“Cool,” Prometheus said, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had fallen in the wake of Lucas’ call. “Wanna go to the beach?”

For a moment, Shudder was confused. After all, Fairfield was landlocked and she didn’t know any nearby lakes with beaches. But, she quickly realized, that was hardly an issue when Lucas could instantly transport them wherever he wanted.

“I don’t know,” Lucas replied, looking uncomfortable. “There’s a lot of preparation to—“

“No there isn’t,” Prometheus said firmly. “You said we were off until tonight. Besides, we’ve all just gone through a series of traumatic experiences. Sila fighting their cousin, your dad nearly dying, Shudder finding out about Clon’s secrets, me learning that I’m not actually a living person and having to grapple constantly with the memory of wanting to hurt my friends, knowing all the while how easy it would be to do…” He paused, leaving a tense reminder that he was probably barely holding it together. “So I think some fun would be good for us.”

“I’ve never been to a beach,” Sila said.

Lucas sighed. “Fine. I’ll portal you all home to grab what you need.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Elise said. “I’d feel too much like a babysitter.”

Lucas nodded. “Shudder, where am I sending you?”

Shudder was tempted to skip as well. After all, if she portaled over a thousand miles away, how would the Einherjar pick her up? But she said nothing. She had never seen the ocean before. That was the only reason. Anyway, they could contact her through her phone and she could make up an excuse and return at any time, so it wasn’t like she was avoiding giving Doc the flash drive. She found a picture of the neighborhood near her apartment on her phone and showed it to Lucas.

He frowned. “Actually, I’m not sure if you should go alone. If Valkyrie or Heaven decide to make a move, you’re the easiest target.”

Shudder almost objected, but Sam spoke up first. “I’ll go with her. I know I can’t protect her, but they probably won’t attack a normal person like me, so I’ll be able to tell you if something happens.”

“Fine,” Shudder said, trying to sound just annoyed enough to not give away the fact that she was curious to talk to Sam more, but not so annoyed as to make them feel unwelcome.

Lucas opened a portal and the pair walked through, finding themselves a few blocks from Shudder’s apartment. She led the way in silence, trying to think of a way to ask Sam what it was like being related to the Aerialist, what it was like having a supportive family, what it was like living a normal life while being connected to so many superheroes. Did the Aerialist invite the rest of Nova Legion over for barbecues?

As they neared her apartment building, she finally found an excuse to break the silence. “Hey, I’m going to check on my neighbor first if you don’t mind.”

Sam looked a little surprised, but simply answered, “Not at all.”

Shudder led them up to Mr. Winter’s apartment and knocked on the door. After a bit of waiting, the old man pulled the door open.

“Shudder,” he greeted cheerfully. “I was beginning to think you’d been arrested.

“I was, actually,” Shudder explained. “And then I was in hiding for a bit. I’m just here to grab some stuff today, but I wanted to make sure you were all set for groceries.”

“I’m fine for now,” Mr. Winter said. “One of the fellows from down the hall made a trip for me. Though I think he tried to cheat me. I gave him as much as I give you and he came back and told me it wasn’t enough. I imagine he just wanted some pay for his work, but he could have just told me. The pride of you young people.”

“Well, with any luck, I’ll be back at my place in the next couple of days, so I can make the next trip.”

Mr. Winter frowned. His wrinkled face made his frowns look deep and serious. “Yeah, until you get yourself in trouble again. You know you’re not going to be able to keep going like this forever.” He turned his frown on Sam. “And who is this? You never bring your criminal friends around here, so he must not be a criminal.”

“They aren’t,” Shudder replied, carefully emphasizing the first word. “They’re just a friend.”

“Good. Make sure he stays that way,” Mr. Winter said firmly, either not catching Shudder’s correction or not understanding it. “I don’t care one way or another about the law, but I hope you know better than to put another kid in a position where that’s the only way to make a living.”

Shudder rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

Mr. Winter nodded once. “Good. I’m going to get back to my game show now. Take care of yourself.”

They exchanged goodbyes and, once the door was shut, Shudder turned to Sam. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “I’m used to it. But I’m more curious about…did that person down the hall really cheat him?”

Shudder looked away, embarrassed. She had hoped that Sam wouldn’t pick up on that. Now she was going to seem like she was trying to make herself look like a good person.

“Ah, probably not. He doesn’t know how much food costs these days so he never gives me enough and I just cover the rest.”

