Economos has the wheel like it's the last arcade game on earth, elbows locked, face lit by the dashboard's weak green. The van's engine whines, a tired animal begging for coffee. Out the windshield: a ribbon of two-lane blacktop unspooling into gray-blue pre-dawn. In the passenger seat, Chris bangs time on his thigh and howls along to glam metal like the universe can be bullied into cooperation. In the back, bench seats facing each other, Adrian drums on his knees and harmonizes, shockingly on-key, while Scottie leans back, jacket collar up, palms flat on the cushion to steady the hum in her bones.

They almost feel like a band. For half a mile.

Something red and fast and wrong hits the van square in the snout.

The world tilts.

Metal shrieks, grinding, tearing, the sound of a soda can in the fist of God, then the van tips onto its side. Gravity yanks every loose thing sideways. The radio wheezes one last guitar squeal and dies. Scottie's hip slams the door. Her head snaps, starbursts popping in her vision.

Adrian moves like a reflex he trained into his bones. He's already got an arm around her, pulling her into his chest, shoulder taking the brunt as a laptop cartwheels past and smashes into the wall. He wraps her with both arms, helmeted forearm a bar across her back, body the barricade he's always promised it would be. When the slide stops, hissing metal, dust like burned sugar, he unwinds carefully, eyes checking her face first, then the rest of her, quick and cataloging.

"Hey," He says, breathless, voice too calm, "You good? You good."

The van is on its passenger side now, floor a wall and wall a floor. The bench is a tilted shelf. Chris coughs and swears, boot braced on a window frame, palm on the windshield. Economos dangles from the half-twisted seatbelt like a stunned piñata, eyes big, glasses askew.

A screech cuts through, Eagly, wedged and flapping, pinions trapped under the toppled monitor bank. Scottie shoves off Adrian's chest and scrambles, knees slipping on plexi, to the tangle. She gets fingers under the edge of the laptop and lifts; it's heavier than it looks. Her shoulder screams; she lifts anyway. Adrian slides in beside her and levers the bulk up and away. Eagly yanks his wing free, whacks both of them in the face in a round of offended thank yous, then scrabbles up a rib in the van and perches on a door handle, furious and alive.

"What the fuck was that?" Chris barks, shaking dust from his hair. The answer pounds on the floor-that-is-now-the-wall, THOOM, and the whole van shivers.

Another THOOM. Then a long, vicious scratch. Metal peels under a gloved hand like the skin of fruit.

Light lances through a widening tear. A mask glints, a leering dragon's face in snow-white plating, eyes red like brake lights. The figure grabs the ragged edge of the hole and rips.

The world gets small. Scottie's body goes still all at once, a hard freeze that locks her joints and empties her lungs. She's not thirty; she's sixteen; she's five; she's on the wrong side of a door listening for boots in the hall. She isn't breathing. She can't.

"Dad?" Chris says, voice doing a thing it never does, a break, a boy.

"Oh fuck," Adrian breathes, automatic gun already scraping into his hand.

"What are you doing?" Chris demands, jammed between disbelief and rage.

"What I should've done a long time ago," Auggie says, voice filtered and enormous through the suit's speaker.

He lifts his gauntleted hand; energy builds, a rising hum. Light licks at his palm. He aims into the van like it's a barrel of fish he never loved.

Chris dives left. Adrian yanks Scottie and dives right, curling around her again as the blast tears a smoking hole through the van's rear quarter, daylight and ozone sucked into the cavity. Heat kisses Scottie's cheek; the hair at her temple singes. She doesn't flinch. She can't.

White Dragon steps through like a nightmare in daylight, boots steady on the tilted metal ribs. Adrian doesn't wait for a second shot; he opens up with the automatic, muzzle-flash strobing his face. Bullets ping off the armor, sparks, sparks, sparks. Auggie takes one step back for balance, then another, and Adrian lunges after him, gun spitting, following the enemy out onto the gravel like a dog on a bad leash.

"Adrian!" Chris yells, and the name is a warning and a prayer.

He turns back. Scottie is still a statue. Chris gets to her and hauls her up onto the sideways floor, hands gentler than his voice.

They're off the road by a dozen yards where the van belly-flopped, the first rows of pines making a dark wall.  In the clearing, Adrian is a staccato flash, pulling the pin on a grenade, arm cocked. He throws. The grenade arcs and drops near the gleaming monster suit, whump, a sharp-edged boom that rattles teeth and punches air.

Smoke boils. The suit staggers. The hum of the chest reactor lowers, then rises again, angrier.

