Tattletale:
call logs. ur right. they r hitting every station with a portal
I let people know.

Every station. My heart skipped a beat.

I looked over at Captain Eads. She was staring at me, looking alarmed.

“They’re hitting all of the stations.”

“Every one with a portal,” I said.

“They’re shutting us down. Closing us off.”

“Capricorn,” Looksee said. “Victoria.”

She had our attention.

Tattletale:
tinkr devices. they all have one. under chairs in bags. hit them b4 they can use

It was a message to us, but from the reaction, I had the sense the message was going out to every team and station.

I adjusted my costume, flipping up my hood. Capricorn stood. Looksee drew her flash gun. Patrol soldiers had their weapons out. Older soldiers were jogging over from one of the other entrances. Leaders for this particular exercise.

“Their parahuman wants to be the one to make the first move,” one soldier said.

“Who?”

“The girl with the painted armor.”

“Sveta. Let me set up, and I’m all for it,” Capricorn said.

The minutes that followed were silence punctuated by bursts of movement so intense that it felt like the situation had just erupted. Boots on the ground, as Patrol officers went to one wing or another. Then laughter, somewhere, eerily out of tune with the feeling we had near the entrance. Fake, to create a sense of normalcy, when the groups at the table might be noticing how quiet things were getting?

At every station, there had to be a situation like this unfolding.

We had no idea who these guys were. They might’ve been friends of the Fallen, but that was open-ended.

“Going,” Capricorn’s voice came over the phone, a whisper made loud.

I was looking around the corner as Sveta went around the corner across from me, entering the hallway, snapping over to the entrance to the restaurant, and disappearing inside.

Capricorn came back in from outside at a run. I flew in, and the officers were ready behind me.

I was just in time to see Sveta skidding on the floor. She spied the target and grabbed it where it apparently sat on the booth seat beside one of the people at the table, and hauled it to her with enough force that it produced a spatter of blood when it clipped the face of the guy sitting by it.

Then she was out, case in hand, and we were in. A restaurant with red, white, and black tile, black booths, and pretty looking tables. It was cold on the one side because windows were open, and noticeably warm on the other because heat radiated from the kitchen.

Sabrina was one, or another Fallen with Crowley genes was. When she used her power, she clarified the point—a shimmering bubble around herself, wet with waves rolling, overlapping and crashing around it. Energy shimmered and danced wherever two waves met.