“The one good thing is that we don’t have to worry about how to keep them imprisoned. The bad, I guess, is that we have no chance of that. Now that I think about it, the base had teleportation blockers. They shouldn’t have been able to take anyone from upstairs at all.”

Rachel glanced over at me, “I think they’re off. I tried to get over here and help as soon as they appeared, but I couldn’t float through the walls. I found that they’d ripped the door off its hinges outside, but they’d also blocked off the stairwell on the lowest floor and broken the elevator. I was about to give up and go outside, but then everything worked and I could float up the tower.”

I thought about it. “Probably Scream Eagle turned anti-teleportation and everything else off. I’d have been more fine-grained about it—turn off phasing and telepathy, but allow teleportation. I bet that he was in the middle of fighting, so he went with an electromagnetic pulse that wasted everything at once.”

Izzy and Jaclyn came around from the other side of the tower, Jaclyn running around and stopping behind me. Izzy flew in and landed next to her.

Jaclyn shook her head, “Power Burst disappeared with the rest of them. It was near impossible to keep that guy on the ground. He kept on waking up. I don’t think Blue has that kind of healing factor.”

Izzy looked Haley and I over, probably checking us for damage, while saying, “I don’t. I don’t remember reading that my grandfather did either. We had to stay there to keep him down, and I could hear everyone as they were knocked out.”

Jaclyn nodded, “We couldn’t do anything. If only Ghost and the Rocket can finish these people, we’re going to have a tough fight when we go back to the island.”

Rachel said, “Which we will have to do, and sooner would be better than later. If more than half the team weren’t unconscious, I’d say we should go now while their best people are down.”

“That won’t be too long,” I said, “since Amnesia Angel seems to be a healer.”

Rachel sighed, “Right, I forgot. We might call in Paladin from California, get all the information we can, and go now, but they may be able to heal themselves up in the time it takes for him to get here.”

“It still isn’t a bad idea,” Jaclyn said. “I doubt they’ll expect us to drop in out of nowhere so quickly. They don’t know we visited the island in the first place, and without Jody, there probably isn’t anyone here to tell them we’re coming. No one told Jody we visited the island, right?”

That hadn’t been part of the meeting.

“No,” I said, “but it’ll still be hard. The cool thing is that we do have options that probably won’t be expected. I promised Prime that he could be in on it when we went after Magnus and the Nine. For that matter, Dr. Transylvania made it pretty clear that he wanted to be in on it, too.”

Jaclyn raised an eyebrow, “You’re suggesting that we go in supported by one of the Cabal’s leaders and a reformed, major supervillain who happens to be a vampire? How could that go wrong?”

Pursing her lips, Haley said, “It would be a surprise, but right now half the team’s down. We should start there. I hope that their poison isn’t extra-effective when Magnus powers them up.”

“We should call Paladin,” Izzy said, glancing up toward the tower. “Everyone’s stable, but I don’t hear anyone waking up yet. I don’t want to find out if Night Cat is right the hard way. ”

“I can call him,” I said and was about to except that Cassie spoke to everyone via implant, waving at me as she walked across the street, leaving the row houses she’d been sniping from.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, “Control already did. He’s on his way.”

“She’s good,” Jaclyn said and then pointed at my sword. “Can you turn that off? Every time someone new speaks, you move it. We’re not in combat anymore.”

I looked down at my hand, “I’d forgotten about it. Normally, I feel it when I’m drawing energy, but I haven’t felt this for a bit. I’m not completely sure I can turn it off.”

Rachel glanced toward the sword. “Do you feel okay?”

“Fine,” I said, “not overly tired if that’s what you’re wondering.”

I turned my attention to it and concentrated on letting go and losing the connection. For a second, it didn’t, and I wondered if it was permanent now, but then it wavered and disappeared.

Looking over at Rachel, who was still looking at where the sword had been and frowning, I asked, “Do you know anything more than I do? From my point of view, I tried to copy Lee’s sword, but it wasn’t the same.”

She shook her head, “I don’t. The Ghosts use the same power sources, but they don’t use them the same way. I don’t know much of anything about what you did.”

She didn’t stop talking there, but the sound around me faded out, and I knew my consciousness had partially entered the in-between space Artificers and Ghosts used for interstellar communication.

Kee’s voice entered my mind, “I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but if that was you, you’ve passed a milestone I hadn’t expected. We’ll discuss it at our next lesson, but I’m not the only one who noticed. A member of the Destroy faction is heading toward Earth now.”

My heart beat a little more quickly, remembering all the times I’d been told that Destroy would end the world if they had an inkling Lee had been here.

“That’s not good,” I said, wondering if the Xiniti weapons they’d left us to destroy our planet would work against a full-grown Artificer.

“I think you have a chance with this one,” Kee thought at me, and I felt the vastness of the multi-dimensional being behind the words. “But not through violence. He’s far too strong. He could unmake your solar system in a few seconds. He’s Nataw’s brother. You’re trying to save Nataw, and you’re Nataw’s descendant in a sense. I sense the resemblance. He will, too. Play on it and you might convince him to leave the world alone.”

Across unknown light years, I asked, “Should I mention Lee?”

She stifled a chuckle. “I wouldn’t.”