"Perhaps if the riots start spilling up into the Middle Ward," Andrei muses. "Not that I'm recommending that, you understand. But I think it's more likely it'll be fixed so that they can go back to billing us for it, in the end."

He skirts around the shattered hulk of the hovercar, pausing as a rustle of movement near his feet resolves into a skinny, mangy cat that darts under the car's bumper. He crouches, holding out his hand.

"Here, puss."

It shrinks back into the deeper shadow with a nervous growl. Andrei sighs, standing back up and looking down the street with his nearsighted physical eyes unfocused and his sharper meta-human senses on alert. A few tangles of bioelectricity linger at the next intersection: four humans, one distinguished by the brighter and more precisely organized electrical pulses of a bionic arm. No one he can recognize, at least not at this distance.

"There are some people down there," he notes to Cal. "Anyone you know?" It doesn't look like a dangerous situation. Yet.