Luminous Beings

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Cordelia Lynn Holmes

Lynn's arm itched. She looked down and there was something in the crook of her right arm. Something. She tried to focus her eyes on it, but her eyes were not cooperating. She blinked. Did she? Did she blink? Something wasn't right with her vision. She was forgetting something. She was cold.

"You always were almost adorable." Lynn frowned. She'd heard that voice. The clinking of ice in a glass. Lynn looked up from her arm, eyes tracing over the orange jumpsuit pants that hung baggy and loose from her legs, though none of the other girls had ever once been fooled into thinking Lynn was a half pound heavier than she was. That sweatshirt had never fooled anyone either. It was just a hoodie to tell the world how rich and tall she wasn't. The jumpsuit told the jury what decision to make, if that silver collar hadn't. On seventeen counts of arson, eight of petty vandalism, three of petty theft -

Lynn was in a living room. There was a couch littered with cigarette burn marks opposite her. She must have been in the easy chair, then, the one that had more quarters than a pinball machine in its cracks. They fought over who got to sit there. Lynn lost intentionally. To her left was the window, barred over, broken through.

Lynn looked across the room and saw a man sitting there. A girl lay sprawled across his lap, strung out to oblivion. He had one hand cradling her neck, idly toying with her hair, and the other swirling the whiskey in his glass. To their right, a fireplace crackled and stirred, even though Lynn knew there was no fireplace supposed to be there. No fireplace in a meth house, Lynn thought. She felt like she was swimming. She felt like she was looking through stained glass, watching rain drizzle down. But there was no water. Only the clinking of ice cubes in glass. Something was wrong. It was too empty. There was always a junkie or two hanging around, some debtor or would be disciple girl to their resident prophet. But it was so empty. She was cold.

The man had olive skin, the wisps of an unformed beard and mustache clinging to his face. His cheeks were pudgier than she remembered, but she was thinking that was more that she'd remembered wrong, than that he'd changed. His eyes were dark and seemed to soak in the firelight without turning warm. Lynn went to pull herself up more in her seat but her arm caught. She turned back and saw there was a handcuff around the side of the easy chair to the crook of her arm. Some distant back part of her head started to hurt. That wasn't how the chair's arm was, Lynn thought. There was nowhere for it to hook in, this isn't right, who's that girl, why is there -

"Lynn." Che said, voice smooth as the whiskey swirling in his hands.

"Fuck off." Lynn muttered, looking around, fidgeting. There was nothing to grab, in a house full of needles there was nothing she could get in her hand. She had to - Lynn stopped for a moment, mind whirring. She had to do something, didn't she? But she couldn't remember what. Was it Che? There was someone else. There was a gunfight, and -

"You're safe."

Lynn turned and looked back at him. The woman in his arms was stirring, just barely. Lynn had seen that before, you know, the ones who might need naloxone, who might pull through. "Who's she?" Lynn said. You never answered their questions. You just deflected. Found something else.

"You know."

Lynn stared at the woman. Tattoos. She was familiar. She'd seen her, yes, at the -

"Drink?" Che asked.

Lynn was looking around. "Where's Clarita? Megan? What did you - "

"Lynn," Che said again, and Lynn felt her voice flicker out her like the flames in the pit. The left side of the room was dark, only lit by the fire. Her eye wasn't working right. "Just relax a minute. You know where you are."

"Shut the fuck up."

"Home."

"This isn't right."

"Was it ever?" Che asked, sipping. No matter how much he drank, it always stayed steady. That's not right either, Lynn thought, feverishly. Clarita poured, I never got to, I would've set it on fire, but she's not here, and - "You're dying."

"Nothing can kill me," Lynn said, but the lie felt weak even to her. She was, suddenly, she knew, just as she knew this house was not as she remembered it. She was shivering beneath her jumpsuit, and she felt clammy. The left side of the room kept growing darker. In the fireplace, the logs had burned to white ash. "I don't - let me out of this chair."