"We gotta go," Economos barks, hand on Scottie's arm.

She doesn't move. She can't even blink. Chris doesn't wait, he flips her up and over his shoulder like he did when she was small and he was the only soft place she had. Her breath huffs out; her hands hang. Eagly launches from the van and wheels overhead, screaming.

They run. The woods accept them with slapping branches and uneven ground, needles sucking at boots. Shouts light up behind them, ugly and eager. White hoods pour off the road, a knot of Auggie's faithful in robes and ballistic vests, guns up, bats and tire irons in fists.

"How the fuck did he find you?" Economos pants, crashing through bracken, laptop bag whacking his thigh.

Chris stops. Just, stops. His head snaps up like a horse who hears what you don't, "Fuck."

He shoulders through a screen of saplings toward a oak with a trunk like a safe. He drops Scottie carefully at the roots, back to bark. Her eyes are open; they don't seem to be seeing.

"Be right back," He tells her, too calm, too steady, then rips off his helmet and plunges into the underbrush.

Economos hunkers beside Scottie, peering around the trunk, breath too loud.

"So," He whispers, way too brightly, "Favorite... color? Mine's, uh, blue. It's a strong, nope, I hear myself. I hear it. We can... sit. Sit is good. Trees are... sturdy."

It's nonsense; it's kindness in drag. Scottie stares through him.

Brush tears. Chris staggers back into the little clearing with a fresh string of scratches across his cheek and forehead, blood finding quick roads. A raccoon waddles by behind his calf with an aggrieved dignity, Chris's helmet somehow clipped to its ringed tail, bumping along like a cursed bell.

"Fucking raccoons are hardcore, man," Chris mutters, and his laugh is half a gasp, half a cry.

"Wasn't exactly inconsistent with what I imagined would happen if a man just walked up and grabbed a wild raccoon," Economos says, blinking like he's buffering.

Eagly flares in and perches on a low branch above Scottie's head, head tilting this way and that. He lets out a small, worried chirr. Chris stoops, slides his arms back under Scottie and hoists her again.

"C'mon," He grunts, and they go, running again, lungs burning, feet sliding, the forest grabbing with a thousand small hands.

They break back toward the road, stumbling up the gravel shoulder to a squat white sedan with a door hanging open. Adrian is slumped in the driver's seat, forehead against the wheel, one eye half-open like a doll's. His suit is scorched; blood freckles his temple. He blinks at them like he got here by being poured into the car.

Chris raps his knuckles on the glass, "The door."

Adrian frowns, tries to turn the key that isn't there, then finally finds the latch and shoves the door out with his shoulder, "Wha--hey."

Chris sets Scottie in the backseat; she hits the vinyl like a dropped thought, eyes still glossy. Eagly flutters in after her and plants his warmth on her thighs like a heated blanket with talons. Economos squeezes in beside her, already reaching for the seat lever to scoot up.

"Move," He tells Adrian, tapping the steering wheel.

"Okay."

Chris jams the shifter, tries to back them, tires spin, the wheel balks, alignment a suggestion. He curses. Adrian, operating on pure habit and denial, flips on the radio with two fingers.

"What are you doing?" Chris barks.

"There's no wrong time to rock, motherfucker," Adrian says, automatic.

"Now is. This is the wrong time to rock."

"Disagree," Adrian mutters, but he lets the dial go dead.

Chris works the wheel, grinds them up onto the asphalt, and punches the gas. The car lurches forward into open nothing, then something. Eagly, heavy and alive, shifts on Scottie's legs and pecks Economos's sleeve through the seat gap like he's a broken button. She doesn't react, but some part of her registers weight and heat and the tiny drag of a beak; her fingers flex once against the vinyl.

"How did they find you guys anyway?" Adrian throws the question over his shoulder, eyes scanning the treeline.

"He put a GPS tracking device in Peacemaker's helmet," Economos says, braced and grim.

Adrian swivels and gives Chris the wide-eyed oops face of a man realizing a thing one second too late.

"What?" Chris says, dangerous-flat.

Economos doesn't get to repeat it. Chris stomps the brakes.

Everyone flings forward. Scottie's forehead smacks the back of Chris's seat with a thunk. Pain snaps her out of the freeze like a hand clapping in front of her face.

"Ow, fuck," She manages, one palm flying to her brow.

Chris is already out of the car, wrenches open the trunk, and drags out the duffel bag of helmets.

"I didn't know!" Adrian calls, scrambling out after him, bouncing on his feet, "I thought they were expensive!"