She led Sam back down to her apartment and they waited in the living room while she made her way to her bedroom. She dug a swimsuit—purchased about a year ago and never worn—out of her dresser. It was her favorite color, yellow.

“I see why my grandpa likes you,” Sam said, their voice slightly muffled by the door. “You’re a lot like him.”

“Yeah, he told me,” Shudder called back as she stripped off her clothes. “Minor powers, children of immigrants…”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean the way you impulsively help people.”

Shudder felt her stomach twist at the thought that she’d given them the impression that she was anything like the Aerialist. “Superheroes help people. I just carry a guy’s groceries for him.”

“Most superheroes don’t carry groceries,” Sam’s voice explained. “I mean, yeah, a lot of them get into it out of a genuine desire to help people, but Grandpa has a knack for noticing when someone needs something, big or small, and then helping them without even thinking about it. I think you’re like that, too.”

“I’m not a good person,” Shudder protested. “I steal things. I hurt people. I have a power that people find viscerally disturbing, and I use it to make people do what I want.”

As she finished pulling on her bikini, she looked at herself in the mirror. It was a nice enough look, she supposed. Since hormone replacement therapy had softened her features and given her breasts, she was largely unbothered by her broad shoulders and any…other parts that might be noticeable in a bikini. However, were they going to a public beach? She couldn’t be seen in public like this. She might like her body, but she didn’t like knowing that others would find it objectionable. So she pulled open the closet.

“But when you helped build Orbis you did it to make the world a better place, didn’t you?” Sam’s voice tore through Shudder’s defenses, leaving her frozen with a yellow sundress in hand. “You weren’t trying to rule or become all-powerful. Heck, if you’d succeeded you probably just would have led a normal life, right?”

Feeling exposed despite the closed door, Shudder quickly pulled on the dress. “You actually get it. Most people don’t.”

She could practically hear Sam’s shrug. “I only get it because Grandpa gets it. I think Orbis was reckless and misguided, but I could hardly call it selfish.”

Shudder remembered the flash drive, which she’d placed on the dresser while she changed. She could hide it beneath the sundress, of course, but then she wouldn’t be able to remove it to swim. Instead, she tucked it deep into her shoe. That way, she could remove her shoes but still keep it hidden. Of course, that was an extremely reckless thing to do with something like Orbis. In fact, it proved that what Sam was saying wasn’t true. Wasn’t it selfish going swimming when she had to protect something as important as Orbis? Wasn’t it selfish holding onto it at all, instead of giving it to Doc or destroying it?

She opened the door. “I appreciate what you’re trying to say. But I’m really not a good person.”

“That’s a nice dress,” was Sam’s only reply.

Shudder and Sam rejoined Lucas and the others and, after Sam made a quick trip to their apartment for their own swimsuit and gear, Lucas opened a portal to a sunny, glittering, and thankfully abandoned beach.

It was a small spot, surrounded by high cliffs which would make it difficult to access for those without portals. It felt like a world away from what Shudder knew. The trees and rocks and the constant sound of the ocean might as well have been fiction to her. They were things only seen on a screen. True, there were those distant memories of that childhood trip, but those were so vague that they were barely any more real than a photo. It had been years, she realized, since she had even traveled farther than Fairfield’s suburbs.

Everyone else seemed to know what they were doing and set up towels, a parasol, a cooler before one by one making their way to the water. Stricken by an inevitable shyness, Shudder hung back and made herself comfortable under the parasol, enjoying the breeze and the unusual smells it brought with it.

Prometheus, dressed in a pair of brightly-colored knee-length swimming trunks that looked almost comical against his metal body, could not swim, of course. Sometimes he ventured deep into the water, disappearing from view for minutes at a time. Apparently he didn’t need to breathe, or at least didn’t need to often. Mostly he stayed closer to the water’s edge, playfully splashing his friends.

Lucas, whose pale skin made the dark tattoos which covered him stand out more than ever in the sun, hardly dipped more than his feet in the water, preferring instead to crouch in the sand and watch the waves rush up to engulf his ankles before receding again and again. Occasionally, he used some well-placed portals to create a water slide for Sila and Sam. Sila, wearing a one-piece made of that Nanzaran shape-changing material, took the form of various aquatic alien creatures to hurl themself down these cascades.

Eventually, Prometheus seemed to grow bored, and joined Shudder at the parasol.