Che smiled. "I taught you how to pick locks."

"You taught me to fuck off and die. Give me the key."

Che shook his head. "Doesn't work that way. Don't you want a drink?"

Lynn stared at him. "I'm sick of these fucking games."

"Because you always lose?" Che grinned, cocking his head to a side as he looked her over, and Lynn could only think of the clothes melting off her, how bare and bone thin she was. Not like those other girls. Not like - there was a blank space in Lynn's brain. I should know, she's so strong, she - the first day, she had a collar, a...a necklace, I...and she - she broke my shoulder, she -

Fuck this.Lynn screamed with anger, trying to reach out to the fire, to make it roar up to life, but the flames stayed put. There was a second in-between her willing the fire to life and when it should have happened that she remembered something happening, she remembered reaching out to a flame, farther than she'd reached before - it had been the cafeteria, there were bullets, and -

Lynn looked back at Che. There were bullet holes all against the wall behind him. The woman coughed and murmured something incoherent. He ignored her. He always did. "Drink, Lynn."

Lynn looked down at the cafeteria mug in her hand. Water, boiling, boiling. There hadn't been a mug there before. She was cold. "What the fuck is this, Che?"

"I'm here to help. I can unlock that thing."

"Then do it."

"Not yet."

Lynn stared at him with all the doubt she could muster, but there was some part of her that almost believed it. That was Che's trick. He could tell the devil, I'm so sorry, Mister Scratch, I need my soul back for just one hour, I promise, there's a con job, and I can get us twice as much, I just need a little upfront, trust me - and he could've made it work. He grinned, sipping at the whiskey. From the left, she could hear the glass breaking, and a few bottles rolled into the room. There was the sound of a car screeching and taking off down the street outside. Lynn could only hear - the left side of the room was untouched by the firelight. "Yeah?" Lynn asked, almost wanting it to be true. On the one hand, the prison uniform scratched just as bad as it had that day - that last day she'd seen him, sitting in the courtroom, collar to her neck, shaking, livid - but a part quiet down murmured that there had been no one that had pretended to have the answers since then, either. What was better? That was the question Lynn had wondered about staring at the bunk above her in juvy all those nights. Is it better to have a liar who pretends to give a fuck, or no one at all?

"Yeah," Che said. "I'm gonna get you off the Promise."

All at once. Lynn felt a sudden surge and snap in her gut, like she'd been stopped halfway down the drop of a rollercoaster. The woman in Che's lap coughed and begged for someone to stop, that she didn't want to fight. Lynn looked down at the cafeteria mug, remembering, and something warm started trickling down Lynn's face. "No," Lynn murmured. "You weren't fucking with me, I'm - "

"Half your brains are on the cafeteria floor." Che sipped at his whiskey. She'd forgotten how it sounded, the ice, how many times she'd heard it sitting in that room. "I want to help you Lynn. You need the help, you know. This - " Che gestured with the whiskey glass, fingers twirling the woman's hair, "Is every last little ounce of that parahuman blood of yours keeping you up on the ropes. It's all here in your skull trying to keep a few neurons firing."

She looked over at her arm, handcuffed to the chair.

"Your temperature's eighty nine degrees right now. And you just lost your right hand to frostbite."

The firelight flickered more. When she looked back at Che he was wearing a suit, black and silky and smooth as a raven's feathers. He'd never once owned a suit in his life, no matter how much he'd bickered about needing just one more drop off or a few more pockets picked before they'd have made it. Lynn tore more copper wiring off exposed generators than she could remember to finance that dream, the idea that if Che was successful, he'd pull them all up with him. He's fucking lying, be smart for once in your stupid life and stop listening, Lynn wanted to snap at herself. But the other part of her felt cold. "You fucked me over," Lynn whispered.

"We've all made mistakes," Che said. Somehow, that sounded right, even though the snapping part protested. We all make mistakes but we don't fucking do what we did, it said, but it was quieter, and colder. He gave her a crooked smile. "You don't get anything back at all if you don't let me help."

