“That’s a little uncharitable.”

“I’ll give them their due. They’re doing their damndest.”

“We’re out of time, Tattletale,” I said, quiet. “What they’re doing isn’t working, and you’re here, trying to vet my plan.”

“Trying to fathom it, when it’s the one action you could take that’s furthest from my ability to understanding. It’s reckless.”

“It is, a bit.”

“There’s nothing noble about putting lives on the line, Victoria. It’s even less noble when thousands do it.”

“You say that even when… you knew Khepri?” I asked her.

“No comment.”

“Do you have anyone you care about?” I asked her. “That you’d make a sacrifice for?”

“Most of the people I care about to that degree are people with powers, and they’d be getting the touch of death.”

“It would be a dreaming death,” I said. “Slow but inevitable. Gotta pollute the cycle. It’s critical that it take a little while. Makes the rest of it easier.”

“Uh huh.”

“You said ‘most’, when you said most were capes. Are there any that aren’t?”

“One person who doesn’t have powers, who’s far, far away right now,” she said. “You haven’t really convinced me.”

“I haven’t exactly been trying. I’m a little dizzy, I’m supposed to get blood, even though it might muck with my powers and screw up my newfound relationship with this girl here…”

I touched the side of the Fragile One’s face.

Tattletale leaned to one side, peering past the gap in the curtain.

“I dunno,” I said. “I’ve been outlining it. That’s all. There’s more to it. Steps, stages.”

“What would you say, if you wanted to convince me?”

“Is there a point, Tattletale? If that’s where you draw your personal line in the sand, given your past experiences, I’m not going to fight you on that. The feelings are valid and I think we’d only fuck up our fragile truce here if I tried.”

“Not my past experiences. Current experience,” she said, meeting my eyes. “As a person left behind.”

“Sure,” I said. I shivered again.

“There’s a way,” she said.

I stared at her. The goosebumps that crawled up my arms had nothing to do with the chill.

“Tell me,” I told her.

“No.”

“Tell me,” I told her, again, rising to an upright position, my toes a half-inch off the floor. I used my aura, pushing at her. Big.

All throughout the hospital complex, conversations stopped. Everything went quiet.

Tattletale stood strong. “You haven’t convinced me. You’d take Rachel from me? Grue? Again? Imp? Chicken fucking Little? The Heartbroken kids?”

“Potentially. People will die no matter what happens, Tattletale. It’s a question of whether it’s one hundred percent or sixty or twenty-five percent. If we do nothing it’s one hundred percent.”