Still floating over the crack, I let the costume fall, dropping from my arms to the chasm. The breastplate provided the weight that helped the bundle fly straight down, into the crevice where the water still flowed in from the ocean, frothing.

Too small to make out before it was even halfway gone. Then gone forever.

I wouldn’t be giving them any more of me, not like I had.

“You’re going—” I tried, before wincing. Breathing and speaking was still hard, and it had nothing to do with the fighting last night. Only the long and heavy ‘sleep’. “You’re going to have to work with me, Fragile One. I know powers that don’t get used can get cranky, but… I’ve kind of gone above and beyond on multiple fronts.”

Water crashed against a fallen building below me.

“Go easy on me, huh?” I asked. I was looking for fires. For cracks in reality. There were only the tears left behind from the old Teacher-assisted Fallen attack on the portal devices. Everything was deathly quiet, but for the sounds of wind and water.

As if to test, to give the Fragile One a chance to respond, I pushed out, letting my forcefield unfold.

It swept over my skin, extended over my clothes. It went no further.

No sudden movements, nothing involuntary, no apparent mind of its own.

I saw three cars on the road, in my long trip back to the headquarters. People roving about, following coordinates to meet and recover capes.

I had to fly low, to pass through a portal. I’d worn comfortable clothes to sleep and I wore a coat now, and I was glad for the forcefield, that had no extra wind resistance. With the rush and the fear, paradoxical as it was, I felt very much like I had on my very first flight.

On that flight, it had been all the possibilities ahead of me that had spooked me. I’d been hopeful, because there were so many promises, so many doors open to me.

Now I felt much the same. In a way, facing this, a possibility that things had worked out, I was more scared than I had been when I’d thought Chris had scuttled our very last option.

Past the portal, the old Cauldron facility loomed. Beaten, battered, possibly unrecoverable.

I flew in through a hole in the wall Dragon had made.

To see the rubble and the signs of battle, I felt more like twelve years had passed, not twelve hours.

I still had responsibilities.

In the event that this all worked out, my goal and plan had been to leave Kenzie in the care of the Wardens, and she would be my first stop when I arrived. She would know the particulars.

But Kenzie, I knew, had gone out of her way to dose herself.