"I'd rather put a bullet in your - " Lynn stopped. The fever was getting worse. The room was getting hotter.

"Remember?" Che whispered.

Lynn touched a hand up to the side of her head. It was wet. She felt where half her skull should be. There was no more hair on her head. "No," she murmured. She turned and looked at the fireplace, which had crackled back to life. The white logs were thinner, now. They were too thin to be fireplace logs, and white.

"I..."

"You did."

"I didn't know."

"You were happy to do it. What'd you say? Something about the Great Wall?"

"Che, he - Che how was I - "

He held up a hand and Lynn stopped talking. She was little again. But he was listening to her, and that meant something. The protesting part was farther and farther away. He leaned forward, and the woman slipped off his lap onto the floor. She shivered, choking on her spit. Her head looked nearly as fucked as Lynn's. Bruised, beaten in. Her clothes had been melted off. "Lynn, you don't have much time left."

Lynn said nothing, staring forward.

"Even if one of them manages to keep you alive. You have a matter of hours. If none of them sits with you in the hospital - which they won't - they'll pull the blanket off and let it happen. Another tally mark for the terrorists. You know what's coming."

Lynn looked down at the handcuff around the crook of her arm, her head feeling swollen and heavy. She was so cold.

At his feet, Salamandra croaked for mercy and Che put a perfectly-shined shoe to her throat and silenced the noise. Lynn turned to the fire to look away, and the bones of the Chinese boy roasted brighter as she did. The gun melted, it melted onto his shoe and he couldn't - "Christ, Che, I don't -"

"Do I seem better now? Now that your hands got a little dirty?"

"I never - I never fucking - your own sister, Che, your own fucking - "

Lynn's voice trailed off. The bottles from the window rolled further into the room. The geometry of the room was melting and running, but Che hadn't noticed. The firelight burned brighter as the bottles rolled in, oozing out kerosene onto the floor. Her nose hurt, across the bridge. "I know."

There was quiet for a minute. The heat was starting to get oppressive, now, sucking the air out her lungs. She could feel the heat against her but it didn't make her feel any less cold. The handcuff was in her arm, going into one of her veins. Lynn lifted the mug to her lips and stopped before she took a sip. There were cracks down the ceramic. Che watched her curiously.

"You're still alive somewhere, aren't you?"

He shrugged. "Could ask you the same thing."

"You're in my head."

"Never left."

Lynn closed her eyes for a moment. She didn't know if him being a hallucination made what he said more or less true. Are you gonna ignore yourself, Lynn? He only knows what you do. That means what he says is what you're thinking.

The walls started to melt on the right side, but Lynn couldn't see anything on the left at all. She tried to keep her eyes from Salamandra's body or the one in the fireplace or the bottles on the floor and that left nowhere to look but right at Che. "Do you know how many people were in the house? When you made me throw the bottle?"

"Made you?" Che asked, kicking Salamandra over to face her. Lynn steeled herself, even as she felt her head swaying. Her toes didn't hurt any more, and she looked down and saw the black rot of frostbite creeping up to her ankles. Don't be a bitch now. Don't die like a little bitch. "Do you think you get off the Promise without another Salamandra?"

Lynn stayed quiet, feeling the mug in her hand and the sweat that was coursing down her skin. She shivered, her breath misting. The room was so hot. "No," she said, softly. "I have to do it again, don't I?" Somewhere outside, she could hear more gunshots, she could hear screaming in a language she couldn't understand. A woman screamed. There wasn't any pressure on the left side of her skull any more.

"How many more?"

"I don't know, Che."

He leaned forward, and suddenly the floor was melting down and they were being pulled closer, no matter how hard she dug her frozen feet into the bed to stop it. "What if this happens, Lynn? What if you find the kids, and they're all around, Gennedy and the others? What if the woman in the woods comes? What if you have to let them go back into their little cells, or you can - " he sipped at the whiskey. "You can stop all that for them. It's not hard. You know how easy it is now."

