A couple of minutes before Rebecca came bursting through Kunta’s door, the room down the hall had been running calmly or maybe not that much.

Christopher and Sydney had, at some point during the long hours of the evening, pulled a table into the center of the room and positioned themselves behind it on their chairs. The effect, unintentionally, was exactly that of two detectives who had just sat their suspects down for a long conversation and had nowhere else to be.

Across from them, Lucy and Penny had nowhere to go and no means to get there regardless.

Lucy was secured with rope, the same practical, no-nonsense arrangement that had been in place since the beginning. Penny had chains, which had required more effort to source but were considerably more appropriate given what she was capable of. She’d shown no signs of slipping back into whatever state Gaspar had left inside her, hours had passed and she’d remained quiet and present and entirely herself but nobody was in a position to take that for granted yet, so the chains stayed.

Both women had resigned themselves to the reality of their situation, which mostly involved sitting there while Christopher and Sydney talked.

Sydney was leaning back in her chair with her elbow on the table, chin resting in her palm, staring at Christopher with the look of someone who has just been handed a story they intend to get every detail out of.

"There is no fucking way," she said.

"I’m being completely serious," Christopher said, nodding with a serious expressed. "She said she needed to go and Rebecca offered to take her and about two minutes later Rebecca was being used as a human shield."

He didn’t look at Lucy when he said it. He didn’t need to. He could feel the glare from where he was sitting.

Sydney turned to look at Lucy with an expression of exaggerated horror.

"As a woman," Sydney said, pressing one hand to her chest as if personally wounded, "I have to tell you, that is really one of the most shameless things I’ve ever heard. Using that as a cover. As a woman, Lucy, I am telling you, that is a low I did not think I would witness in my lifetime."

"You’re thinking about it wrong," Christopher said, already sounding tired of wherever this was going. "She’s a marine. She’s with Callighan. You can’t keep looking at her through the lens of you know, normal person expectations. I made that mistake earlier and I’m not repeating it."

Sydney turned to him slowly. "Not ever again?" She let the pause breathe. "Christopher, do you realize what you’re saying? You’re essentially saying you don’t care if Lucy ever has to—"

"I meant I’m not letting my guard down around her again," Christopher said flatly. "Not whatever you’re turning it into."

"I’m just saying! Look at her!" Sydney spun back toward Lucy and pointed with two fingers, her face arranged into an expression of deep, soulful concern. "She looks like she’s on the verge of tears, Christopher. Do you see this?"

Lucy was, in reality, not on the verge of tears. What Lucy was on the verge of was something considerably less gentle,secretely wondering if she should attempt anything just to shut them both up.

Penny, sitting beside her, had gone very still, trying to be invisible as possible. Thankfully those two kept all their attention and humiliating words for Lucy and she didn’t want their attention shift on her.

"She tried to use Rebecca as a hostage," Christopher said, gesturing toward Lucy without looking at her. "Rebecca. I’m not exactly losing sleep over her emotional comfort here."

"I did not try to kill her," Lucy said, not letting that slide.

"You put your arm across her throat," Christopher said, finally turning to look at her with one raised eyebrow. "You literally said you’d snap her neck."

"Snap little Rebecca’s neck?" Sydney recoiled looking at Lucy with disgust. "What kind of monster does that?"

"Now you’re overplaying it," Christopher said, his expression twitching slightly. "That worried face isn’t believable on you and ’little Rebecca’ was too much."

"I’m acting," Sydney said, as if this required clarification.

"I know. That’s the problem. It’s getting obvious."

"Fine." Sydney adjusted. She pointed at Lucy again, this time with more restrained outrage. "How about I will never forgive you for what you did to Mei!! How’s that? More natural?"

"Worse, somehow," Christopher said.

Sydney crossed her arms and leaned back, reconsidering her approach.

The room had, by this point, settled into a rhythm that nobody had exactly planned for. Sydney’s commentary ran at a near-constant pace, shifting targets fluidly between Lucy, abstract concepts, and Christopher himself whenever she felt he was getting too comfortable. Christopher responded to roughly forty percent of it and ignored the rest. Lucy had stopped trying to engage and had retreated into a flat, burning silence. Penny had not said a word in a considerable amount of time.

"So, Christopher," Sydney said, shifting gears suddenly. A small smile crept in at the corner of her mouth. "How are you feeling?"

"About what?" Christopher said, yawning into the back of his hand.

"About Lucy." She gestured toward her. "You’ve been with her all day. Just the two of you, mostly. That’s more quality time than some couples manage in a week." She tilted her head, the smile growing. "Did anything stir inside you? Any feelings you weren’t expecting?"

Christopher looked at her for exactly the length of time required to confirm that he had understood what she was implying and that he was going to give it exactly zero engagement.

He stood up.

"I’m taking a break," he said simply, pushing back from the table.

"Oh come on!" Sydney’s voice climbed immediately, following him toward the door. "This is a classic arc, Christopher! Enemies to lovers! It’s been done a thousand times for a reason, because it works! The tension, the hostility, the underlying—"

Christopher walked out of the room.

"—respect!" Sydney called after him, her voice carrying down the hall.

The door didn’t close behind him but his footsteps kept moving and faded down the corridor without pause.

Sydney sat for a moment in the resulting quiet. Then she turned back to face the table, where Lucy and Penny were both looking at her, Lucy with an expression that had moved from burning silence into something more like exhausted disbelief, and Penny also tired merely by hearing them.

Sydney propped her chin back on her hand.

"Just us girls now," she said cheerfully.

Neither of them said anything.

Sydney, predictably, had not let the silence last.

