He regrets it. He’s trying to do better. He was willing to turn himself in, even though that wasn’t what Cradle wanted or needed.

He didn’t want any of this any more than Cradle did.

It wasn’t him that screwed with Cradle like that. It was the power, acting according to some alien programming.

No.

There wasn’t one response I could give without feeling like I might be compromising my integral self.

Well, there was one response.

“Yeah,” I said. “I… yeah.”

He was too far away to properly hear me.

I nodded, instead.

“If you understand, let him die!”

This time, I shook my head.

“No,” I said, knowing he couldn’t hear.

That would violate my integral self too. Just as much. More.

He moved a hand, and the red-highlighted cables swung out, and connected to the ends of other cables, which separated from other fingertips. One hand now had cables of double the length.

He repeated the process again.

Arming himself for combat.

Chris was okay, it seemed, limping toward the fight. Operator was crawling toward Capricorn and Vista, who had reunited, and who were only a short distance from Sveta. Vista was more focused on making the way between Operator and them as steep as possible.

Operator’s cleavers periodically stabbed into the earth for handholds, as he trudged through muddy field at a forty degree incline.

Cradle swiped his cables at me. I flew back and away, evading. He swiped again, a backhand, and I barely needed to evade.

Not meant for me. He’d swiped at the camera.

The camera dodged.

The hand shook, and cables reconfigured. The one at the middle finger was longer.

One swipe, angled to connect with either me or the camera. I hit it with the Wretch, and saw the crimson highlighting twist and distort, as the camera struggled to keep up with the outline of the cable.

The cable hit the ground around the base of Cradle’s robot, and the soil exploded with the impact. Again, that surrounding force.

His version of Rain’s power. Or something he’d begged and borrowed for, maybe, another tinker’s tech, modified to work with his gear. That was a thing tinkers could do—a thing that drove them into tinker enclaves or the PRT. Past tense ‘drove’.

That effect meant I couldn’t catch it, but I could still deflect. Where things got harder was that I wasn’t sure of the fallout now. The cord was over a hundred feet long now, the arm was twenty-five or so feet long, and even if I knocked the cord to one side, I couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t land in a way that put it near teammates.

I closed the distance. There were still other cables, and if I couldn’t control the whip—