2103:12:09:20:59:33

  My team, Echo Team, consisted of Mantellan, Rhennish, March, LieSpy, Peakstar and myself. It was a team that, bar Peakstar, I could’ve predicted I’d be in.

  Without Crowsong, I was an unattached vigilante, so I’d need to slot in some other group of people that were already more familiar with each other, and with me as well. The Sentinels thus made sense. And while LieSpy wouldn’t have shared our close real-life connection we shared, Peakstar thought of us as having bonded after the whole bridge debacle.

  As for Peakstar, well, someone of either the Wardens or the Guardians would need to serve as our link to their communications network. And since LieSpy was here, it would be the logical conclusion that that figure would be a Warden. Add to that the fact that LieSpy was the sole member of either of the two official hero teams, and it would make sense to put Peakstar, as the Prospectus’ manager – or director, or leader, or whatever her title was – with her.

  Yes, it was all very logical. Very well thought out. Very… prepared, for an operation whose participants weren’t a hundred percent sure beforehand. Like they’d planned that everyone would be willing to go through with it despite the abruptness of it all.

  Maybe the rumors of there being some sort-of teamwork-based masked working behind the scenes was true after all.

  Our helicopter – which wasn’t a helicopter by the way, but an anti-gravity vehicle called the Silverhawk Anti-Gravitational Light Covert Hover Carrier made decades ago by a maker called, you guessed it, Silverhawk. Not that anyone besides official documents, military experts, dedicated hobbyists and the overly pedantic called it anything other than a helicopter. Just like every rotorcraft gets labelled a helicopter.

  One of those people was March, apparently. Her officer-like uniform wasn’t just a coincidence or stylistic, but aspirational apparently.

  But anyway, our helicopter headed for our target in Little Europe. Ours was one of three heading there, as it seemed the Jannacht had both focused and found a relatively warm welcome in the district. Something to do with their origin as European refugees fleeing the sunken continent to New York, or so Peakstar explained.

  How a villainous gang could garner goodwill from it fifty-nine years after the fact, I didn’t understand. Sure, they’d helped people, but they’d done so in the way that ethnicity- or culture-based organized crime often helped ‘their’ people: self-servingly. That same help had propelled them to one of the few intercontinental crime organizations in the world still around. And yet, stories were still passed down from generation to generation that these villains were somehow good?

  It baffled me, no matter how many times Peakstar tried to explain it. It was a different time, I suppose.

  “-so in 2088, Triton Air & Energy built their own antigrav hover carrier based off of Silverhawk’s model with the support of the North American Governor Jorry J. Herbert, but their first open launch ended up killing the man!” March was still rambling on excitedly about that same topic. I let her, mostly because it was better than her flipping between somber and irritated. “Some say it was an assassination aimed at the governor himself for his pro-corporatist, anti-Guardians tendencies, while other say it was actually a conspiracy by Silverhawk’s estate and old Guardian colleagues to discredit the Triton’s-”

  Peakstar held up a hand to signal everybody to be quiet, but I had to elbow March three times before she finally got the hint. LieSpy giggled softly at the antics from my other side.

  There was a moment of silence as Peakstar listened to OP-COM. Then, she said, “Echo Team ready at location. Standing by,” and turned to the helicopter’s pilot. “Lower to operational parameters,” she ordered, and after the pilot giving the affirmative, the helicopter started noiselessly dropping altitude.

  Peakstar turned to us. “Operations Command says the other teams are almost ready. Mantellan?”

  He nodded. From a hidden pocket somewhere, he took out a feather. He clasped his hands together around it, then put his wrists to his mouth. In words that would’ve been unheard in a louder vehicle, he whispered, “Lofty air, grant us this boon – featherlight under waxing moon.”

  The mage – or caster-alter, but he had said he preferred the older term – opened his palm and from it burst six yellow-golden feathers, one for every person. They shot in the air and slowly drifted to their intended target, absorbing into our bodies without a trace. The spell would give each of us a much, much lower terminal velocity for-

  “Should last about ten minutes,” Mantellan said.

  Not that any of us really needed it besides the man himself, and maybe Rhennish. I could shift into any bird, LieSpy had bragged she could lift herself with her telekinesis, March could summon a pair of harpies or jetpack soldiers and slow her descent, while Peakstar had both a standard variety super-flight along with the ability to shift into light and fly off that way. Even Rhennish might be able to use his water jets to slow his fall enough to touch ground lightly.

  But the point of this wasn’t to slow our fall; the point was to do so without being noticed. Aside from mine and LieSpy’s, each method would risk alerting our targets.

