Even within ‘peevishness’, there were scales and degrees. People and faces, sure. Some people bothered me. Rain’s were cast out in slices like a fistful of knife blades, each ‘blade’ long, thin, and casting a different face. Connective tissue running back the way we’d come, to anger and loss of control. The images around Kenzie were fuzzier, because she wasn’t really here, and they shifted at times. A lot of the faces looked Heartbroken. One looked like Roman, but much older and grizzled. Heartbreaker, sneering a little.

I shivered, uncomfortable.

It kind of unnerved me, as I thought on it. Because she was—or she and the Heartbroken were—here only in the capacity of observer, not a brain or corona pollentia.

It meant that she was looking, and this alien machine we were crossing was looking back, responding in kind.

It didn’t feel like were anywhere important to the greater system, because we were in a whole section where it wasn’t people. It was things. Some I only knew intuitively, as random as they might have looked.

The landscape rumbled. Images cut out, fading out, returning, and stuttering. I could see light flash across the terrain, illuminating both the ground and the light fog from the temperature differential. To my right, an image of jean shorts with pockets extending below the leg of the shorts went dark, and didn’t return.

In the distance, a landmass tilted. An island surrounded by chasms, leaning over until it came to rest against another, larger tract of ground.

“So,” Kenzie said. “While I’m talking about stuff in my workshop, I just heard Tattletale explain how the people on the surface are shifting tactics. Does that count as spying, if I overhear, and if I might be included in the briefing? I want to stick to the rules.”

“I think it’s fine,” I said. “What’s the shift?”

“Moving back. Defending Titans who aren’t part of the Fortuna network. Apparently Tristan and Sveta are taking a short rest while waiting for portals, because they’re bungling it up and messing up my tech, Dragon’s too busy to un-mess it, which is crazy when she’s a computer, and so it’s overheating while draining power from Dragon’s power cell. Those things last years!”

“Is Tattletale still there?”

“Yeah, but she has a headache. Should I bug her?”

“Please,” I told her. “We had a trail, but it feels like it’s gone cold. We could use any hints she can offer.”

“Be right back.”

I floated down, because my flying was poor in this place, and was almost slower than walking, letting me keep pace only because Rain slowed down when walking up slopes or taking it easy while scaling down the far sides. I harbored some hopes that if I let my power ‘rest’, it might have a bit more oomph when I needed it.