“Not into swimming?” Prometheus asked, looking out at the ocean.

“Not really,” Shudder lied. It was easier than admitting she’d grown bashful.

“Eh, I don’t blame you,” Prometheus said with a shrug. “There’s only so much you can do out there. It gets boring quickly. Especially if you’re me.”

“Sounds inconvenient.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Prometheus looked at her, shifting position to converse with her more directly. “Can I admit something to you?”

Shudder wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear it, but there was no polite way to decline. “Sure.”

“I kind of hate this body. I wish I could go back to the way I was before.” This wasn’t surprising to Shudder, but there was a weight to his words. As if saying them out loud, regardless of how obvious they were, was important to him. “But it’s kind of ridiculous if you think about it. I mean, I never really had that body. I was never Adam. I’m just a computer program imitating Adam’s personality. My thoughts and feelings aren’t even real. So why does it bother me so much?”

Shudder had no idea how Prometheus had gotten to be the way he was, and imagined she wouldn’t be able to pierce the philosophical questions involved even if she did. But one thing was clear to her. “Your thoughts are real.”

“How could you know that?” His tone was accusing, but Shudder didn’t allow herself to become annoyed.

“I’m psychic, remember? I can’t sense anything from a computer, but you’ve got a presence like anything with a brain. If I had to guess, I’d say whatever’s inside you is more like a pseudocerebrum than a CPU. It probably even stores your memories as thought if it can. We never figured out how to do that long-term, but it would be more efficient than storing them as data and converting them.”

Adam stared wide-eyed at Shudder. It was unclear if he understood any of what she said. “Huh.”

“Not that I see how any of it really matters. I mean, I don’t know what it’s like actually experiencing it, but it seems like if you feel like Adam and everyone else recognizes you, what difference does some intangible concept of ‘realness’ make?”

“I didn’t think it mattered, either,” Adam replied. “Until the Seraphinite. But it was able to change me, just like someone changing the settings on a program.”

Shudder thought back to when he had touched the Seraphinite. His fear had vanished from her senses. Perhaps the Seraphinite had converted his mind to data. But he had still been conscious according to what he had said later. Plus, she had been able to find his fear when she dug deep enough.

“The Seraphinite took control of the hardware, the physical components of your body, and then manipulated the pseudocerebrum until it got the results it wanted.” Why it wanted rage was anyone’s guess. “It’s kind of similar to what I do, I guess. Just approached from a different angle.”

“Do you think I have a soul?”

Shudder shrugged. “You’d have to ask Valkyrie.”

She realized she was being needlessly dismissive. After all, a soul would be a piece of him that had gone unchanged by whatever had made him metal. Proof that the Adam of before and the Adam of now were the same.

She decided to change the subject before he could react. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“If you don’t like your body, why don’t you change it?”

Prometheus became frustrated. “I’d go back in an instant if I could!”

“I don’t mean go back. It’s kind of like…” Shudder hesitated. Did she want to get this personal with someone she barely knew and certainly didn’t trust? It seemed like a path to humiliation, but she found her heart was aching for Prometheus’ all-too-relatable discomfort. So she decided to dive in. “It’s kind of like me. I was an early bloomer. Towered over my classmates in middle school. I couldn’t make myself shorter, or change my broad shoulders, or my Adam’s apple. I mean, maybe there’s some magic way I could have done it all instantly, but back then it was so far from my reach that it might as well have been impossible. So I changed what I could. And as I did so, I found that the rest of it bothered me less.”

“Well, I can’t just take hormones and change myself,” Prometheus protested.

“I have literally seen you change shape,” Shudder shot back. “The system that makes up your body may have chosen to make you huge and metal initially, but you’re clearly the one in control. So figure out how to tell it what to do. Make it shed some mass or a few inches of height.”

Prometheus opened his mouth, looking angry, but paused. “Okay, maybe you have a point and I kind of feel like an idiot for not trying that already. But I’m objectively better like this, aren’t I? I can protect people in ways I might not be able to with less bulk. Plus everyone likes me this way. And they seem to think I should like it, too.”

Shudder laughed. “‘Everyone’ sounds a lot like how my dad talked to me.”

“Huh,” Prometheus repeated.

They sat in silence for a time before he seemed to decide that sitting around was less interesting than playing in the water and returned to his friends. Shortly afterwards, Lucas wandered up to get a drink from the cooler.

