“I’m not looking for miracles,” I told her. “I’m not expecting miracles. But… I guess this is a hail mary. A long shot attempt at trying to get the stars to align, make something happen.”

Rain snorted. I looked at him, but his mask covered his face, and I couldn’t read his expression or guess about the nature of the snort.

“Can I talk to her?” I asked. “It’s kind of critically important. You know it would have to be, for me to even ask.”

“I don’t—” Jessica started.

“We can ask,” my mother said.

“I don’t think it would be good for anyone involved,” Jessica said. “Not Victoria, and not Amelia.”

“I’m not expecting it to be,” I told her. “Not for either of us. But there are billions or trillions of other lives out there, who die if this planet isn’t in one piece. I just have to ask, get answers. To avoid putting a hundred kids like Kenzie on battlefields, avoid a losing fight.”

“Thousands more deaths,” Byron said, from the sidelines.

I nodded, somber.

Jessica didn’t give me my answer. Or she already had.

My mother, though, told me, “She’s downstairs. I can show you the way.”

I nodded.

“I’ll stick up here,” Byron said. “Talk about this phone call I gotta make.”

“I can’t imagine this will take long,” I told him. “But if there’s anything you need me to do, I’ll do what I can.”

“I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do. Gotta face the music,” he said. His helmet was under one arm, his expression was… it made him look a lot younger than he was. I was used to viewing Tristan and Byron as veteran capes, with years under their belt, and more than enough hardship giving them a measure of grit.

And here, Byron was a boy who wasn’t old enough to vote, preparing to tell his mom that his brother was dead. He looked scared. Rain laid a hand on his upper arm.

“Do you need me?” Sveta asked me.

I thought about saying yes, but… she’d known Tristan. She and he had bonded, over their fan-worship of Weld.

“No. You do this.”

She nodded, but she looked wary. She glanced back at the Number Boy.

Nobody here was sure about what they were doing.

Fuck. What the hell were we doing?

If we saw another battlefield, if we saw that battlefield, that the Simurgh had been on, I wasn’t sure our minds wouldn’t shatter into a million pieces before she even screamed.

“The elevator is this way,” my mother said.

I followed her. Aunt Sarah floated along, and I took to the air, floating at a similar height, feet a few inches above the ground.

The elevator was beneath the big set of stairs that led from the lobby to the upper floors.