"Fuck!" Chris throws over his shoulder at both of them, at the sky, at himself.

"Oh, I gotta pee so fucking bad," Adrian says, and turns to the nearest tree with the urgency of a man choosing his priorities poorly.

Chris sprints a dozen yards into an open field stippled with dew and chucks the duffel as far as his shoulder will let him. It arcs, lands with a slap in the wet grass. He bends double, hands on his knees, pulls two sharp breaths, and looks up.

A line of white hoods is standing there across the field like chess pieces that hate you. They do not raise their guns. Not yet. They go running.

"Scottie!" Chris roars, turning and sprinting back toward the car.

Economos is already clambering over Scottie's knees to the far door, muttering "Fuck no" as a prayer.

"What the fuck?" Scottie asks, adrenaline finally punching holes in the fog.

"Nazis," Economos pants, popping the latch.

She twists, looks across the ditch to Chris, to the robed figures eating distance, to the man in white steel rising like a nightmare sun behind them. Her brain throws every old memory at the screen at once. Lamar's name flares and vanishes. She follows Economos, too slow. A white hooded body slams into her side and drives her into the gravel. The air leaves her. The hooded man's knee lands on her forearm. Pain sizzles.

Across the road, two more pile onto Chris. They swing bats and iron like it's a sport. He swings back and moves, every motion half fight and half shield, trying to carve a path to her through bodies. Eagly explodes off the backseat and goes for eyes and ears and soft bits, a feathered missile of rage. He takes down one hood; claws rake a second. Chris uses the one heartbeat's space to wrench free and launch himself at the cluster over Scottie.

She finds a tire iron beside the car, fingers closing on cold steel like it's an old friend. She swings, wild, unpretty, effective, the iron catching a kneecap, a wrist. A hood howls and drops. Chris shoulders the other off her and plants a heel in the man's gut. For two seconds, they're free.

The air darkens. A white boot smashes Eagly out of the sky. The eagle pinwheels, slams into the gravel and lies in a vicious tangle of wings and pride.

Scottie's head whips up, and the world goes quiet. The suit towers over them, red eyes bright. Every muscle goes to stone. The freeze pours back in like cold water.

Chris launches, throat-raw, "I'll kill you!"

"You think so?" Auggie says, and the suit's arm pistons, crack, and Chris sails backward a clean eight feet, skids, and ends up on his back in the ditch, breath gone, eyes stunned and blazing.

Auggie turns the speaker up; his voice is a sermon and a hiss, "Forty years ago, God challenged me as He did Abraham. But I was too weak to listen. But not no more!" He plants his boot on Chris's chest and presses; gravel grinds into skin, "I knew you was unclean when you were born! And even more so when you killed your brother."

"That was you," Chris spits, straining against the weight.

"I knew when you listened to that devil music. I knew when you shaved your body like a woman. I knew when you slept with the whοres of polluted blood! And men!" He sneers, voice doubling with the helmet's amplification, "And even more so when you conspired with the forces of Baphomet against the United States of America! But worst of all..." The dragon head swivels; the red eyes find Scottie where she's pushing to her knees, tire iron slipping in her scraped palm, "When you treated that cunt like she's anything more than an undesirable."

He strides to her in three measured steps. His gauntlet wraps her throat, lifts. The world drops away. Boots kick uselessly at air; her hands scrabble, nails scraping steel. The suit's servos whine. Black creeps in at the edges of her sight. She thinks of a tree at six years old and a belt at six-oh-five and Lamar's hand warm on hers and Dylan's bad coffee and Adrian's open palm a place to rest two fingers and Chris whispering be right back like a promise he keeps making and breaks and makes again. There's no air. It goes dark.

A teal blur interrupts the sermon, Adrian, blood on his lip and murder in his eyes, drives a knife deep into a seam under Auggie's arm, "There are gaps in the armor, man!"

Auggie drops Scottie. She hits the gravel and the sky slaps back into color, air burning its way down into her lungs like whiskey. Adrian yanks at the blade; Auggie backhands him with the other arm, and Vigilante skids across the shoulder into the brush, armor ringing like a thrown hubcap.

Economos, who has never been built for heroism and has started doing it anyway, staggers up the ditch bank with the automatic he swore he wasn't good with and rakes the white hoods with a long, panicked burst. They scatter, yelling, bodies diving for cover. Bullets chew bark and cloth. Adrian throws himself across Scottie, arms a cage, helmet over her face as gravel kicks and cracks nearby.

