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"I feel like s**t," said Mistral, ushering Mendel along behind her. She felt such remarkable amounts of s**t that she couldn't properly articulate it in any other way. s**t pretty much summed it up.

Meeting Babylon's glowing blue eyes was an intimidating task, so Mistral didn't try. She picked at the glowing Babylon lights strung from her skirt, and slowed her roll as Mendel tried ferociously to climb up Babylon's front. He mashed his paws into the front of Babylon's jacket and barked gleefully, big brown eyes sweet in the manner of all puppies. "I was going to go finish installing the upgrade on my ring," she mumbled, "want to come with?"

Once Mendel was coaxed down, the (un)happy trio marched off towards the quiet rooftop Mistral had located and claimed for her own. It wasn’t much, as far as secret Earth hideouts went; the building had been condemned in the first burst of DC’s housing bubble, and now was waiting for its awful death. The stairs were stable enough, and there were few enough of them that Mistral could climb them in one go. She nestled herself back into the small nest of blankets she’d brought up on her second visit, but only after extricating a pillow for Babylon to sit on.

The blueprints popped into her hands, and she settled them over her lap. Out came one of the boxes of device pieces, and she pulled off the dark circle of her ring. “It’s like… it was a little hard to make, but…” She reached into the box and withdrew a slim curve of metal. A tiny dot of pale blue flickered at one end. “It won’t work right away,” she said. “My device isn’t powered yet. But I’ll know if I installed it right.”

She’d always known when she installed it wrong, after all.

Mendel tucked himself behind her like a living, breathing couch cushion and she leaned back into him as she fiddled with the curve of strangely blue-gray’d steel. “How have you been,” she said, still staring at the pale blue light. “I haven’t seen you since… since.”

She tried to wedge the pieces together for the thirty thousandth time. They didn’t click the way they ought, and Mistral dropped her signet ring on her lap to try to twist the silver piece of metal a little more, to make it fit. “It ought to click in,” she said. “Simple as pie. But it won’t click.”

He was asking strange questions, to be honest. She slid the silver band on her finger and tried to twist it onto her finger, thinking it might fit better that time if she knew it would fit on her hand, like it didn’t magically resize or something. With a scowl, she tossed her signet to Babylon. “Try that on, will you? You’re the first person I’ve seen in nights. I’ve sort of been avoiding people, you know.” For a good reason. Half their compatriots probably hated her by now. She remembered Sarras, calling her a murderer.

A deep breath and a few quick blinks knocked the tears out of her eyes. “Are you looking for someone specific?”

“That psycho b***h,” she said, looking up from her device at last. “You want to talk to her? Holy s**t, Babylon, she is literally psychotic, she tried to kill me. She would’ve done it, too, except there was some massive Order signature.”

Actually, hadn’t General Avalon been trying to get to… him? She looked closely at him, and tried to slot the ring into the device again. There was a quiet snick, and she tried to wiggle it apart. No dice. She huffed out an expansive sigh, and hunched over it. “Past me was a crazy b***h. Anyway, why not just write her a letter? Dear General Avalon, thank you for not stabbing anyone close to me today, that’s so kind.”

“She’s a crazy Negaverser,” said Mistral. “Maybe she’s doing something crazy and Negaverse, like trying to corrupt her Wonder and move beyond your reach forever.” She mumbled something expletive-like under her breath. “C’mon,” she said to it, “stop flashing.”

Maybe it was like wifi, and wouldn’t glow solidly until the device was online and it was streaming… data? She mumbled another curse word and slipped her signet ring back on. The light stopped flashing, then, and she held up her hand, looking impressed with herself.

“Uh, dang,” she said. “I have no idea what I did to make that work, but you know, I guess I’d better… call the Code, or something. Get the gang together and try to not get punched by anyone too hard. For achieving my next stage on the backs of our dead brethren.”

Babylon and Mistral were not sitting far enough away that Mistral couldn’t put her forehead on his un-pauldron’d shoulder. “I advanced literally as soon as I got to Babylon,” she objected, her voice muffled in his fur collar. Actually, it had been as soon as she’d successfully completed past her’s device. “Correlation doesn’t always mean causation, but as far as evidence goes, I think I did advance because they died.”

She sighed unhappily. “This is all guesswork,” she said. “******** guesswork.”

“Yeah,” she said. “******** piece of s**t unuseful Code. I’m going to go back to my Wonder and strangle it.” And then she would find that doll and take it apart, unless it proved to have developed a, a, an empathy circuit or something in its off time.

She leaned back onto Mendel and hugged her knees to her chest. “Do you think Menachem knew that Asimov’s mother was crazy? Like, that crazy? That extreme? People died. She knew people would die. And she didn’t put in any safeguards to protect our own. Why wouldn’t she do that? I don’t understand.”