Summus Proelium

The island was thirty-six miles long and sixteen miles wide. None of its inhabitants knew exactly where it was located, other than somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Its exact location was a tightly guarded mystery that only a few were actually cleared to know, and there were even multiple false locations and leads put out into the public to muddy the waters. Tech-Touched devices cloaked the island from most satellite detection, and no civilian flights went anywhere near it.

On the island itself, dozens of buried or otherwise hidden emitters blocked any teleportation or other Travel-Touched powers from being able to carry their users any further than roughly one hundred yards into the ocean. Not that they would want to go further than that, as each of the inhabitants carried somewhere inside them a device that would explode and kill them should they leave the range of those emitters or do anything to hinder them. It was a catch-22. The emitters projected a signal preventing Travel-Touched powers from allowing them to escape, but also prevented their surgically implanted explosives from detonating. A third layer of protection in the system was that the implanted explosives continually projected their own, separate signal to the emitters. If that was disrupted, such as by the removal (or attempted removal) of the device, the emitters would project a debilitating sonic disruption until back-up forces could arrive and secure the offender.

So, teleporting off the island was impossible because of the emitters. Disrupting the emitters was impossible because of the signal they sent to the implanted explosives. And tampering with the implanted explosives was impossible because of the signal they sent to the emitters. One would have to simultaneously, down to the second, disrupt every emitter within a particular range (which would involve actually finding all of the emitters whose signal overlapped your location, and being willing to risk your life that you were right) and disable the implanted explosive. You would need one person to disable each emitter in range of you at the exact same time that you disabled your implant. And any number of those who did so would die in the process as soon as the emitters were disabled, if no still-active emitters happened to be near them to prevent their bombs from exploding.

And, of course, simply building a boat and sailing away was not an option when your body would incinerate the moment you weren’t within a football field’s length of the island.

Many may have considered these measures to be inhumane and overkill. But this was not just any island. It was a prison. And its inhabitants of the island were not just any prisoners. They were the worst, most dangerous and irredeemable Fell-Touched in the world. In certain countries they might have been executed, given the choice. But the international community as a whole frowned on capital punishment. And so this compromise was struck. If those most dangerous Fell-Touched could be captured, they were brought here to be taken out of society’s hands and left to fend for themselves. In some ways it was almost a death sentence in and of itself, given the violence on the island. But putting them there allowed governments to at least say that they did not execute them. While, of course, ensuring that they would die if they ever tried to escape, before they could pose a threat to innocents.

There was only one official rule on the island, as far as the jailers who left their prisoners on it were concerned. And that one rule was that you never left the island. That was all. Other than that, those who lived on the island were left to their own devices. Some formed small encampments to protect one another or to conduct quick attack raids against others. Some lived entirely on their own. People were split by various divisions including nationality, languages spoken, personal beliefs and prejudices, and many other possibilities. No group on the island was more than roughly twenty people in size. The egos and powers of the people who had been put here could not abide playing nice with more people than that. Larger groups always fractured and split, or simply disintegrated as members attacked and backstabbed one another.

The authorities did not leave the island’s inhabitants completely without any aid, of course. There were food and other supply drops weekly, both to regular designated locations, and to randomized spots whose location was announced through the island’s intercom system after the drop was made. Those lucky enough to be closest to these randomized drops could move quickly to grab the provided supplies before other prisoners beat them to it. Sometimes those extra drops were truly randomized, while other times they were intended to give a boost to a group who either needed it or whom the guard who chose that spot wanted to see thrive (or simply survive).

Yes, some of those who monitored the island treated it as what amounted to a reality show for violent supervillains, a game where they could watch the worst of society battle it out with one another. Those people weren’t the majority of those put in a monitoring position, but they did exist. And they took advantage of their position at times to advance their preferred gang.

Others, of course, held a deep vendetta against one imprisoned villain or another, or even entire groups of them. These tended to direct extra supplies away from those criminals and toward the ones who would attack them. Those types tended to be rooted out by psychological testing earlier on and removed from their positions, but they still existed as well here and there.

In all, the island was a very violent and unpredictable place, not only because of its inhabitants but also because of the monitors. People died often, and the average life expectancy wasn’t great. But those were considered acceptable conditions for a place that kept these dangerous psychopaths from using their Touched powers to endanger and terrorize more innocent people.

