The backyard of that Brigantine house wasn’t much to look at. A stretch of cracked concrete hemmed in by a sagging wooden fence, a few patches of dead grass that had given up somewhere around the time the world did. But it was where they gathered every day around this hour, the usual faces filing out one by one with the kind of slow, mechanical routine that came from having nowhere else to be.

A handful of Callighan’s men moved around the edges, not really watching but watching all the same. A folding table had been set up near the back wall with a large pot and a stack of mismatched plates, and one of the older women from the group was already ladling out rations with the practiced efficiency of someone who’d long since stopped caring about portion fairness.

Mei got her plate and found a spot near the fence, away from the main cluster of people. The food was what it always was, edible in the strictest definition of the word and not much beyond that. Some kind of stew that smelled better than it tasted, a heel of bread that had gone slightly stale. She ate in silence, watching the yard without really looking at anything.

Keith dropped down beside her a moment later, already halfway through his portion like he hadn’t eaten in a week.

Tommy was standing a little further off, as always watching over them like a guard but also lost in thoughts.

Keith scraped the last of his stew up and set the plate down, then leaned back on his hands and looked sideways at Mei.

"Alright," he said, keeping his voice low. "Here’s what I was thinking."

Mei glanced at him without turning her head.

"You need to go take care of some personal stuff," he said simply.

She stared at him.

"And Tommy walks you."

The stare turned flat. Cold, even.

"No," she said.

"Mei—"

"Absolutely not."

"It makes sense, think about it—"

"I said no, Keith, that’s your brilliant plan? You want me to ask a man I barely know to escort me while I— " She stopped herself, jaw tight. "No."

Keith held up a hand like he was trying to calm something down. "Listen. Nobody’s going to question it. It’s normal, it’s simple, and it doesn’t look like anything because it isn’t anything weird. It’s just Tommy walking you a little bit away from everyone else so you can talk without half the yard hearing you."

Mei said nothing. She looked away from him and stabbed at what was left in her plate.

"It’s the cleanest way in," Keith pressed. "No made-up stories, no suspicious timing. You need a moment away from the group, Tommy goes with you, you get your conversation. That’s it."

She hated that it was logical. She really did. It was still mortifying in a way that made her want to tell him to go think of something else, but she turned it over in her head and kept arriving at the same frustrating conclusion.

"Fine..."

It wasn’t like she was really going to relieve herself anyway.

Keith nodded and walked over to Tommy with his hands in his pockets, casual as anything. Mei watched from across the yard, silently hoping it would work out.

She couldn’t hear what Keith was saying but she could see Tommy listening. He was questioning and nodding slowly, t Then Keith said something else, gestured vaguely in her direction with a slight tilt of his head, and Tommy’s eyes drifted over to her.

Mei met his gaze and didn’t look away. She kept her face trying to make herself convincing but if anything she looked more embarrassed than anything.

Tommy held her eyes for a moment, reading something in them, then gave a single quiet nod.

She let out a slow breath through her nose.

Tommy wasn’t a bad person from what she had observed so far. She’d thought that for a while now, even if she’d never said it out loud. He was stuck in the same rotten situation as the rest of them, doing what he had to do, keeping his head down for the sake of Emily.

Keith ambled back over, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

"See?" he said quietly, dropping back into his spot. "Painless."

"Don’t push it," Mei said, setting her plate down.

Later, when the plates were cleared and people started drifting back inside, Tommy made his way over to her.

Mei stood and brushed off her hands.

"Thanks," she said quietly.

"Don’t worry about it," he replied, gesturing for her to go ahead, falling into step just behind her.

A couple of Callighan’s men glanced over as they moved away from the group. Tommy caught their eyes and gave a simple nod — I’ve got it — and that was enough. They didn’t push it. Tommy wasn’t the type anyone worried about, and the logic of the situation was plain enough on the surface. A woman needed a moment away from the group, couldn’t go alone, and had picked the most dependable face around. Simple. Nothing worth raising an eyebrow at.

They let them go.

"Sorry to bother you with this," Mei started carefully as they walked, keeping her voice easy, unhurried.

"Don’t be." Tommy’s expression shifted slightly, something uncomfortable passing through it. "I mean... there are some real criminals around here. And worse. So." He didn’t finish the sentence but he didn’t need to. The complicated look on his face said the rest of it.

Mei could read him like an open page. The quiet restlessness, the way his eyes never fully settled. He wanted out of here. It was written all over him. The only thing keeping him rooted to this place was Emily, and they both knew it. Without her, he’d have been gone a long time ago.

She kept walking until the nearest voices faded back far enough that she felt reasonably sure no one was close enough to matter. Then she stopped and turned around.

"You’re from New York," she said. "Abraham Lincoln High."

Tommy’s eyes went wide. His feet stopped moving. "Liam told you that?"

"No." She tilted her head slightly. "Ryan told me."

"Ryan?" He repeated the name like he was trying to place it, brow pulling together.

Mei had to stop herself from giving him a dry look. He didn’t even remember? She set that aside for a second. Though to be fair, maybe Callighan hadn’t made a big thing of what was happening out in Atlantic City. Or maybe Tommy just genuinely didn’t pay much attention to Callighan’s business beyond what directly affected him.

"Your classmate," she said. "Ryan Gray."