He kicked Salamandra and she rolled over closer, through the kerosone and across the firelit floor that was running like watercolor right to the base of Lynn's chair. "Shut the fuck up, Che, I - " But it was like everything he said, it snaked in and coiled around and never, ever, went out. What if, Lynn thought, and she was in a little prison room with Clarita right in front of her, looking up at her with a bloody lip, and there was gunfire outside. You already killed one kid, Lynn, someone said. What's a few more? It's already too late.

Che leaned back. The ice in his drink was still cold. "We didn't want to wind up here, you know. You and me."

"I'm not here," Lynn said. "There's not a fucking we."

"You can go." He gestured to the oozing, utter black of the left side of the room.

Lynn leaned back, closing her eyes. Her eye. Christ, her eye, it was gone, that was why -

"Do you think when you wake up you can ignore it? What happens? Are you just gonna die? That's it. That's all it boils down to. You would rather live and light thirteen year olds on fire than do the right thing and kill you-"

"Shut up," Lynn whispered.

"Four people. Ash." he snapped his fingers. "Because you wanted to feel strong and stand over Salamandra with her skull caved in. And a kid. How old was he? Thirteen? Twelve? You saw the rifle shaking in his hands, didn't you? The terror in his eyes behind that ski mask? You did all that. Not Gary and his wandering hands, not me, not any one of the bitches in juvy. Just you, Lynn."

Lynn stared, her brain running like the room around her. I burned Gary's hand, he tried - I burned someone's hand, recently, the mall, I burned him, I didn't mean to, I shouldn't have, I didn't -

"I meant it when I said I wanted to help, Lynn. You always fought harder than anybody else. It's what made you so useful. Like Smokin' Joe. Tougher every round. Every ring of the bell. Are you smokin' yet, Lynn? It's the fifteenth round. There's no time left." Che stood up off the chair and stepped across the floor, gliding across the ground that melted and ran like molten wax. Lynn could smell, for a brief minute, a dizzying rush of smells - Christmas pine needles, dumplings steaming and sizzling, iron and salt, gunpowder, sweat. Everything was starting to tilt, now. Che alone stood still, like some kind of anchor in all the dimensions of space, as the bottles rolled into the fireplace with the sounds of police sirens and a gavel slamming and the feeling of glass in her face, in her nose, blood running down her throat as she tried to breathe. Everything was cold as the fire spread across the room. Lynn couldn't tell the boundaries between her senses any longer. They fumed and flickered like a fire catching on to deadwood. Salamandra's body went next, and Lynn saw there were four more bodies turned to ash inside the fireplace as she went, ripped up shreds of a Chinese menu. And a Chinese boy, dressed like a toy soldier, crackling, burning. Then Clarita, and Megan, and Eli, and Keaton, and Amelia, and Natalie, and him -

"Stop it, stop it, Che, I don't - "

"It doesn't fucking stop," Che snapped. He was right next to her chair, standing over her, and she was small, small as she ever was, and Lynn tried to shove him away but her hand slipped into the black of the suit and kept going and going and going as the other hand stayed bound to the chair. She pulled back and her hand was gone was like her eye. At least it wasn't cold anymore. Che leaned over her as the rest of the room ran into the fireplace and then the fire started running back, crawling up the walls and across the floor. It flickered in Che's eyes and in the whiskey glass as he poured it into Lynn's little ceramic mug, ice clinking as he filled it to the top. "That's the thing. It never stops. The first time you sat on a street corner and looked for cops when I made a deal. It never stopped after that. Not once."

There was nowhere else to look but him. "You should've just killed me," Lynn finally said.

Che smiled, something wide as his whole face, his teeth now straight and shining. "Maybe. You were never gonna get out, Lynn. That's what nobody told you. None of the guidance counselors or prison therapists or kids on the Promise. You were never gonna catch up. They were nice. They smiled. They ate lunch with you. But none of them were gonna say you were a fuck up from the day your mother left you at the hospital when her baby's eyes changed color."

