The Simurgh didn’t have habits, didn’t have personality, didn’t have wants or needs. She acted. She went after big, vulnerable targets, and the Wardens Headquarters was packed full of refugees and noncombat capes. Kid capes.

Dinah. The Heartbroken. Tinkers. Thinkers.

Their powers weren’t so useful for the battlefield, but they might be critical here.

I’m sorry, younger me. I feel like you would have wanted to take a stand, here. This isn’t noble, putting them in the line of fire, but it may be necessary.

“Portals up?” I asked.

“If Dragon isn’t in contact, probably not,” Sveta said.

“Phones are active, at least,” Chris said. “I can try calling, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“Please,” I said, nodding.

If phones are active, we still have some hope. We need Bonesaw. We need Contessa. We need a lot of things to make anything happen. We have a plan for Fortuna, but that’s just for Fortuna.

It felt like we were playing from behind, and it was getting worse. She’d dropped a fucking army on us, and I wasn’t sure we weren’t going to be paying for that later.

If there was a later.

I floated up a bit to check the battlefield. Drones were hiding under terrain, portal-drones hidden in a shallow cave.

Swooping down, I picked up rocks the size of my head, and hurled them simultaneously in a loose shotgun spray. The portal winked out.

“On to the next stage of the plan,” I said, trying to emulate Chevalier a bit. To sound confident, calm. We’d anticipated this. We’d play into it. I saw Sveta and Rain nod, and I felt encouraged by the fact that they seemed encouraged.

“The next stage of our plan or the Simurgh’s?” Chris asked, because he couldn’t let us have that.

I gave him a stern look, in part because I didn’t have a good answer.

Last 20.2

No portals meant we had to take the long way back. This, I had to imagine, was part of the Simurgh’s plan. Draw us out, tie us down, and then go after the biggest target.

It felt bad. I was aware of the running clock. The countdown Dragon had provided had shut off when she’d gone dark, but that was for Simurgh exposure. We had another countdown—the time before she merged with Titan Fortuna and enacted her plan.

The back of the Uther was smaller than I’d imagined it being, equivalent to my old bedroom in Brockton Bay, or Crystal’s living room, and there were a lot of us left to find our seats or places to stand. Defiant was up front, piloting a flight of Dragon’s ships to land near other groups, to carry other people who had fought the Simurgh.