Something clicked this time. Tommy’s eyes went wide in a completely different way this time.

"Ryan..." He said it slowly, like he was pulling the face up from somewhere. "Yeah... wait, you’re with him?" He stared at her. "He’s still alive." It came out less like a question and more like something he was saying out loud to confirm it was real. A small, almost involuntary smile crossed his face for just a second.

Hearing that one of his classmates was alive somewhat was nice to hear after everything he had lost.

"I’m part of his group," Mei said. "We’re based in Atlantic City."

The smile faded. Tommy’s expression folded into something more complicated, and she could see him doing the math, opposite sides, same world. A weird thing to sit with.

"I see," he said quietly.

Mei didn’t give him long to dwell on it.

"It’s written plainly on your face that you don’t want to be here," she said. "That you don’t want any part of this group. So why are you still here?"

"Emily, someone I care about. She’s got some... problems. I can’t just leave her."

"Because she has a Symbiote inside her?" Mei said.

Tommy looked at her widened his eyes.

"You know about that too? Gaspar showed you?" He asked carefully.

"Ryan showed me," she said, crossing her arms.

"Ryan?" He blinked. "What.... how would Ryan—"

"Ryan is a Symbiote host as well," she said simply. "How do you think Emily got hers?"

It took a second to land. Then it landed.

"Ryan did that?!" A flash of anger quickly appeared on his face.

Mei however stayed calm. "Why are you getting angry? From what I understand, he saved Emily’s life. The Symbiote might be the reason she’s still breathing."

She was piecing together the edges of that story more than she was stating fact, but she was fairly confident in the shape of it.

Tommy’s anger didn’t last. It buckled almost as fast as it came, something softer taking its place as the memory caught up to the emotion. He’d left Emily in decent shape. She’d been okay when they parted. If Ryan had given her a Symbiote, well, that didn’t sound like someone hurting her. That sounded like someone making a call to keep her alive.

His mind jumped for a second to Penny. To what Gaspar had done to her, forcing part of himself into her without a choice, without a word. The thought of Emily going through something like that made his stomach turn.

But that wasn’t what this was. He knew that even as the comparison formed. Because Emily, when she came back to him, hadn’t been frightened or broken or hollow. She’d been okay. More than okay. She’d been grateful and she’d spoken about Ryan with only praising words.

Or maybe it had started even before the Symbiote, now that he thought about it.

After Ryan left, Emily had changed. Quietly at first, then in ways that were harder to ignore. She’d worried about him out loud, saying they shouldn’t have let him go like that, that he was out there alone, that it wasn’t right. Tommy had listened. He’d even understood it, at the beginning, Ryan had been part of their class, of course she was concerned.

But it kept going. Ryan’s name kept coming up, again and again, and something inside Tommy had started to fray under the weight of it. He’d already lost so much by then, his parents almost certainly gone, the world he knew completely unrecognizable. Emily had become the one thing he was still holding onto, the one constant in all of it. And she couldn’t stop talking about another man.

Nothing inappropriate. Nothing that should have meant what it felt like it meant. He knew that, even then. But the stress had been eating at him for so long and the pressure had nowhere else to go, and one day it just snapped. He’d lashed out at her. Hard. Harder than he should have, harder than he’d ever spoken to her before.

Emily had gone quiet after that. Not upset-quiet, more like something in her had simply stepped back and closed a door. She’d grown distant in a way that felt final, and when she’d tried to leave the group on her own not long after, Tommy had had to talk her down, convince her to stay. She had. But things were different between them after that, and they both knew it.

Then the sickness started. The changes in her behavior, slow at first and then less slow, until she was in the state she was in now, unstable, unpredictable, a version of herself that scared him in ways he didn’t have words for yet.

"Ryan can help her."

Tommy’s eyes snapped back to Mei.

"Y...You serious?" He asked.

"I am," she said. "You’re staying here and doing what Gaspar says because you think Gaspar is the only one who can fix what’s happening to her. That’s why, isn’t it?"

Tommy didn’t answer right away. He didn’t need to. The answer was on his face.

"Then I’m telling you, Ryan can help her," Mei said, seriously, "and he is nothing like that scumbag."

Something shifted in Tommy’s eyes. It was small, just a flicker, but it was real hope. A way out. An actual way out of this place that didn’t mean leaving Emily behind or surrendering her to Gaspar indefinitely.

Mei saw it reach him.

And that was exactly why she stopped talking.

"I’ll let you think about it," she said, already turning and starting back.

"What?" Tommy turned after her, thrown off. "Wait—"

He wanted more. She could tell. He wanted the full picture, every detail, something solid to hold onto right now while the ground was still shifting under him.

But that wasn’t how this worked.

"We’re going to be late and it’ll look suspicious," she said without breaking stride. "Just think carefully about what I said. When you’ve made up your mind, when you’re actually ready to do what needs to be done and you’re willing to cooperate, let’s talk again."

Then she walked away and left him standing there with it.

Dropping everything on him at once would have been a mistake. The boat, the plan, the logistics, the risk, all of it piled onto a man still reeling from finding out his old classmate was alive, that Ryan had given Emily her Symbiote, that there was a completely different path forward than the one he’d been grinding himself down on. That was already a lot for one conversation.

So Mei chose to simply let Tommy recover and resume their conversation latter when he would most certainly have made up his mind to help them.