He stared at her for a bit, looked away, glanced at her, looked away again, and finally spoke. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

Shudder forced herself not to sigh. “Sure.”

“What’s the significance of yellow nail polish?”

Shudder blinked. What did nail polish have to do with anything? The only yellow nail polish that came to her mind was…

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s the significance of it to you?”

Lucas toyed with the tab on his soda shyly. “I scryed you.”

Not knowing about magic, Shudder was unsure of how angry to be. “You had one of your drug visions about me?”

“They aren’t drug visions,” Lucas protested. “But, yes, I used that broken camera and I saw—I experienced—a bunch of moments from your past. I couldn’t really process it all as it happened because I wasn’t…myself, I guess, and it all kind of became a mess of feelings and experiences by the time I could think about it. But through it all yellow nail polish stood out as important. And it’s the only thing I saw that I don’t understand the significance of.”

Shudder couldn’t decide whether to feel mildly annoyed or furious. She understood so little about magic that it was impossible to guess whether this was a violation. Did magic-users consider the past fair game? Did it make a difference that he certainly hadn’t meant to view that particular moment? She didn’t need to ask to know what he had been looking for. He was trying to figure out whether a supervillain could be trusted.

Instead, she decided to ask a different question. “Why did you think that was okay?”

“I don’t know,” Lucas admitted. “It was a practical choice, but I realized afterwards that I don’t actually know when it is and isn’t okay to scry someone. I guess that’s to be expected when I learned magical ethics from someone who’s probably a supervillain.”

It was hardly an apology, but Shudder decided that being angry at Lucas over it wasn’t worth the effort. “Whatever. Just don’t do it again.” A moment later, she added, “It was the first thing I stole.”

“What?” Lucas shook his head. “Oh, you mean the nail polish.”

“Yeah. Yellow is my favorite color. It’s the color of fear, you know?”

Lucas frowned. “Is that all?”

It seemed he wouldn’t be satisfied with such a brief answer. “I brought it home. My dad found it a couple of days later and yelled at me. That was when I finally decided to stand up for myself and tell him the truth. You can figure out the rest from there.”

She laid back on the towel with her arms crossed behind her head, giving her statement a sense of finality.

“Ah, I guess that explains it,” Lucas said. A few moments later, he wandered back to the water.

Shudder closed her eyes, breathed the fresh air and relaxed, allowing herself to drift off to a nap, thankful that Lucas had bought that explanation. Thankful that he hadn’t asked what word was printed on top of that particular bottle of nail polish.

 

---

 

That evening, Lucas portaled to Serpent’s Lair with Adam, Shudder, and Whisper. After the beach trip, he had visited the bar early to arrange a private room for the meeting, as well as drinks for the participants. Euryale had promised that she could provide drinks for the two vampires as well, something Lucas had chosen not to probe further. He had also instructed Sila to stay home with Sam and wait for word from the others. If they didn’t return, Sila was to get into contact with a superhero team from another city.

The provided room had a single table, dim lights, and was separated enough from the rest of the bar that only the throbbing beat of the music could be heard. Lucas arranged his friends on one side of the table and moments later, the drinks arrived.

As they settled in to wait, Lucas felt his anxiety growing. It wasn’t the physical threat that Valpurgia posed that worried him. That was abstract. He had no idea what her goals were and it seemed impossible that she could pose an even more all-encompassing threat than Valkyrie, despite her maneuvering. Instead, the source of his anxiety was the idea of what his not-quite-girlfriend had hidden from him.

His friends seemed nearly as anxious. Adam was ignoring his suspicious-looking grey drink and continually looking between the empty chairs and Shudder, apparently calculating how quickly he could protect the most vulnerable person present. For her part, Shudder was mindlessly sipping her Shirley Temple, a grim look on her face. Whisper was as unreadable as always.

Soon the door opened and Valpurgia swept in with a noble air. She wore a small smile as she took her seat, as if content that everything was going exactly as she desired. Krisztina crept in after her, looking uncomfortable. Her t-shirt and jeans were, as always, a sharp contrast to her mother’s stylish dress.

“Good evening, Lucas,” Valpurgia said.

A bottle and two glasses had been brought for the vampires and Lucas felt his blood boil as Krisztina sheepishly uncorked the bottle and poured a glass first for her mother then for herself before taking her seat.

“I’m not going to waste time,” Lucas began. “Did you arrange the attack on the STRIX base?”

