“It’s manipulation!” someone else called out. “They’re holding themselves hostage with us, too!”

“I can promise you,” Eric said, and he looked upset and angry in a way he hadn’t when people had been shouting you. “There are capes who are prepared to die. There are capes who trust each and every one of you enough that they’re willing to put their lives in your hands, as they’ve done for you on multiple occasions, not just in the here and now. The decision wasn’t easy for any of them.”

“What if we just brought back the good ones?” asked the deeper voice from before. The leader.

“You can, but you run a risk. The queen Titan… let’s just say she has similar powers to the Simurgh. The smaller you keep the core group of capes, the easier it is for her to make a move that outplays us all. To counter this, with as many capes and civilians as we’re talking about, she’d need to make billions of moves, and that takes time, and it takes energy. We think that’s enough to trump her.”

“You’re not sure?”

“Some of our best masterminds and heroes thought this was the best course of action,” Mr. Kingston said. “For obvious reasons, they didn’t take this lightly. Listen. We’ve done a lot of tonight’s preparation by keeping our big thinkers and most capable people behind precogs, to confound her and slow her down. Right now she’s diminished, trying to bring that rock downhill and to the finish line. She’s preoccupied with the dreaming and the pollution, we hope. The most dangerous capes are in secure custody and they’ll be in secure custody when they wake up. If you wake them up. It’s up to you, we can’t make you and we wouldn’t make you.”

“Will the Titans go away?”

“I don’t know,” Eric said. “We don’t know. But that’s part of this plan. Part of why it matters if you keep the capes around or if you don’t. If you do… this will always be a card we can play in response, if there’s enough capes and enough of you willing to cooperate. Obviously a few key parahumans would hold the ‘drug’. If you don’t… the way forward will be hard. We have stockpiles of tinker equipment made for people to use… no promises on some of it, we have reams of data, everything you could hope for to track down and counter the parahumans who remained. A man named Saint has taken countermeasures against the Machine Army and is hopeful they could be an asset, but no promises. In any event, he’s not a parahuman, he has resources. But it will be hard. Whatever happens, you’ll be going through this winter with less than you had in prior winters.”