Even with Christopher gone and only two tied-up women left in the room as her audience, she had continued the conversation or rather, her side of it. Lucy’s expression had been doing something involuntary and increasingly strained in response to each new comment, the muscle in her jaw working steadily against whatever she kept deciding not to say.

Penny had on the other hand chose to stay silent but then her whole body stiffened.

The warmth hit first. A sudden flush running up through her body from somewhere she couldn’t identify, spreading fast and unwelcome, followed immediately by goosebumps racing down both arms in the same moment. Her skin prickled. Her stomach dropped.

She knew this despicable feeling.

No, she thought, and the word barely made it past her lips before her eyes were no longer her own.

The yellow bled in from the edges like ink dropped in water, spreading, filling, swallowing the color of her irises entirely until there was nothing left of her in them. Her head dropped forward on a slack neck, hair falling across her face, her body going momentarily still with the awful stillness of a puppet mid-handoff.

Sydney’s attention sharpened immediately. She’d been mid-sentence when something in the air shifted and her Dullahan instincts caught it before her conscious mind did, a change in temperature.

She glanced sideways. "Hey? You okay over there? What’s her name again?"

"Penny," Lucy said, her eyes fixed on the woman beside her warily.

Lucy knew Penny, had seen her around Brigantine, in Gaspar’s orbit, in the way all of the broken ones tended to orbit him. She’d written her off as another casualty of whatever Gaspar did to people when he decided they were useful to him. She hadn’t known about the attack on Ryan, they hadn’t told her the details but looking at Penny now, she was starting to fill in the gaps herself.

"Penny?" Sydney stepped out from behind the table, crossing the room until she was standing directly in front of her, close enough to look down at the lowered head. "Hey. Penny."

Once again only silence answered.

And then Sydney’s body moved before she’d told it to, her Dullahan Senses reacting.

The tentacle erupted from Penny’s torso like something that had been coiled there waiting as a violent, whipping strike the color of curdled yellow, fast enough that even Sydney’s accelerated reflexes only barely got her out of the direct path. She twisted back hard, arms coming up, but the edge of it caught her anyway and the force behind it was staggering, she went airborne, her back hitting the wall behind her with a crack that rattled the room and knocked the breath clean out of her lungs.

She slid down it and hit the floor.

"Hnngh—"

Penny was already moving. The chains binding her to the chair had gone taut as she threw herself against them, her body working with unthinking ferocity just in getting free and getting to the target.

"What is happening—" Lucy’s voice pitched up sharply.

And then Penny’s eyes found her. That terrible yellow gaze swung and landed on Lucy. There was nothing behind those eyes right now, no recognition, no decision-making, no person.

The tentacle coiled and struck.

Lucy’s body reacted before her mind caught up, she slammed her foot into the floor and threw her weight backward, tipping the chair out from under herself and crashing to the ground. The tentacle punched into the concrete where she’d been sitting a half-second before, leaving a crack in the floor that hadn’t been there.

"Release me!" Lucy shouted, already wrenching her wrists against the rope binding them, fighting the knot. "Get me out of this—"

"I’m a little occupied at the moment!" Sydney called back, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth as she pushed herself upright against the wall, one arm pressed against her ribs where the impact had done something unpleasant.

She grabbed the wooden rod she’d set aside earlier and got back to her feet, forcing her breath to even out despite the sharp protest from her side.

"Stop," she said, planting herself in front of Penny with the rod leveled. "I’m going to give you one chance to stop before I put this through your head."

Penny threw herself against the chains again. One of them, the one anchoring her left side let out a sharp metallic groan and snapped.

"Shit."

Sydney was already moving as her body glowed blue.

She used her speed and appeared behind Penny in under a second, rod raised. But the tentacle was waiting. It came around like it had eyes in the back of its host’s head, reacting faster than it should have been able to, and caught the rod dead on.

The wood split in two.

"I really should have grabbed something metal—"

The second tentacle came from the side before she finished the sentence, cracking across her forearm like a whip. She got her arm up but the force pushed through the block and drove into her side, sending a wave of real pain radiating up through her ribs. She skidded back a step and braced.

Penny had already turned her attention back to Lucy.

Lucy was on the ground, chair cracked beneath her, working the rope binding her wrists against a broken chair leg with everything she had. She was close, she could feel the fibers starting to give but the tentacle was already tracking toward her, gathering speed aimed at her with deadly intent.

BANG!

The sound hit the room like a thunderclap and the tentacle burst apart mid-trajectory, yellow residue spraying across the floor.

Sydney exhaled and turned toward the doorway, a strained smile pulling at the corner of her bloodied mouth.

"Finally done out there?"

"Shut up," Christopher said, already in motion, scanning the room in a single sweep, Lucy on the ground, Penny in the chair with one chain broken, Sydney battered and bleeding. His gun was up, barrel tracking.

He hadn’t even fully processed the scene before another tentacle launched itself directly at him.

He dropped into a roll without hesitation, the attack passing close enough overhead that he felt it displace the air. He came up on one knee, gun still raised.

"She’s going after Lucy!" Sydney shouted across the room, already repositioning.

"Why?! Did Lucy do something to set her off too?!" Christopher called back, eyes still fixed on Penny while Lucy stopped briefly just to glare at him.

"I have no idea, just get Lucy clear! I’ll handle this!"

Christopher opened his mouth to argue, some part of him wanted to point out that Sydney was visibly hurt and the chain was already broken and the math on this wasn’t great but she was right and he knew it. He shoved the argument down and moved.

He was across the room in four long strides, dropping to one knee beside Lucy and already working on the rope at her wrists with one hand while keeping the gun raised and pointed at Penny with the other.

"Damn it, what did you say to piss her off?"

"I said nothing! Get me out of here you idiot!" Lucy shot back.