"Stay, hey, stay with me," He blurts, voice high and breathless.

She blinks up at darkness, at his breath ricocheting in the space between metal and skin, at the old fear cracking and the new one getting named.

Chris is moving before the echoes die. He launches at his father with no plan left but fists, hits hard and again and again, knuckles splitting, the suit plates shifting under the barrage. He hammers the mask; it jars, then cracks; one more punch and it shatters off, tumbling into the ditch. Auggie's face under it is all hate and fatherhood and the emptiness in between.

"You killed my brother! You killed Keith!" Chris snarls, and there are tears in the spit, "And you're only right about one thing, I am a piece of shit! I'm a piece of shit for listening to you for all those years! I'm a piece of shit for not killing you in your sleep! I'm a piece of shit for not killing you the moment you laid a fucking hand on Scottie! I'm a piece of shit for ever letting her be your daughter!"

Auggie laughs, a horrible, human sound. Blood ropes from his nose; he bares his teeth in it, "You hit like a girl."

Chris draws the pistol with a motion that is not practice; it is gravity. He plants it on the center of the only face that ever taught him he was wrong for being alive.

"Well, go ahead and do it, you fucking pussy," Auggie taunts, eyes bright with something like joy, "I knew you couldn't do it, you faggоt. 'Cause I control you. Whether or not I kill you, you'll never be able to get the fuck away from m--"

The shot is a flat crack that folds the morning in half.

Auggie's head snaps back. The body lists, then slumps, then crumples. White plates scrape asphalt, red eyes dying. The field goes suddenly loud, wind in grass, a crow somewhere noticing things, Eagly making a small broken noise.

Chris stands there like a scarecrow with his strings cut, pistol low, chest heaving. He looks at the body like it might get up and deliver another sermon. It doesn't.

He turns. He stumbles to the patch of gravel where Adrian is levering himself up on his elbows and Scottie is trying to sit with the world spilling sideways. He drops to his knees so fast the grit bites through his pants. He gathers his sister into his arms with the care of a man holding a bomb he loves and pulls her against his chest. She is breathing, ragged, wet, present. He bends his forehead to hers and breaks.

"I'm sorry," He says into her hair, again and again, voice shredding itself on the words, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--" like he can rewind a life with repetition.

His shoulders shake so hard it knocks both of them. His hand cups the back of her head, big palm covering too much, and he rocks them without meaning to like he's trying to find a rhythm her heart can borrow.

Beneath his cheek, her pulse ticks. Thump. Thump. Thump. She fixes on it the way she used to fix on the washing machine cycle at three a.m., proof of motion, proof of now. She doesn't have a voice yet, so she puts her fingers in his glove, leather creaking, and holds on.

Adrian sits back on his heels, blood in his teeth and awe in his face, breathing like a man who chooses it on purpose. Economos stands five feet away, gun hanging in a hand that forgot how to be a fist, eyes wet and confused and tired.

They lie there in the gravel, a knot of breath and bruises and a history that just ended itself with the loudest period any family ever wrote.

Scottie doesn't process. The world blurs at the edges like a windshield in rain with the wipers off. Her throat is a vise; each breath scrapes raw up a bruised windpipe. Her chest moves because Chris's arms are around her and he's breathing for both of them, shuddering, ugly sobs he can't swallow, and her body remembers how to match a rhythm when the brain short-circuits. She can't tell him to stop touching her hair. She can't tell him anything. She holds him back with both hands fisted in his jacket and cries without sound, salt heat sliding into the grit on her cheeks.

Eventually the motion returns to the world. They move as a knot, Economos hauling open a door, Chris lifting her like she weighs nothing, Adrian hovering, bloody and wide-eyed, into the stolen sedan that smells like bleach and cigarettes. Economos drives because of course he does; competence is a reflex he gets punished for. Chris takes shotgun with Eagly sprawled in his lap like a wounded cat, talons curled gentle into denim, head drooping, feathers askew. Adrian slides in beside Scottie and freezes when she eases down, ginger, pillowing her head in his lap. Trust is heavy; it pins him to the seat.

He inhales to say something, anything, probably the wrong thing, and Chris doesn't even turn around, "If you ruin this moment, I am going to staple a turd to your forehead."

Adrian shuts his mouth so fast his teeth click. He sets both hands in the safest place he can think of: palms open on his thighs, framing her temple, guarding-not-touching. His eyes skate over her face, purpled thumbprints blooming at her throat, gravel rash along one cheekbone, and he swallows rage like battery acid.