The Fell-Touched who came here were monsters. Monsters dumped in with monsters to fight and kill one another so that society didn’t have to deal with them anymore. Such was a fact of life on the island known across the world by various names, but in English as Breakwater.

At this particular moment, it was nighttime. The island was cloaked in darkness save for spots of light created by various fires, torches, and Touched powers. One spot of light in particular came from a large bonfire in the middle of a clearing directly above a waterfall. Around that bonfire sat six figures, each watching the flames in contemplative silence, and a seventh figure who stood a few feet away looking over the falls to watch the water crash down far below.

The first of the seven figures was a relatively small man (when standing, he reached about five feet, three inches in height), his skin covered in tiny, extremely sharp needle-like spikes that varied randomly in color between black, purple, and gold. His eyes were slightly oversized and contained two separate pupils within each, one red and the other blue. He called himself Pinprick, with the ability to launch and regrow the needles that covered his body. Each color needle possessed a different power. Black took control of things they struck, be that people, animals, or objects. Purple exploded into clouds of damaging acid. Finally, the gold needles did nothing to inanimate objects, but made living beings struck by them intensely ill while feeding that life force back to Pinprick himself to grant him a form of regeneration.

The real trick to his gift was that any living being struck by at least three needles in short succession would, in turn, find their own skin covered in them for up to ten seconds before they would explode needles in every direction. One of his favorite things, back in the real world, had been to enter a large crowd of people, launch his needles into a large crowd, and watch the ensuing chaos and more and more people who were struck by at least three of them grew needles of their own to launch everywhere, and the entire situation escalated exponentially. It was positively hilarious, and the memory of those days was still enough to make him laugh now and then.

To Pinprick’s left sat a much taller figure than the first man. So tall, in fact, that even sitting as he was on the ground, the man’s head was still higher than most people were while fully upright. When standing, the man was nearly nine and a half feet. He was also quite thin, for all his height, his skin a very pale and clearly unnatural white. Even more unnaturally, he had no visible face on the front of his head. No eyes, no mouth, no nose. Where his face should have been was nothing but blank skin. Adding the fact that he had no hair, only a bald head that showed off more of that paper-white skin, and the effect was quite eerie indeed.

This was the villain known as Quell. How he could see, no one knew. And Quell himself wasn’t saying. His own gift allowed him, first of all, to absorb and reuse all sound within his earshot. Any sounds he heard could be retained and then replayed at any point, emanating outward from any part of his body he chose. He could also manipulate those replayed sounds, making them louder or quieter, changing the specific tone or even the voice used for words, and so on.

Beyond simply absorbing sounds, as his name implied, Quell could also silence them. At will, he could project a field that rendered an entire area silent, sound incapable of existing within it.

And more than that, the man was also capable of both absorbing and muting other things within his area, such as fire, electricity, emotions, and more. Or even Touched powers themselves. By simply turning toward and focusing on what he wanted to affect, be that a flickering flame, a bolt of lightning, a person with powers, or anything else, Quell could make the effects and powers disappear, dousing flame, erasing lightning, taking energy from an electrical device, or even making a Touched incapable of actively using their abilities so long as he was focused on them. Further, any effect that directly struck him would be absorbed so that he could, in turn, use it himself once.

Quell was an extremely dangerous man, to say the least, who communicated primarily by stringing together the absorbed voices of others (he was capable of reusing sounds though not powers or effects) to form the sentences he wanted. For example, if he meant to say the sentence, ‘I took a long walk to the store for some milk’, ‘I took’, ‘a long walk’ ‘to the store’ ‘for some’ and ‘milk’ might all have been said by different voices and in different tones.

Completing the group around the fire were a dark-skinned man in his late twenties with long black hair tied into braids, an Asian woman in her sixties with angular features and pale eyes, a red-haired and heavy-set white man clearly late in his fifties but quite fit, and a quite beautiful brunette with intensely, even unnaturally, blue eyes who didn’t seem to be fully out of her teens.

The black man’s Touched name (no other identifiers tended to matter in this place) was Watchdog. The Asian woman was known as, somewhat strangely, Diesel. The red-haired man was called Rupture. Which left the young girl. Despite looking quite out of place against the rest of the group, she, perhaps more than most on the island, had earned her place there. Calling herself Zeal, her power allowed her to induce murderous, blindingly passionate emotions and loyalty for either herself or any given person or object. People affected by her power would fight and kill one another to protect it, to possess it, to take it for themselves, or to obey its commands. When multiple people were affected, she was able to share the skills and talents of any of those people amongst any others. The same went for any Touched powers they possessed, though those powers were often weakened by being shared. And she had used that gift quite a lot, amassing what amounted to an entire cult of obsessed followers who could and did kill for her before she was fifteen.