  “Should be enough,” Peakstar said, then turned to us, the juniors. “Remember, try to aim for the backyard of the house next to it.”

  LieSpy rolled her head exaggeratedly, crossed her arms and muttered, “Yes, Mom.”

  Peakstar pointed her finger shot of a tiny laser a millimeter in diameter at LieSpy’s forehead. Though it scattered harmlessly on the half-dome (or was it a quarter dome since it didn’t cover all of the back?) helmet, LieSpy grabbed her head and cried, “This is abuse; I know my rights! Corporal punishment of a student is forbidden, says so right in the Code of Education.”

  I snorted and March giggled at the reaction.

  “Disciplining a soldier in an active combat situation is permissible as long as it is neither cruel, protracted, harmful, violent or otherwise detrimental to long-term wellbeing, morale and unit cohesion,” Peakstar said as if quoting it directly from a handbook. “And from what I see, I just raised morale.”

  LieSpy scoffed and opened her mouth to complain, but once more Peakstar’s hand went up. LieSpy mock cowered and Peakstar put her hand down.

  A second later, the Warden stiffened in her seat. “Alright people, mission’s a go!”

  She stood up – though not fully since the ceiling was too low – and slid open the door to the outside. Air rushed in, but not too loudly or in great volumes; antigrav didn’t produce winds and it wasn’t like there was a storm going on outside.

  “Gents first,” our leader said.

  Mantellan stood up and casually stepped out of the helicopter. Rhennish jumped immediately after.

  “Your turn kids.”

  March stood closest to the exit and stood near its edge, hesitant. Peakstar grabbed her by the shoulders and leaned in close, pointing down. At Mantellan and Rhennish if I had to guess. March nodded shakily and jumped.

  I was next and had no such issues. I dove out of the helicopter head first.

  Only to be left mildly disappointed. There were no roaring winds flying past my ears, no floppy bits of my crown getting swept backwards or waving with the flow of air rushing by, nor heart-pumping adrenaline or fun feeling of weightlessness in my stomach. Instead I fell at a sedate pace, like going down an escalator except at a ninety-degree angle.

  Disappointing, but my position did allow me to view the land underneath us, along with our target.

  This particular area of Little Europe was closer to Greenside’s border than Aberdeen’s or Riverside’s. It was on the southern edge of the city proper, right before where Cascadia’s forests and hills regained their dominance. It wasn’t quite rural, but the houses were built far apart and, while not quite mansion-sized like those in western Bayside, the Old European-style country houses weren’t small.

  Our target wasn’t any of those houses though. Instead, it was a comparatively small warehouse with an incredibly large surrounding lot where, I figured, as much as twenty trucks could park themselves and their trailers with relative ease. What purpose the warehouse used to fill, I didn’t know, but considering its surroundings, maybe it had been part of a logging company? Might’ve even been a part of the defunct Intra-Cascadian Logging and Furniture Company – the logging counterpart to Crowsong and I’s old furniture warehouse.

  I followed the trail of the heroes below me to the far-reaching backyard of the house, touching down after near a minute of falling. I wondered if the owners knew we were here.

  Once everyone was on the ground, Peakstar turned to me. “Your turn.”

  I nodded, turned into an owl and flew over the fence to our target location.

  I looked around, but saw no patrols or people standing guard. There were a few security cameras strewn about all over the building itself, though the long poles interspersed right behind the fence specifically made to hold them didn’t seem to have any. Likely, the Jannacht had wanted to blend in, and a bunch of security cameras suddenly appearing along the perimeter would’ve triggered some people’s (justified) sense of paranoia.

  Seeing little else of note aside from a few random cars around docking zone, I returned, warning my comrades with a hoot before descending and shifting next to them.

  I explained to them what I’d seen.

  “About what we expected. Mantellan?” Peakstar said.

  The vigilante nodded and again took out an item: two lenses, like that of a pair of glasses. Rather than cup his hands like before, he spread his arms wide before drawing them in towards himself in a circling spiral. Out of interest, I tracked his fingers and saw them bend and twist seemingly at random, but in doing so, leave in their wake a trail of slowly-coalescing blue mist turning into symbols.

  He drew his hands close to each other and pushed his wrists together, shaping his hands like he was holding a bowl. The lenses floated, then disintegrated into sigils that swirled about in bands, floating within his hold. He said, “Blind our light,” to it, and a shimmering soap-bubble burst forth from his hand to cover all six of us. I attempted to touch its edge, but my fingers slipped through the barrier like it was nothing.

