She knelt down, and the same motion coincided with a sound far sharper and louder than Rain or myself making our landings.

When she stepped away, the box she’d used to communicate with the Capricorn brothers was lying on the ground, camera and three of the camera ‘engines’ attached to it.

“That’s a load off,” she said. “You might have to carry me back. I burned a lot of power.”

“No problem,” Rain said.

She wasn’t fiddling, but the machine booted up. It buzzed, and scenes around us buzzed in kind. It got louder, the distortion around the scenes increased.

The scenes around us showed us a girl Kenzie’s age, black-haired, with light brown skin, wearing clothes I didn’t recognize, with loose cloth and a girdle-style belt that went from under where her breasts would be to her pelvis, wrapped around her trunk. Her sandals had shin-guards built into them, and her forearms had guards near the wrists.

The machine buzzed, and the buzzes corresponded loosely with where I felt words might start and stop.

Kenzie adjusted settings. The voices became clearer, unintelligible, but wholly natural.

A child, scared and confused, with none of the cold confidence I associated with Contessa.

“Our enemy?” I asked. My voice boomed through the canyon.

“Or ally,” Rain said. His voice did the same. He raised his head, looking upward.

Boots slammed into the crystal. Not as hard a landing as mine or Rain’s.

I turned to look, and I saw Sveta.

“Oh, everyone’s here,” Kenzie said, sounding pleased. “Tristan, Byron, Chris! Come on down! You too, Number Boy!”

But that enthusiasm and joy felt out of place.

Sveta’s expression was so dark… and my first thought was that it was this. That she was seeing the inner core of the person who had done this to her. She rubbed one arm, and I saw that, whether it was because we were here, where powers were dampened, or because she’d found a way to assert some control, her tendrils were no longer trying to braid themselves.

She crossed the small island, and as she passed, images changed. To her right, along the canyon wall, I could see a mechanical Case Fifty-Three, carrying two children. Again, Kenzie’s age. I looked back and saw the young Contessa, forlorn, the foreign tongue she spoke overlapping as an adult Contessa, depicted on the canyon wall, reached for one of the children.

“I’ll take it from here. Return to your cells,” the Contessa in the crystal said.

Sveta didn’t even bat an eyelash as that unfolded around her.

She wrapped her arms around me in a hug, face buried against my shoulder. I hugged her back, and felt my heart break. I looked over at Rain, who was wide-eyed once again.