The others in their small group had made it clear that if she used her power to control them outside of planned defensive measures, they would make her spend months begging for death. She, in turn, had let them know that anyone who touched her without her permission would find themselves targeted by the negative aspect of her power. A person or object affected in that way would find themselves not loved and desired, but loathed. Anyone who saw them would do anything in their power to utterly and completely destroy such a person or object.

All of which left a single man, the one standing by the waterfall.

Using a stick to gently poke the tinfoil wrapped package that was set close to the fire so that it would cook the food inside, Pinprick glanced toward Quell, nudging him slightly. “Hey, man, you got any more of that chocolate left from before? I’ll trade you a flavor tablet for two squares.”

There was a pause before the answer of, “One tablet, one square. Orange, not lime,” was said in the voices of three separate people. “Two squares for root beer flavor. Three for real coffee.”

“Yeah right,” Pinprick retorted. “If I had real coffee, I’d be taking your whole bar. Fine, I’ve got an orange tablet here.” He produced the wrapped candy-shaped thing, which would dissolve in a glass of water and grant its flavor. “Just need some fucking candy, they’re stingy with that shit.”

After the two made the trade, Pinprick addressed the man who was still standing apart from the group. “What about you, big guy? You got any chocolate with you? Hell, you might’ve just joined up with us, but you’ve definitely been on this hellhole for awhile. How long’s it been?”

Without turning around, the man replied, “Four years and seven months.”

Watchdog gave a low whistle at that. “Shit, Prick’s right, you’ve gotta have all sorts of stashes around this place, surviving that long. You gonna share with the rest of us?”

“I’ll do better than that,” the man replied, turning at last to face them. He appeared to be in his early forties, with tanned skin faintly lined by age and stress, blonde hair with slight gray around the temples, and brown eyes. “Far better than giving you a few measly treats that would be gone in moments.”

“I don’t know, I like my chocolate,” Rupture replied with a low chuckle. “I’d watch what you promise, lest you disappoint us. Don’t care how long you’ve been on this island, if I get disappointed, you won’t get much further.”

“Now, be nice,” Diesel ordered, her gentle tone as at odds with her name as her appearance. The elderly Asian woman was quite polite and, to the extent that she was capable, enforced that politeness in her companions. But when a fight broke out, she was capable of doing untold damage.

Clearing his throat, Pinprick asked, “This got anything to do with why you keep going off on your own for days at a time before moseying on back here? You setting up some kind of surprise party for your new friends? Come on, you can share with us, we’re all buddies, right?”

“A surprise party, of sorts,” the man confirmed. “But not for you.” Pausing, he amended, “Let’s say you’re part of the party. If you’re patient.”

Watchdog muttered, “You’re pretty secretive, you know that? I don’t know if I like secrets.”

“Hey, don’t worry, puppy,” Zeal put in teasingly, “I’m sure our new friend isn’t just leading us on. He’s sincere, aren’t you?” She turned her slightly pouting gaze to the man by the waterfall. “I really don’t want to be disappointed again. People are always disappointing me.”

“Stop it,” the man ordered. “I’m not interested in you.”

“You’re lying,” Zeal declared, stretching out to make a point of her considerable bust and athletic figure. “Everyone’s interested in me. Unless you’re gay, and you’re definitely not gay. You talked about having a kid the other day. I heard you.”

Quell ‘spoke’ then, the words coming from a dozen different sources all put together to form the sentence he wanted. “She’s right. You did mention having a child. Or children. Sometimes you say child, sometimes you say children. Which is it?”

Instead of answering the question directly, the man replied, “You’re right, I’ve been here for awhile. Long enough that I’m almost ready to put my plan into action. My… daughter, she’s just about old enough. Three more weeks.”

“Old enough for what?” Rupture asked. “And I’ll thank you all to note how much I resisted making my own suggestions.”

“You don’t get credit when you point it out,” Pinprick informed him before focusing on the standing man. “Seriously though, what’re you talking about? What’s your daughter almost old enough for?”