  “Good. Let’s go.” Peakstar led us out of the back gate and towards the warehouse.

  We reached the fence without issue. Rhennish pointed a finger at the fence’s wires, shooting a very low volume, high-powered jet of water sharp enough to cut through it. Like a blow-torch made of water.

  After some time, there was a hole in the fence, and the water disappeared as Rhennish stopped using his power. We marched through the hole one by one, taking our first steps onto our destination proper.

  “How long?” Peakstar whispered to Mantellan.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “Three minutes, twenty seconds,” he responded.

  The Warden nodded and, “Let’s pick up the pace,” we started jogging towards the warehouse wall. Once there, she asked, “LieSpy, how many do you sense?”

  LieSpy turned and stared at the wall, unmoving for ten seconds before turning back around. “Fifteen total.”

  “Can you tell how many masked?”

  LieSpy shook her head. “The thoughts of the closest four say they aren’t, but…” She shrugged.

  Peakstar rubbed her chin in thought.

  “I can scout?” I suggested.

  She shook her head. “Not enough time. The other operations are already ongoing. They’ll figure out the scale of it soon and then sound the alarm. The element of surprise is still our greatest advantage here, so it’s better to go in hard and fast, hit them before they can organize.”

  She turned her head to March. “Marching Orders, call two ranged, quick-fire and non-lethal. Ring after I breach the wall and target henchies before masked.”

  March nodded and prepared her bells.

  Peakstar turned to us. “LieSpy and Jester, focus on their juniors. When you’re done, or if there are none, help Marching Orders with the henchies.”

  I nodded and LieSpy thumbs-upped

  “Rhennish and Mantellan, we’ll-” the mage’s bubble of quiet popped around us, but Peakstar continued undisturbed, “-focus fire on the first villain we see. We try and burst them down before focusing on another, but if we can’t, I’ll engage the first while you focus on the other, alright?” They nodded, and Peakstar said to all of us, “As for how each of you reach your goal, I trust everyone to know their capabilities best. Everybody agree?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Good. Stand behind me.”

  We did. I preemptively shifted into an ostrich. March took her ringing stance. Water bubbled underneath Rhennish’s feet. Mantellan whispered and gestured another spell. LieSpy… probably prepared herself one way or another, even if nothing was visible.

  Peakstar raised her hand, pinpricks of light forming at the tips of her fingers. They grew brighter until ten beams shot forth, hitting the wall in a circular pattern. She then twisted her hand and the beams completed the circle, rotating at blazing speeds while rapidly spiraling inward. It took at most a second before that section of the wall was turned into fist-sized chunks.

  She transformed fully, shifting into a spear of light and shooting off into the warehouse.

  I followed immediately after, entering second.

  Like Amber and my now-ruined base, the interior was devoid of machines, workspaces, offices or anything else that betrayed its original purpose. Instead, it looked like a training facility with a shooting range, boxing bags and training equipment, as well as a lounging area eerily similar to, if larger than, our own.

  There were also, as LieSpy had said, fifteen people loitering about. Three of them were already on the move after Peakstar’s lightshow, while the rest were still getting accustomed to what was happening.

  Peakstar had found an opponent further in, blasting the figure – Auroran, if his rainbowed silhouette was anything to go by – with a numerous rays of light, some lasting and some not, all with seemingly little effect. Auroran’s radiant shield held, Peakstar’s light-rays breaking and splitting apart.

  As for the rest, there were eight henchies now rapidly looking to arm themselves, three already armed though not yet fully turned towards us, and three villains besides Auroran: Snorkel, Acute Puncture and Ricochet.

  I made a split-second decision to go after Acute Puncture rather than Snorkel.

  Long bird legs carried ostrich-me to Acute Puncture at full speeds. The junior villain was still frozen in shock at the suddenness of the attack, but when I was right about to crash into the villainous fencer, she dashed back and as far away as she could, leaving behind her trademarked purple smear.

  I gave chase; the furthest she could dash was a couple of meters. In an instant, I was right in front of her again, she dashed forward and past me, leaving me running headlong toward a concrete wall.

  I pulled my feet off the ground and quick-shifted twice, ostrich to base to rabbit. Rabbit-me smacked into the wall with great force, but not enough to really wound. I leaped myself off of the wall and in Acute Puncture’s direction, quick-shifting again to end up an ostrich once more.

  Rather than face me head-on, the villain dashed to the side and through an aisle between two towering pellet racks filled with crates.