Lynn stared at him.

"You were never going to get out. Not out of that neighborhood. Not out of juvy. Not out of here. You may as well have stepped into a casket instead of that fucking rocket ship. Even if you get to a pod. Even if you get through the atmosphere. Even if you land." He shook his head, smiling wider and wider and wider. There was no way to tell where the dark of the suit stopped and where the dark from her left eye started aside from when the fire flickered between them. "I'm in your split open skull." The only thing steady was the whiskey in her mug. Her hand was back. It was holding it. The other was still cuffed down by the IV tube. "You killed a kid, Lynn."

Lynn said nothing.

"You burned him alive. He died screaming with metal in his face and molten steel boiling through his feet."

Lynn turned away.

"I never did that. I tried to hustle you all, sure. I even hurt you. I won't lie. But I never fucking lit a kid on fire." Che sipped at his whiskey, still just as full after filling her glass. "Do you think it hurts for long, Lynn?"

"Shut the fuck up," Lynn whispered, the mug shaking in her hands, but the whiskey never spilled.

"This is my help, Lynn. The only thing I can give you."

"You're in my head. This is - this isn't - it's a Salamandra dream, I've had a - "

"You've had nineteen."

The fire grew and grew.

"Salamandra let you hesitate, you know. And that kid. And all the others. But Arianna won't. Gennedy won't. Do you want my advice?"

"How did I live?" Lynn asked. You deflect. You don't let them control the conversation. But it didn't matter, because Che was always the conversation. He could play the game better than she ever could.

"Think."

Lynn closed her eye, the sweltering heat thudding against her, digging its claws in and pulling at her. She was so cold. "Someone got me out," she murmured. "Not Keaton, or Eli, they couldn't have..." she paused, thinking more. "The lizard. He would've killed me." she paused, feeling the whiskey in her glass, wanting so badly to take a sip, to feel something cold, she knew it would make it all stop melting and all hold still. "Spoons would've...gone crazy, I..." It clicked. "Amelia."

"Why?"

Lynn paused. She felt the fire start to creep in the hole in her head, and she could feel it slither down her throat. She was still cold. Why would Amelia have gotten her out instead of saving herself? "She's afraid." Lynn stared. "Afraid of me."

"It never stops."

Lynn tried to breathe but there was no air. She could still speak, which she didn't understand. Cold. "Does Keaton know? Eli? That I...killed..."

"Who? Any of them? Not yet. Maybe Keaton suspects. But Keaton will put it together. The kid. Salamandra."

"How, I - "

Che hushed her with a look, the way he always could, and nodded.

"Gennedy could've given her a tip."

"No, no, she wouldn't - "

"You haven't been caught yet. Did you really think you were that clever? You're fucking failing every class."

The cold got deeper. You stupid girl. You stupid bitch. Lynn lowered her head. "Eli?"

Che looked down at her. "She pities you. She heard what you sputtered out at the party. If she remembered half of it, Keaton knows the rest."

Lynn stared at her glass. What did I tell her? "It never stops."

Che shook his head, and the rest of the room melted away. It was just fire, and Che. "It never stops."

"What was your advice?"

Che smiled at her, and pulled back the jacket he was wearing. His .45 was tucked into his waist. Lynn felt the pain in her knee as fresh as the day she'd gotten the scar. The pistol made her shake and clench. Her knee. Christ, her knee. "Don't turn your back to any of them this time."

Lynn thought he was going to slide the jacket back over, but she realized it was an invitation. Lynn reached out with the arm that was cuffed to the chair, seeing that her right knee was oozing blood through her jumpsuit as she did. She wrapped her hand around the pistol. It and the whiskey. The only cold things in the room. She pulled it out from his waist, uncomfortable with how close it brought her to him, again, and pulled back into her chair. It was cold steel, and there were leather straps binding her to it, and electrodes against her skin. There was talking somewhere out the window. A voice she recognized. A man. She couldn't place it. The sound of something crashing.