Valpurgia’s face was impassive. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“To weaken the local STRIX presence and force them to dedicate what resources they have left to hunting down Director Korris.”

It seemed she wasn’t going to hide her crimes at all. In that case, he could focus his energy elsewhere.

“Angel, you don’t have to go along with this,” he said to Krisztina.

Krisztina’s reply was quiet. Cowed. Completely unlike her usual confident demeanor. “She always gets what she wants, Lucas. It’s better just to go along with her.”

Valpurgia was smug. “I am merely taking what’s rightfully mine. Krisztina knows better than to stand in the way of justice.”

“Oh yeah? What’s rightfully yours?” Adam asked dryly.

“The world, of course. Krisztina and I are vampires, naturally superior to humans. You are ours to rule.”

“Gonna have a hard time taking over the world if you can’t even take over a STRIX base.”

Sometimes it seemed to Lucas that Adam was as dense mentally as he was physically.

Thankfully, Whisper was there to correct the course. “She didn’t need to win that fight. She just needed to sow chaos long enough to begin her real effort. Right now, she needs Fairfield to be in a weakened state to conquer it, but I’m guessing that once she’s done so, she’ll be able to grow her forces exponentially and launch a much larger campaign.”

That was the smart way to approach the conversation. Make a guess and encourage Valpurgia to keep talking. But to Lucas, the details of Valpurgia’s plan were less important than Krisztina.

“You see? She’s at a vulnerable point in her plan. If you stand up to her now, we can stop her together.”

He had been sure to visit this room before the meeting. He had taken some measurements and ensured that the position of the chairs was just right for this moment. Krisztina was leaning back, her hands off the table. Perfect.

He opened a portal beneath her. Sending her plummeting down with a shriek to land on his side of the table, facing her mother. Due to her supernatural resilience, the fall did nothing more than shake her up. She remained upright when she landed, gripping her chair tightly, her face shocked.

“See?” Lucas asked. “Isn’t this better?”

Valpurgia looked annoyed, but unshaken. “I made Krisztina. She knows that her place is at my side.”

“It doesn’t matter if you made her,” Whisper said in a sneering tone. “She’s her own person. She can be more than what you made.”

“Lucas, you don’t understand,” Krisztina said quietly. “My job was to get you to trust her. To help recruit you.”

Lucas had been waiting for that blow. But he forced himself not to feel hurt until he had more information. “What does she need me for?” Surely the strategic advantage of his portals couldn’t be that vital.

It was Valpurgia who answered. “For the last century I have forged numerous alliances in the demon dimension. My forces there number in the thousands and grow by the day. Unfortunately, interdimensional travel is a complicated task. They can transport themselves between many planes, but ours is not easily reachable. Unless Lucas were to assist.”

“That’s it?” Shudder scoffed. “A demon invasion? A war against the entire world? There’s no end to that. Even if you conquer the world, you’ll be fighting rebellions for your entire reign.” She looked around at her allies incredulously. “Our plan was way better than that. You all see that, right?”

“Tlön would have weighed down humanity by protecting the worst and weakest of your species,” Valpurgia explained. “My rule would hone the strongest among you, allowing you to reach your potential.”

Emboldened by Shudder’s ease, Adam gave an amused smile. “Okay, but you have to see that this is a pretty extreme goal. What makes you think Lucas is going to help you?”

Lucas could feel Valpurgia’s eyes on him, but he watched Krisztina. Letting her see his sincerity, and his lack of fear.

“Because, like us, Lucas is superior. You have a magnificent inherent magical power, but look at who you’ve chosen to ally yourself with. A weak psychic who has proven herself incapable of growth, an abomination of leftover alien remains, and a walking pile of medical waste. They’re holding you back. Have you even begun to imagine what your portals are capable of?”

Lucas ignored her. She might have considered her words tempting, but there was nothing he found appealing in them. “You know what she’s saying isn’t right, Angel. I believe in you too much to even question that. This is your chance to stand up and say it. We need as many of us as possible to stand up to people like her.”

Valpurgia must have sensed her grip over Krisztina weakening, because now she addressed her. “They are peasants, Krisztina. They are to serve or be crushed. If you stand with them, then you’ll be crushed alongside them and I don’t want to see that happen to you. We have a birthright. It’s time to claim it.”