  I turned to follow and found her standing at the far end with her back against the wall. Right beside her were two steel beams supporting the roof – in her haste, she’d inadvertently ended up trapping herself. If she wanted to get out, she’d have to go through me, and this time there was no space for her to go past.

  “Goddamn fuckin’-” Acute Puncture cursed as she fiddled with her belt, trying her best to unsheathe her maker-rapier.

  I ran forward as quick as I could, hoping to reach her before she got it out.

  But right as I’d left the aisle, just two meters away from my target, a dark blur tackled me from the right partway through, throwing me against the wall. My rib bones cracked and my neck got whiplash from the impact alone, a feeling only worsened when my body hit the wall a second later.

  I shifted back before the pain could become to much, and took a second to catch my breath.

  As I let the phantom pain bleed away, I saw Ricochet bounce from where he’d struck me into to the wall above me, then toward the ceiling before finally diving at an angle back to wherever he’d come from. All in less than a second.

  And right as I got ready to shift again, Acute Puncture stepped out of from behind her little alcove, blade in hand.

  She turned to me.

  I shifted into a ferret, and not a moment too soon. Acute Puncture slammed rapier first into the wall where I’d just stood at, her blade penetrating the concrete all too easily.

  She pulled her rapier out from the wall and looked down.

  I didn’t wait and dashed away, not wanting to test if the rapier had an edge as sharp as its point. The sword swung right overhead as I ducked underneath the pallet racks to a place Acute Puncture couldn’t reach.

  I’d failed to take her down quickly enough, and now she was armed and ready. While I could keep her busy, I figured my time was better used taking down Snorkel with LieSpy – if she hadn’t done so by herself already. If I could do so quickly, I had no doubt she could use her mind powers to knock Acute Puncture out while I absorbed the hits.

  On the other side of the rack, in the aisle between the two, I shifted twice and ostrich-ed up before running back in the direction where I’d first come from while turning my head to look behind.

  Acute Puncture appeared at the alley’s entrance. She moved to put her rapier in front of her and got ready to dash while I quickly -

  The rack to my right suddenly tilted as Auroran’s shining self got pushed into it by a jet of Rhennish’s casted water. The rack leaned further and further back, the crates upon it shifting and adding to the weight.

  Eventually, it leant too far and fell, hitting the second rack and pushing it over as well. The crates were now in freefall, a whole avalanche of them converging on the aisle below, right where I stood on me.

  I quick-shifted into rhino to take the hit. Crates shattered on my back, hay and packaging foam bursting from them along with all sorts of contraband – electronics, pots and pans, and even a toilet for some reason. All shattered, broke or bounced off of me, but while it hurt enough to bruise, my thick skin, muscle and bone resisted.

  But even so, it was a too-tight fit and worse, my plan to rapidly move to LieSpy’s aid foiled.

  Annoyed, I looked at the rack and saw the culprit, Auroran, was still buried within it, the metal of it warping around him from the impact. He looked to be in a daze, but would no doubt shake it off.

  Deciding to get a bit of revenge, I pushed back against the fallen rack with much power as I could muster in these cramped confines. And as the weight of the rack had diminished with each fallen crate, it turned out to be surprisingly easy to push back.

  It wasn’t long before I tipped it over the edge, and it started falling the other way. Auroran, trying his best to get out of his improvised prison, screamed, “No!” before the pellet rack tipped beyond the point of no return.

  It crashed to the floor with a deafening, resounding and definitive clang! He made no noise after.

  For a brief moment, I turned to base form and climbed a still-whole crate to get a better look at the situation.

  Outside my immediate area, back from where Peakstar had blasted a hole in the wall, I saw LieSpy face off against Snorkel. He’d managed to gather enough water to create waves, but his attacks were useless against my friend. Every wall of water he sent crashed against an invisible wall thrown up by a gesture of LieSpy’s hands. His control was also less fine than it had been when I’d fought him, and he was less innovative than he had been with me. From the way he held himself – exhausted and in pain – LieSpy must be attacking him mentally at the same time, though why he hadn’t collapsed like Mauvist had that one time escaped me. Maybe it was because Snorkel was a whole person and not one mind spread over twelve or so bodies? Or the effort to create her invisible barrier dragged down her ability to attack.

  Some distance away from LieSpy, March was wrapping up her fight with the henchies. Two red-shaded ghostly soldiers wielding some form of high-tech electric-rifles were continuously zapping a group of four henchies, arcs of electricity looking them in place. The other seven were already on the ground, six of them secured while March was busy tying up the seventh.