“Almost old enough to be sent here,” was the response. “And when she is, Paige will make certain they put her on an express plane to this island.”

The response to his claim was a flat, silent stare from all of his companions for several long seconds. Finally, Diesel gently pointed out, “Ah, honey, we don’t see how that actually helps anything here. Why would you want your child to be sent to this place, let alone plan for it?”

“Yeah,” Watchdog put in, “and how the living fuck does your crotchspawn being tossed in this fucking hellhole with the rest of us actually help? I think you’ve lost your goddamn mind.”

Stepping away from the waterfall finally, the man moved over to take his seat next to the fire. He didn’t answer the question at first, choosing instead to stare into the flames. Eventually, after the others had exchanged confused glances, he spoke. “Because when she gets here, this entire island will stop being a prison. Everyone on it, everyone, will be able to leave. We will all escape.”

The response to his claim was mostly incredulous chuckling and outright laughter, yet he remained resolute. Finally, Pinprick managed, “Okay, okay, let me get this straight. Your kid is just waiting to be old enough that they’ll bring her here. That’s, what, seventeen at a minimum if the offense is bad enough to try her as an adult? And you think that, just because she gets here, this whole prison is gonna shut down? All the defenses they’ve got are just gonna turn off or whatever and we’ll all be free? Just like that?”

“Something like that,” the man replied simply. “The point is, we’ll all be able to leave. You all can do what you want when it happens. Cause chaos, keep all the heroes busy and occupied. That’s why I’m here. That’s what all this has been about. A long-term plan. When it comes, when she gets here… unleashing every monster on this island into the rest of the world will give me the opening I need.”

There was another brief exchange of looks then before Diesel gently asked, “The opening you need to do what, dear?”

Staring into the flames, the man answered in a voice that was so quiet, his companions had to lean in to hear him properly. “The opening I need to destroy the Detroit Ministry.”

“Those fucks who run everything over there?” Watchdog blurted. “The hell makes you think you can pull off what no one else has? I mean, besides the fact that you’re crazy enough to think bringing your kid here is gonna somehow free everyone on this island. How are you gonna take down the Ministry? They’re always ready for anything people try to pull.”

“They won’t be ready for this,” the other man murmured. “They’ll be too busy grieving.”

With a curious look, Diesel asked, “Why will they be grieving?”

He offered the group a casual shrug. “Because in three weeks, when my Paige turns seventeen, she’s going to kill the person she’s spent years establishing a history of hatred and abuse toward, the one person the Ministry’s leaders can’t live without.

“Their daughter.”

******

Patreon Snippets 4

Aaron Jessup and Silversmith

“She really asked what you thought of the city after taking you prisoner in your own truck?”

Hearing that question, Aaron Jessup exhaled slowly. He had been staring down at his own dirt-encrusted work boots, thinking about the last time he’d bought a new pair. They looked old and grungy against the pleasant light blue carpeting of the interview room in this Conservator outpost in downtown Detroit. The room itself was clearly meant to put people at ease, with comfortable seating, soft lighting, rounded edges on all the tables, and several windows looking out into the main lobby along with two large, open doors at either end. The doors and windows could be closed for a more private discussion, or for those who might be afraid of being seen. But when set like this, the intention was obviously to make people not feel trapped. With the wide windows and two large doors, they wouldn’t feel quite so penned in.

It definitely wasn’t an interrogation room, that was for sure. As a truck driver who had driven routes all over the states for a good sixteen years, Aaron had been in both kinds. He preferred this version.

Finally, he looked over to the man who had asked the question. He was Silversmith, man of gleaming metal armor and a sterling reputation. The leader of the local Conservator (or Federal-level Star-Touched) group was one of the most well-known Touched not only in the state, but the entire country. Jessup had never met the man before, but he knew plenty about him. The guy was one of the good ones. He could be trusted.

“Yeah,” Aaron confirmed with a nod. “Asked me what I thought of your city while she had her big lizard gorilla thing ready to smack me into next week if I didn’t behave.”

Eyeing Aaron briefly, as though judging how he was feeling, Silversmith gave a light chuckle while shaking his head. “That girl’s still pretty new around here, but she’s already something else.”