Economos brakes crooked. They spill out in levels, Chris first, cradling Eagly; Economos waving his arms at nothing; Adrian gathering Scottie slow and careful from the back seat. The clinic door gives under Chris's shoulder; wind chimes clatter in terror.

"Help!" Chris roars into the linoleum-bright lobby, voice cracking, "Save my best friend! Where's the doctor? Now! And an ice pack--my baby sister needs an ice pack!"

Chris half-sobs a thank-you and barrels after the vet tech through swinging doors, Eagly limp in his arms. Economos hovers in the doorway, jittering. A nurse presses a blue gel pack into Scottie's hand; Adrian sets it soft at the side of her neck, then another over the worst of the swelling. She hisses through her teeth and nods, eyes closing for exactly two seconds.

The waiting room tries to be universal, mint paint, pet calendars, a tabby in sunglasses poster, but it can't drown the metallic tang of adrenaline or the sting of antiseptic. Scottie sits, spine straight because slumping hurts, icepacks forming a collar. Adrian sits so close his knee touches hers but doesn't make a fuss about it; his mouth starts moving anyway.

"So," He says, hushed like a library, "owls actually invented refrigeration. People think it was penguins, but that's propaganda. The first ice box was just an owl sitting very still and glaring at water until it froze. Also, male nurses are awesome. I know one. He once saved a hamster by yelling at it to live. It did. It became governor of, sorry. I'm talking. I'm going to, I'm going to not."

He fails to not. He keeps a stream of soft nonsense going, a blanket of sound. She lets it wash over her because silence tonight is the wrong shape.

The back-room door whooshes. Dr. Hurwitz reappears with two nurses flanking a wheeled table. Eagly is trussed like a feathery burrito, wing splinted, head up because pride refuses sedation. Adrian is on his feet before the table stops rolling, gun out, reflex and paranoia braided. He sights down at the vet, then the nurses, "Don't move."

At that same moment the front door opens and Harcourt and Adebayo slide in, Harcourt already scanning, Adebayo wearing a look that says I have done five impossible things before breakfast.

"Hey, John," Harcourt says, deadpan.

"Thank God you guys are here," Economos blurts, shoulders dropping like a marionette cut.

"What's going on?" Harcourt asks, reading the room in one long blink.

"Dr. Hurwitz kindly stitched up Eagly," Economos says, "and Vigilante's being a total freak."

"Dude, they saw us," Adrian says, gun unwavering, "Peacemaker and I are wanted. What other choice do we have besides killing this veterinarian, this nurse, and this male nurse?"

"You can just say two nurses, man," Adebayo says, eyebrows climbing.

"If I just say 'nurse,' I think people will imagine it as a woman."

"He's standing right there," Adebayo says, pointing at the male nurse, who lifts a polite hand, "We don't have to imagine anything."

"It must be weird waking up every day and being a male nurse," Adrian says, sympathetic and offensive at once.

"You're a fucking busboy," Economos says, hands on hips.

"Oh, great!" Adrian snaps, "Now we definitely have to kill them, because you're giving away stuff about my secret identity."

"Do we really have to kill these people?" Adebayo asks, already tired.

"No," Harcourt says, a flat gavel, "We'll tie them up, and by the time the morning staff comes in, we'll be long gone."

"They've seen our faces," Adrian argues, moral calculus short-circuiting.

"If we can't stop the Butterflies today, it won't matter," Harcourt replies, looking ten years older for two heartbeats.

"Okay," Adrian concedes, lowering the gun an inch, "But we can't use duct tape. That'll hurt their skin when they try to pull it off."

Economos stares, "So you're compassionate about tape but not brutally murdering people?"

Adrian thinks, really thinks, for three seconds, "Yes."

Adebayo peels off down the hallway, phone already to her ear, "I'm calling my wife."

Harcourt turns her attention to Scottie, takes in the icepacks, the bruising, the way she's holding herself like glass, "What happened to you?"

"Ooh, I know!" Adrian says, answering for her, which is both helpful and not, "She nearly got choked to death by her racist, abusive father who, btw, is no longer in the picture."

Harcourt's eyes flash, not pity, not quite; inventory, respect, rage stored for later, and then she looks away to give Scottie dignity.

Down the hall, behind a half-closed door, Adebayo slows. Chris is kneeling beside the operating table where Eagly lies wrapped and blinking, his forehead pressed to the steel edge, hands clasped like a child learning how to pray from TV.

