The computers illuminated as I walked through the main room.

“Go to sleep,” I said. The computers went dark.

I had to fish through three coarse paper bags of groceries that we’d stowed under one of the tables to find the food supplies. A small bag of lime and chili chips, a protein bar, some preservatives with pepperoni stick added in, more stick-shaped preservative packs with cheese in the mix, dried fruit, two bottles of vitamin water, and a large thermos of regular tap water.

Breakfast.

Laptop. I flipped it open and turned it on. The agenda for the day was laid out in glowing words against a dark background. More groups would walk through.

I had messages from the night prior. Fume Hood. Another friend and support. Hero teams planning to patrol in Cedar Point. Other, related things. There was a vein of positivity running through it all. The hero teams reaching out, expressing interest, wondering about the response they’d gotten, or expressing curiosity about villains who’d showed their faces but hadn’t been involved. Who was that guy? What’s her history?

It was easy to be standoffish, to draw lines in the sand when it came to jurisdictions, to make territorial noises and see the other teams as competition.

This was a balancing act, but there were benefits. The heroes we were connecting with knew some of our names, faces, and voices.

The clock told me it was a quarter after six in the morning as I left the headquarters.

My feet left the fire escape and touched down in Cedar Point a few minutes later. The shifting temperature and the proximity of the water cast Cedar Point in a heavy mist. There weren’t many lights on, but the ones that were on made the surrounding mist glow.

Not many people awake.

I walked along the rooftops, flying up to the points higher than I could get with a skip or a jump. Briefly, I turned on my forcefield.

Briefly, I saw the mist stir, as facial features and hands moved through it. If I hadn’t known what I was looking at, I wouldn’t have been able to make much sense of the swirl here, the vaguely oval void there.

It wasn’t a good feeling, to verify that, but I’d treated my heart gently this morning, armoring it in sentiment. I could take that much.

I sat on the edge of a random rooftop, got my laptop out, and opened it.

There wasn’t internet here, but I had files saved on my computer. Random pictures I’d saved, old PRT documents I’d scanned and saved for printing for my collection, that I hadn’t gotten around to deleting or printing, and some things I’d typed up for the Patrol block.