“You almost sound like you admire her,” Aaron pointed out. Part of him felt… almost offended by that, but not quite. He’d been robbed before, by people who were a hell of a lot more nasty about it than that girl had been. Lizard monsters or not, it paid to have some perspective. And when you still had a scar on your left shoulder and your right hip from jumpy assholes with guns who thought you weren’t giving them what they wanted fast enough, you tended to appreciate the more professional thieves. Not that he wouldn’t like to see her behind bars for that shit.

“Admire her?” the silver-armored hero echoed before shaking his head. “No, I wouldn’t say admire. But given some of the monsters that come scurrying out of the shadows to terrorize the people of this city, this lizard girl’s a damned peach in comparison.”

“Like that Pencil guy,” Aaron murmured. He knew about the Scions of Typhon. Who didn’t? They, and those like them, were psychopaths beyond all description. The stories that made it into the national news about that son of a bitch…

“Like Pencil,” Silversmith agreed with a heavy sigh, glancing toward the other man. “Or any of his freaks. Believe me, as much as I wish you could have made it through our city without a problem like this, it could’ve been worse. Your cargo’s all CIF insured, right?” He pronounced it ‘kif.’ It stood for Cooperative International Funding, a pool put together by most of the first world countries drawn mostly from taxes on Tech-Touched devices and manufacturing, as well as merchandise sales for Star-Touched teams and similar things. Everything went into that pool and was used to rebuild after Collision Points and other very damaging Touched Events. Companies and even individuals who paid to be CIF insured sent funds into the pool as well, in order to be covered if and when they themselves were victims of Touched crimes.

“Yeah, that’s all covered,” Jessup confirmed. Getting robbed wouldn’t be on his neck, at least.

“Good.” With a brief pause, Silversmith looked to him. “I wanted to ask you something else. In your report to the first officers on the scene, you said that the Minority member That-A-Way ‘sort of’ fought your attacker. Why do you say ‘sort of?’”

“Ehhhh…” Grimacing, Aaron shook his head. “Look, I don’t want to get the girl in trouble or anything. She did her job, a job she shouldn’t have to have at her age. She’s a good one in my book.”

“She is a good one,” Silversmith agreed, his tone easy and casual. “I’m not asking you to tattle on her, Mr. Jessup. I think That-A-Way is one of our finest young Star-Touched and an incredible young woman in her own right. But given the age situation of the Minority and how careful we need to be with protecting and guiding them, if there is an issue, it’s better for me to know about it now before it becomes a problem. We need to know if our teenagers need a break for their own mental health, or if they need to be kept away from certain threats for their own safety.”

After a long pause, Aaron gave a long, heavy sigh. “Well, best as I could see from where I was… she and that Pack girl did seem to be… uhh… maybe… flirting a little bit? Don’t get me wrong, she still fought her, but it was like… neither of ‘em were really up for hurting each other. And they were just… yeah, flirting a bit.” He grimaced once more. “Just don’t give the kid a hard time about it?”

He could hear the easy smile in Silversmith’s voice. “Trust me, Mr. Jessup, this isn’t the first time we’ve had an issue of young, still-maturing Touched developing feelings for people on the other side. You were right to tell me about this. And don’t you worry, we know how to handle it.

“Everything will be just fine.”

******

Pack and Broadway

An unlabeled white van pulled up to the mouth of an alley, idling there as the window rolled down.

“Hey, sweet thing!” called a voice from within the van. “You need a lift?”

Rolling her eyes behind her mask, Pack abandoned the shadows and moved to the van. Holiday, Twinkletoes, and Mars Bar followed suit. As she approached, the side-door of the van slid open, held by Tuesday, the lizard-monkey chittering at them in a voice that seemed to be an order to hurry up. Their traveling cage sat next to him.

One by one, Pack reached out, touched one of her menagerie to shrink them back into their normal lizard forms, and placed them in the cage. Riddles flew down from where she had been playing lookout and returned to being a bearded dragon. Tuesday was last, and she tickled under his chin before putting him back to his ordinary gecko shape. Setting him in the cage, she closed it up, then slid the back door shut and moved around to get into the front passenger door.