"God," He says, voice thick and scraped raw, "please bring back my best pal, Eagly. And I never should've left him in my father's garage for four years when I went to prison. I should've found somebody better to take care of him. Like an ugly girl who was desperate for love, who would've done anything I wanted when I was locked up. And, you know, I could've just broke up with her the moment I got out. I probably wouldn't even had to hɑvе sеx with her, right? Yeah, you know... probably just once, you know, to be nice. And probably 'cause I was getting out of prison, I'd want to anyway, it wouldn't have even been a chore. But I was selfish. And I was a bad friend to Eagly. The only one besides Keith that ever loved me for real... or Scottie... but I think she hates me and... and I just want my little Scottie-girl back, too. Oh, fuck. Please, God... I'll do anything you want. Just please, please... give me my sister back and keep Eagly alive."

As if on cue, Eagly squawks, affronted and awake. Chris's head snaps up.

"Buddy?"

Another squawk. Eagly pushes up, wobbly, and then spreads both wings and wraps them around Chris's shoulders. A hug. Chris gasps like a man seeing a magic trick he invented. Adebayo's mouth parts; she lifts her phone and snaps a photo, the act automatic and reverent.

Minutes later they reconvene in the employee break room, microwave, stale coffee, a corkboard with business cards, a cat calendar turned to the wrong month. Scottie sits at the end of the table, icepack fresh and cold, voice nowhere to be found but eyes back in her skull where they belong. Adrian hovers at her flank like a sentry who brought jokes to a gunfight.

"Hey," Adebayo says, tucking her phone away with a guilty glance, "We should get a move on killing this cow."

"What about your wife?" Harcourt asks, not unkindly.

"Well, she's upset," Adebayo admits, "But she gets it... sort of."

"Okay," Economos says, clapping his hands once like he can organize fate, "How do we do this without Murn?"

"We have someone else we can trust to lead us," Adebayo says.

"Me?" Economos perks.

"No. Fuck, no," She says automatically.

All eyes turn to Harcourt. She squares her shoulders; leadership fits her like a plate she's tired of carrying but will carry anyway, "The butterflies breathe our air and drink our water, but our food sources don't keep them alive. So they had to transport a creature from their planet across the galaxy. And now we know they keep it in the cavern below the barn on Coverdale Ranch. There, they milk the beast for the amber fluid. To stop the butterflies, all we have to do is kill the cow. Without it, they won't be able to stay alive for more than a couple of weeks. However, they almost certainly know that we're on our way to do that now. Which means they'll do what they can to move the cow out before we get there. According to what Ads and I overheard, teleportation. I'm guessing they can move it to one of their other enclaves around the country, which means, to us, they will be lost forever, and all of our work goes to waste. Hopefully, we can make it there before they make their move."

"And then we go in there," Adrian says, eyes bright like a kid retelling his favorite movie, "and we kick ass like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

"They get slaughtered at the end of that film," Economos says.

"Bro, there's a freeze-frame and we hear a bunch of bullets. That doesn't mean they died."

"Yes, it does."

"I don't think so. I think they jumped over those bullets right after that freeze-frame."

"Well, that's an exceedingly optimistic interpretation."

"Both things are equally possible."

"No, they're not."

"Well, whichever one you believe says a lot about your character."

"Yeah, about how insane you are."

Adrian laughs, unabashed, "Economos, I love this back-and-forth thing we have going. It's not as deep as, like, what Peacemaker and I have, but it's fucking cool."

"Whatever the case..." Chris says from the doorway, Eagly tucked gentle against his chest in a nest of gauze and dignity. His face is blotchy; his eyes are clear, "I'm in."

"Hashtag MeToo," Adrian says, raising a finger like he's pledging allegiance to chaos.

"I guess," Economos sighs.

"Yeah," Adebayo adds, jaw set.

Silence holds a beat. Then Scottie, voice a shredded rasp that sandpapers the room, croaks, "Same."

Heads whip toward her. Chris's entire body flinches, "Scottie-girl, no."

She lifts a palm, wait, and keeps going, each word pulled through barbed wire, "Chris... I wanna help my brother save the world."

He opens his mouth, shuts it, looks at the hand that once pulled her from cribs and closets and car wrecks of his own making. He nods, one consent, one apology, one vow, and swallows the thousand things he wants to say.

Harcourt pushes a map across the table, already moving.

"Then let's move."

Adrian nudges a fresh ice pack toward Scottie like a bouquet. She presses it to her throat, meets his eyes, and nods. He beams like a fool who just got knighted.

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