsong called out to Furcate. The portal near the center of the work site was their lifeline, feeding them their powers, in this place where powers were dampened or gone.

There was no indication she was being heard. Furcate continued moving away.

Scribe and Armiger were helping the wounded, even though it would have been better for Scribe to be using her power.