KD was in the driver’s seat. Or rather, Broadway as she was known in the field. She wore what amounted to a power-suit, metal armor that boosted her height by a few inches (useful for disguising her identity) and enhanced her strength and speed to the point of lifting about six hundred pounds and running forty miles per hour. The suit was dark purple to the point of being almost black, with what looked like narrow white vents all along both arms, down both legs, and in the chest and back. They weren’t vents, however. They were speaker-systems that could blast sound at ear-splitting decibels all on their own, even before KD’s own power to manipulate and enhance sound itself came into play. Without the suit, she could clap her hands, then magnify and direct the result until it punched through a concrete block. She could do that to any sound in her vicinity. She could also disperse herself into soundwaves in order to avoid attacks. And if she used her power to focus sound toward one area (similar to what she would do when narrowing it for a sonic attack), then turned herself into sound and jumped into the wave she had just created while it was moving, she could reappear at the target. Basically, she teleported along her own manipulated and directed blasts of sound. And there were other tricks she could do with sound beyond straight up damage or teleporting.

She could do all that without the suit. With it, her power was enhanced to incredible levels. Instead of punching through concrete, she could magnify the sound that came from the suit’s speakers to the point of being able to damage or even destroy a military tank or other armored vehicle.

The helmet of the suit was also dark purple, with three white vertical speaker-vents along either side. They were positioned where her ears would be and angled toward the front. Over the face part was a wide V-shaped visor. Whenever Broadway spoke, bright multi-colored lines bounced across the surface of the visor roughly in rhythm with her words. Like a speaker system with the lights in front that pulsed along with the music it played.

Once Pack was inside, she shut the door and Broadway pulled away from the curb. The van made it through the maze of side-streets before approaching the freeway. Only once they were heading up the ramp did KD remove the helmet and set it aside, exposing her pale skin and bright blue-dyed hair fashioned into pigtails. Dani took her own hood down and pulled the black, featureless mask off her face to reveal her dark skin with short, spiky hair that was mostly black aside from the bright white-dyed tips.

Both girls grinned at one another before fist-bumping as the van joined the rest of the traffic on the freeway. “Could’ve gone worse,” KD chirped. “Got half the stuff.”

“Could’ve gone better too,” Dani retorted, leaning back in the seat a little to watch the cars around them thoughtfully. “We could’ve gotten all of it.”

“Yeah, true,” KD agreed easily, drumming her fingers along the steering wheel to some tune in her head. “Still, half isn’t bad considering that Touched girl showed up.” Trailing off meaningfully, she added, “Speeeeaaaking of which…”

“Nothing to speaking of which about,” Dani insisted, feeling a slight flush cross her face as she turned to look out the passenger window. Boy, those lights in the city sure were interesting.

There was a slight giggle from behind her, before KD spoke again. “That was the girl you were trapped in Jailtime’s funhouse with, right?”

After a brief pause, Dani nodded. “Uhh, yeah, That-A-Way, that’s right.”

“And the girl who helped at the hospital,” KD pressed. “The one who saved Holiday.”

There was another brief pause from Dani, then a slightly more quiet, “Yup.”

“Ah,” KD murmured. Her voice sounded totally noncommittal and barely interested. “Kay.”

Several long moments of nothing further happened, while the van traveled down the freeway. When she was met with so much silence, Dani very hesitantly turned to peek over her shoulder at her companion.

KD was grinning brightly, staring that way. As soon as Dani turned to glance at her, she blurted cheerfully, “You like her!”

Blush deepening, Dani flailed a little. “What–nooo, no, come on, don’t be stupid. She’s one of the good guys, she’s a hero and stuff. She wants to arrest me, remember? What do you think that whole fight back there was about?”

“Oh yeah,” KD deadpanned, “she really looked like she was totally dead set on locking you up forever and throwing away the key. However will you survive the dreadful wounds she inflicted?”

Making a face at her friend, Dani retorted, “The point is, she’s Star-Touched. I’m Fell-Touched. Good guy, bad guy. Not really conducive to a relationship. Even if I did like her.”

“People can change sides, you know,” KD pointed out. “This stuff isn’t set in stone.”

Dani gave her a sharp look. “I’m not joining the Team Good Samaritan just because I think That-A-Way is hot. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she totally is. But I’m not changing my whole life over it. I made my choice about being who I am.”

“Who said anything about you joining them?” KD replied. “It can work the other way too.”

“Something tells me that girl is not interested in joining our side any more than I am in joining her side,” Dani muttered.

KD nodded in agreement, her tone thoughtful. “Maybe not yet. But you know what?

“I’m pretty sure whatever’s going on between you two is just getting started.”