Within seconds of that conversation, I’d landed and so had not only Daniel and Izzy, but we’d also been joined by Sean, Dayton, Camille, Sydney, Vaughn, and Haley. Jaclyn had already been on the ground, of course.

Cassie, Julie, and Rachel all opted to stay on the roofs of the buildings around Justice Fist’s base. It wasn’t a bad idea. For all we knew, Jody had signaled for help. Someone needed to be in position to act.

Upon landing (Justice Fist seemed to have metal woven into their costumes), Dayton looked around the yard and said, “Wow. What a mess.”

I hadn’t had time to take it all in during the fight, but I couldn’t argue. Cassie had been using her gun to both intimidate and blind Jody. While the blinding light hadn’t done much, the shots fired to scare and redirect Jody burned long lines in the grass. At the same time, Jaclyn’s footsteps had been pushing her forward at hundreds of miles per hour with hundreds or thousands of pounds of force behind each one.

She’d left holes with each footprint.

If that weren’t enough, Izzy’s sonic blast did more damage than I’d realized. While I’d noticed the crater where Jody had been hit and the damaged window behind him, I hadn’t fully appreciated that Izzy had been aiming down at an angle. That meant that Jody’s crater lay in the middle of a streak of destruction that began at least ten feet ahead of him and ended more than 20 behind him.

Sean shrugged, “It’s just grass, but yeah, it’s a lot in that little time.”

I turned toward him, “There aren’t any gas or water lines around here, are there?”

Sean shook his head, “Nah. Futuremen chose this site because they could be turned off or weren’t used or something. Best practices, I guess.”

Nodding toward Justice Fist’s base, Daniel said, “I can read Jody’s mind now, but I’d rather do it somewhere less public.”

Sean glanced down at Jody, frowned and said, “Yeah. That’s better. I can fly him in. He won’t wake up, will he?”

Daniel shook his head, “Not likely. You can’t ever know for sure, but I didn’t sense anything in him that resisted any more than a normal person.”

A few minutes later, all of us but Rachel, Cassie, and Julie were sitting in the conference room at the top of Justice Fist’s tower. We’d flown in through door-sized open windows—which was cool.

Sean had floated Jody and Dayton back in, placing Jody in the chair he’d been sitting in before the fight. They’d tipped the chair back, allowing it to seem like Jody might be intentionally sleeping through the meeting.

It felt in character to me, but I couldn’t deny that I might be biased.

“I’d like to look through his memories,” Daniel said, looking from Dayton to Sean. “Are you okay with that? I know I already asked, but I want to make sure because once we’ve done it, there’s no going back.”

Dayton glanced over at Sean but said, “I think I speak for both of us in this. I think we have to know what’s going on. We know Jody’s messed up, but he’s always been loyal to us. I mean, yes, he’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole.”

Via implant, Vaughn told me, “I’m not touching that—in more than one sense. And by the way, how cool is this? Have you and Daniel been making comments like this all your lives?”

“Sometimes,” I replied, realizing that with everyone using them, I might finally have to set up my implant’s traffic management rules.

Daniel nodded, “Okay. Then I’ll do it now. I’m going to be looking for when he started working with Magnus, what he’s deliberately done for Magnus, and if there are any hints that he might not be fully willing. I’ll be conferencing in Julie to help with that last part. Any objections?”

Sean shook his head, “Dayton’s right. We’ve got to know. We chose to work with your dad and the Defenders because we were worried about Futuremen Capital’s connection to Magnus. It’s kind of our fault. We didn’t make Jody join Magnus, but we worried that he might.”

“Alright,” Daniel closed his eyes and I could feel him reach out to me. I’m going to bring in Julie, but I think I need to bring you in too. With Jody maybe also being a baby Artificer, I might need the help.

I caught the implications of the words. He might need me for defense. Remembering how something that might have been Magnus attacked me in the in-between space, I couldn’t rule out that Jody could do the same.

Okay, I thought back. Aloud, I told Haley (who was sitting next to me), “The Mystic may be bringing me in too. So if I slump forward um… catch me before the Rocket suit damages the table?”

Haley’s eyes widened, “Oh no. I’ll try.”

With that, the world around me disappeared. Daniel, Julie, and I stood on the beach near Grand Lake—not the main beach. That was a state beach. This was a county beach. It was maybe 100 feet wide and 20 feet deep, the sand ending in wet soil, grass, and pine trees. Though the trees hid it, farmland started past the ten-car parking lot on the other side of the nearest street.

Haley and I had visited a few times. Why? Because almost nobody used it. If you wanted a place where you could make out uninterrupted, it worked, provided the occasional scent of cow manure didn’t ruin the mood.

In this memory, it was mid-afternoon, the sun bright and the waves rough. Jody and a muscular, white-haired man stood on the beach. They weren’t making out.