  Of Ricochet, Peakstar and Rhennish, I saw nothing.

  Mantellan was air-walking over the rack I’d just knocked down, heading towards Auroran. It seemed like he had been the one to have thrown Auroran into that rack. And now that I thought about it, the metal wrapping around Auroran was likely his doing.

  He gestured and a spell shot towards where Auroran lay under the rack. The metal began to bubble and curl, but before I could finish watching the show, Mantellan saw me look.

  He pointed behind me, back from where I’d come.

  I turned around. Boxes strewn about, racks tilted over; the geography of the area had changed. And at the other end, cornered between it all, was Acute Puncture, unable to dash out of the debris field. She was trying to make her way through the crates and smuggle-ware, cursing as she hacked, slashed, kicked and clambered through the incidental fortifications.

  I gave him a quick nod, transformed into a crow and flew just above the villain before diving down. I shifted out of crow form, ready to tackle her much like I did in our first encounter.

  Either through instinct, training or experience, she looked up at the right time to perform a power-fueled dash backwards along her carved-open path within the debris field.

  Using yesterday’s sambo lesson on falling, I turned my fall into a roll and wound up standing right in front of her face.

  She stumbled back in surprise. It was a power-fueled one, but her feet hit a crate right behind her, stopping her dead cold. Desperately, she tried swinging her sword and carve me open, but I grabbed her arm long before it could. I then placed my leg in front of her body and, using my hold on her sword arm, shoulder-threw her on to the floor.

  “Every fucking time-” She tried to stand up, but I pushed her back onto the floor hard, pushing the air out of her lungs.

  With her disabled and my knee on her back, I reached for my utility belt and-

  I frowned. I’d never gotten it back from security at Rennie Island.

  Before I could start cussing out the Wardens, I heard a, “Need a hand?” from behind me. Mantellan had floated over, arms already moving in what was no-doubt a binding spell of some sort.

  “Yes please,” I said.

  As I held Acute Puncture, he continued his gesturing, until saying, “Now.”

  I let go and stepped back.

  Before Acute Puncture could stand, a green orb slammed into her. Vines began sprouting from the area of impact, wrapping the junior villain up as she, as with every other case I’d met her, kept cursing at me. It lasted only until the vines wrapped around her mouth.

  “Does anyone-” I tried, but was interrupted.

  “LieSpy and March are both done,” Mantellan said. “The henchies and Snorkel secured. As for Ricochet…”

  He trailed off. Then, to my puzzlement, he turned around and started creating another spell, shouting, “Exergy to entropy – disperse and bind!” A panel sprang into being one-and-a-half meters to his right, hovering in the air. And as it came into being, I saw a part of his right foot disintegrate in a flash of light.

  Before I could react, Ricochet blasted through the garage, tearing through the metal with ease and making the air whistle with hurricane-level winds. He shot straight at where Mantella had cast his barrier.

  Immediately, all the force he’d built up vanished, with the villain himself hanging suspended in the air, twitching like he was being shocked. Mantellan looked not-at-all bothered by the noise – or the lack of foot – and murmured another spell to bind Ricochet before letting him drop.

  Peakstar floated in from outside riding a beam of light, with Rhennish skating in right after her.

  “That’s the last of them,” Mantellan declared to the pair.

  I looked at his half-foot for a second, before deciding on another question instead. “How did you know?” I asked, referring to Ricochet.

  “Hm?” the floating hero turned around. I gestured toward Ricochet. “Oh, that. Well, my noggin might be old and slow, but that’s nothing a simple spell can’t fix.”

  That was…

  “Everyone done here?” Peakstar asked, flying forward until she was next to Mantellan. She looked at the two bound villains, then to me. “Good job with Acute Puncture, Jester,” she told me matter-of-factly.

  I blinked at the unexpected praise – not the praise itself, but the person saying it. “Thanks.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Pick her up and put her with Snorkel. We’ll need to get them ready for transport.”

  X

  The villains were loaded into the helicopter, all except Auroran. As he was still in his shifter state, still a featureless rainbow silhouette and still with his powers at the ready, we couldn’t put him in the helicopter. It would be a risk to transport him safely regardless, and putting him in with the other villains would only make any escape attempt worse both in terms of their possible success as well as impact if they managed.

  Right now, LieSpy kept him unconscious artificially, but having her transport the villain was not a risk the Wardens were willing to take. So we were waiting for either Needle Knight, Antibaronne or Malachite could help us. The first two had anti-power powers perfectly suited for such things, while Malachite could buff and debuff people.