"If you wake up," Che said softly, "You'll try and break them out, won't you?"

Lynn nodded, barely. She was shivering.

"And then what? Do you take them home? Do you get them back home? Do you have a plan to get them home?"

Lynn looked away. Her plan was always just...she...

"You never wanted to get them out did you, Lynn? Not really."

Lynn felt sick. It wasn't true. She didn't want it to be true. It just sounded so right.

"You just wanted to feel like a good person before somebody with better aim than me put a bullet in you."

There was nothing for Lynn to say. There was just fire and Che and cold. He always was right. She never could outsmart him.

"What's your plan now, firestarter? If you're unlucky enough to wake up."

"I - " Lynn said, feeling something trickling down the left side of her skull. "I...get the others, out...out the way. On the pods."

"There's something useful you've done, at least."

"Then I - I go. And..." For a moment the room seemed almost steady. The handcuff on her arm slipped away, but Lynn didn't notice. "..and we see how good their aim is."

Che smiled. "Better than me, for sure. Don't feel bad. Maybe you'll do it. You always did pull something out in the fifteenth. If not, hell's warm enough for you." His eyes flickered as the fire started dancing across him, too. He clinked his glass against her mug.

"Have a drink?"

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Cordelia Lynn Holmes

Cordelia Lynn Holmes had many faults but being someone to quit easily was not one of them.

The problem was that the part of her that had picked herself back up off the asphalt, or the power-washed concrete of a prison block, or the carpet of that house - that part of her just couldn't.

She couldn't see. Lynn didn't remember drinking. It was all spinning. Her thoughts wouldn't work. Nothing was working. She hurt. She hurt really bad and she wanted to go to sleep. Somewhere she could hear him scream. Pick me up, Lynn tried to say. I have to get him back to the kitchen. They got them out of the cafeteria so I can blow it up now. Freezer, someone, there's -

Someone was holding something over her head and covering her eye so she couldn't see. "Stop," Lynn tried to pick her hand up off the floor and push them away but it wouldn't move. "Shta," Lynn garbled. She was sweating in her mouth. It was hot, and salty. Lynn coughed - pain lanced through the side of her skull - and ash and blood splattered out. She wheezed, and what she could see out of her eye was dark and swimmy and shifting. "Stop I can't see, I can't..."

I got shot again, Lynn thought. I walked in the room and I got shot, from back behind me, there was supposed to...they were supposed to be there and they weren't, and I got shot in the knee. But Lynn's knee didn't hurt. Nothing in her legs hurt. She was just cold. Lynn was shaking and shivering and couldn't remember why her hair was gone. She was barely able to shift her head. There was a girl over her. Lynn couldn't remember her name. She was swimming. There was something she had to say but she couldn't remember but she knew it was important she had to say it. Where did she get shot? She couldn't walk. Was it her knee? Someone was screaming for help. It's a trap, Lynn thought. You're gonna follow them in the door and you'll get shot.

Keaton, Lynn wondered. Or Elly, or... Lynn blinked. Was Amelia there? Amelia was gone. She'd been gone for a month. There was something she had to tell her before they got shot again. Lynn couldn't remember who her was. "Lizard," Lynn muttered, her brain trying to hold all the thoughts that they were leaking out her skull like cupping sand in her cold shaking hands. Why had she been there? Why did she get shot? She wasn't - "docks," Lynn murmured. "Docks, they're bringing..." Lynn tried to remember. The woods. "Dolls," Lynn said. "Kids at the docks, tell denim, it's...they're...the ghost men are watching but she...know," Lynn tried to pick herself up again but her hurtless legs wouldn't work. She was cold. She was so cold. She was so cold. All of her was shaking and shivering and clammy. Someone had burned half her clothes and all her hair off her. She didn't want to be ugly when she died. The part of her that put brick by brick against the part of her that was afraid and fused it in the kiln of the back of her mind was leaking out onto the floor through Amelia's jacket. "Blanket," Lynn murmured. Her words spiraled slower and quieter. "It's cold. Bring the lizard, he'll get cold, it's cold, lizards and cold they...they slow, you can..." Lynn's eye focused on the figure above her, leaning over her. It was a woman. No. "No," Lynn said. "I had to, you were gonna kill me, you were gonna kill me...I had to, I had to, I had to...you were gonna hurt him, you...you and then those four people and the kid, I lit him on fire, I thought...you shot me, why did you shoot me, I never hurt you, I did everything right...they all sat there and lied about me, I just had to watch...I was gonna get needle...they lied...you shot me..."