“We all have birthrights,” Shudder snapped, suddenly furious. “I had a right to parents who cared about me. Prometheus had a right to his body. And Krisztina had a right to choose her own future. The world didn’t care about any of that, so what makes your birthright so special? We’re all missing something from our lives. That doesn’t mean you get to take over the world.”

“Instead we try to help the world and ensure that others get to have what we were denied,” Adam agreed. “Even Shudder was doing that, in her way.”

“It might seem like you’re nothing without her, Krisztina,” Whisper added. “But you’re already someone to your friends. You know where Valpurgia is going to guide you. If you don’t like the sound of that, then now’s the time to choose your own course.”

Lucas leaned close to whisper. “We’ll protect you.”

There was a tense moment as everyone waited for her answer.

Krisztina looked at her mother. “I’m going with them.”

Lucas smiled. “Good. Then we’re done here.”

He opened a portal behind them and stood to leave.

“Yes!” Adam cheered. “You came here to recruit Lucas and you ended up losing your daughter! How does that feel?”

Valpurgia glared at her daughter, her expression rage-filled enough that Lucas worried she might attack. However, when she spoke her tone was calm. “You’ll return to me, Krisztina. Just as you always have. Both of you will fill your roles.”

Lucas backed through the portal, the others following him. Shudder flipped off Valpurgia just before the portal closed.

He transported them to a couple of other locations just in case she had a way of tracing his portals, ending at the classroom.

“So at least that’s an easy win,” Adam said once they arrived. “All you have to do is not open a portal for her.”

Whisper’s armor vanished, leaving Elise. “I’m not so sure. She was angry, but not defeated.”

Krisztina had gripped Lucas’ arm and was holding tight. “She’s confident that Lucas will open the portal for her whether he agreed tonight or not.”

“If she’s someone Lucas trusted, couldn’t she have mind controlled him into doing it at any time?” Shudder asked.

Lucas had been wondering the same thing. “Let’s assume for now that she can’t. What else does she have?”

“She does these meditation sessions with the regular members of Heaven,” Krisztina explained. “Supposedly they’re for mental health, but really she’s put these sort of magic anchors in their minds so that she can take control whenever she wants. She used random people for the STRIX attack, so she needed to use cognicrystal as the anchor, but she won’t need that with Heaven. She’s also partnered up with Sapphire Dawn, the CEO of Dawn Industries, who has given her these secret advanced exosuits they’ll be piloting.”

Elise began pacing nervously. “That’s bad, but without a portal to her main army, she can’t begin her conquest. That might mean we have time to help them.”

“What about the Seraphinite?” Adam asked.

Krisztina shook her head. “I don’t know what she’s doing with that. But I do know that she’s captured Nova Legion.”

There was an anxious moment of silence.

“What?” Adam asked flatly.

“She can’t open portals like Lucas, but she’s studied interdimensional travel extensively. It’s not easy to transport an army, but transporting a small group is different. She was able to create an artifact that connects to, or maybe contains, some kind of labyrinth dimension. The entire Brazil mission was a trap.”

“So we need to rescue them as soon as we can,” Lucas said.

“There’s also Valkyrie and her plan,” Adam reminded. “Assuming we do want to stop the nanites.”

Lucas shook his head. It was too much to handle. A plan had sat in his mind like a parasite ever since the meeting with Valkyrie. It would put an end to her threat, but it required doing something dangerous and questionably ethical. “We can’t fight two battles at once. We need Valkyrie on our side.”

“Don’t use the phrase ‘lesser of two evils’ as an excuse to join her,” Elise said darkly.

“No, you don’t understand,” Lucas explained. “I don’t mean join her. I mean, we can give her something so valuable that she’ll join us.”

“What?” Adam asked.

Lucas ignored him. “Elise, Angel. I need the two of you to find Valkyrie. Figure out where she’s hiding, but don’t attack or make your presence known. We’ll also need to find something belonging to Snapshot.”

“I have her camera bag,” Elise said.

“Perfect. Adam and Shudder will come with me. Adam, I know you’ll be with me because you care about saving lives more than anyone. But, Shudder, what would you do to save Tlön’s life?”

“Anything,” Shudder replied.

Elise sighed. “Shudder…”

“It doesn’t matter if she really is the monster everyone thinks she is. I can’t let her die.”

Elise looked concerned, but didn’t protest. She must have been able to hear the determination in Shudder’s tone.

“Perfect,” Lucas said, rubbing his hands together. “Then we have a busy evening ahead of us.”