  As for the henchies, they were to be loaded into regular prisoner transport as soon as they arrived.

  The rest of the operations – according to Peakstar – had been mostly a success. Five of the locations had been empty of masked by the time they arrived, which was the opposite of what the Wardens-Guardians leadership had hoped for. They’d expected to catch the villains with overwhelming force while they were divided, with two, maybe three villains per location and one or two locations empty. Instead, five had been empty, and the rest had gotten twice the number of masked they’d predicted.

  Whether that was wrong intel, wrong timing, lucky augury on the Jannacht’s part or an internal policy change of the Jannacht wasn’t clear.

  In the other great success beside ours, Karlomagus, Carceran, Babayanna and Charmer had been captured alongside many henchies.

  The final raid had been less of a success. Medea and Itentyrant had been captured, but Communard and Manny Vester were killed after their combined powers – one called soldiers while the other called weapons – proved a lot more difficult than expected, with the Warden Hecaterion and the solos Bruce Spruce and Flotsam dying as a result. Five henchies likewise had gotten killed in the process.

  It was likely none on either side were permanently killed since Jauntiste could teleport resurrectors in from the hospital, or vice versa – but it wasn’t ideal.

  Still, it was a great blow against the Jannacht in the city. If the captures stuck, it meant that the Jannacht had lost a total of seventeen masked in the course of the Jannacht Wars, leaving five active: Darkstar, Soliloquy, Endoida, Featherpiercer and Gadfly.

  Unfortunately, those were heavy hitters (aside from Gadfly, a junior), and the Jannacht was international. Even if they couldn’t free their friends from prison, they had plenty of reinforcements. The question now was if they’d deemed Charm worth it to keep sending people, or if it was better to cut their losses.

  “You holding up alright?” I said to LieSpy.

  “For the third time: yes. Keeping someone unconscious is easy.” She said that, but I could hear the exhaustion in her voice. While keeping someone under might be a simple thing, she’d also fought Snorkel right before that, which mustn’t have been easy.

  “Just making sure,” I said. “It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.”

  LieSpy snorted. “You guys could pose for the cameras. Get yourself some fans.”

  The ‘cameras’ weren’t journalists – it was too soon after for that – but civilians who’d gotten out of bed after the noise had died down and the announcement systems in the area gave everyone the all-clear. They were now busy filming or livestreaming with their phones, and approaching the heroes to ‘interview’ them.

  “Hell no,” March interjected. “Did it once, and never again. They are waaaay too comfortable with asking personal questions.”

  Thankfully, Peakstar and Mantellan – foot restored with another spell and a load of medical supplies – took most of the attention, freely explaining what had happened and how great a success this operation had been to whoever was or would be watching on the other side. Rhennish was a bit behind them, keeping himself busy warding off whoever wanted to approach the henchies, Auroran, or us.

  “Oh yeah,” LieSpy said, commiserating. “I remembered my first heroic debut. I helped track down and capture a smalltime villain by the name of Flock Locksplit along with some of his fences. The Wardens decided to make a whole ordeal out of it, complete with a press conference, interviews, articles and everything.” She shuddered at the memory. “Hours and hours of media training, yuck. Never again.”

  “Should’ve become a vigilante,” I said.

  “Meh,” LieSpy said with a shrug. “Maybe. But then I wouldn’t have been able to tell my parents. And I doubt I could sneak out of my home every other night without alarming them.”

  I shrugged. “I manage just fine.”

  She scoffed. “Yeah right.”

  I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She looked at me, then glanced at March, who was looking at us uncomfortably. Right, she doesn’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t get too personal.

  “Whatever. I’m great at sneaking around. Crowsong told me so, and she-” I clamped my mouth shut. Nearly forgot she was supposed to be dead.

  Thankfully, March took me cutting myself of as forgetting, then remembering my mentor had died. “Oh Jester,” she said, somewhat awkwardly patting me on the back. “It’s alright. I’m sure that she’d be very proud of you.” What an awkward way to express-

  No. Awkward or not, it was very kind of her to try and comfort me.

  Still, it left me in a bit of a bind on how to respond. I looked to LieSpy, hoping for some help, but she just stared at me, mouth twisting like she wanted to make a comment without knowing which comment.

  “Thanks,” I said softly.

  The gratitude was genuine, but all it did was make me feel even worse. March was growing on me, but it felt like all of it was built on a lie. A shared grief that wasn’t shared at all.

  Thankfully, we were interrupted by the arrival of a convoy ready to relieve us of our captures.