Everything was dark now and the slurred mess that spilled out of Lynn's bluing lips matched it. This was cruel. Lynn hadn't done this to her. There was pressure on the side of her head. The freezer. She'd pulled her into the freezer. That's why it was so cold. Lynn had killed her but she hadn't been like this. She didn't blind her. She blinded the kid though. She lit him on fire. She melted the gun in his hands. "I didn't know," Lynn slurred. "Get off my eyes, get off my eyes, get off my eyes, get off my eyes..."

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Cordelia Lynn Holmes

Lynn chewed again on Amelia's words. Everybody's got something lucky they hold onto, right? Lynn had never felt particularly blessed with good luck - the sole stroke of blessed fortune was getting the single public defender in the continental United States that cared about parahumans assigned to her case, but Lynn had never attributed much to luck. I'd trade luck to be tall enough to ride the rollercoasters, honestly. Besides, there'd been little in Lynn's life she felt like she'd ever held onto for very long. Her hoodie, maybe, one of the few possession that made it through parahuman juvy, but even then, she never felt like it was much in the way of luck. Lynn listened closely to what she said about cults. Sororities? Lynn had really never heard much about them. She knew they were like societies or something, from Italy, maybe? And they were all slutty, but that was about all the intel she had. Lynn considered attending college and becoming President of the United States as equally likely for her, so she'd never looked much into it. Still, that didn't stop her from forming an opinion.

"Well, we should get one started here," Lynn said, in the sort of blank affect tone that was never clear if it was joking or serious, even to herself. "At least we'd be making some money off the brainwashing."

Denim and Denzel came over, and Lynn felt a brief flutter of mercy that he and Natalie weren't anywhere around. Maybe there's some luck after all. Wonder if there's any gambling here. Lynn had been interested in the boxing leagues the Promise had, but they were banned to elemental parahumans. It'd hadn't stopped her from watching as many matches as she could, and offering to spar with any of them behind closed doors. A few had taken her up on it, and it'd been a nice shake-up from hitting a heavy bag. The more violently-minded ones were won over by Lynn's offer they could literally hit her as hard as they wanted and she'd be fine the next morning. Who said I don't know how to win men over, huh?

Keaton and Eli walked up and Lynn's brain jumped between a few thoughts, all of them the sort that felt like the moment right before you take the plunge. What had they been talking about? Why were they coming over? Why were they hanging out for so long? Why - Lynn blinked, and felt her pocket for her phone. It was turned off - and also back in her dorm. Lynn had been forgetting things lately. The one day she made it to class the previous week, she'd forgotten her bag. "I...shit, my bad," Lynn said, blinking. She turned to Keaton as she answered her question, keeping her voice steady but hoping to say more with her now-orange eyes. "Oh, you know. Who knows what kinds of interesting things you might turn up here," she said. Keaton and I need to meet again soon. I have to tell her about the loading docks.

Eli had asked more or less the same thing, and Lynn greeted her - to her own surprise, with a smile. "What's up," she said. Lynn looked around the crowded room and saw Eli meet Freaky D's gaze. Lynn felt her jaw tense. The last time he'd been present when kids got brought in, she'd wound up far closer to death than she'd admit. If he comes here, there could be problems. Christ, why don't he and Cara just fuck already and stop causing problems for the rest of us.

Lynn looked down at her cafeteria tray, freshly devoured. She was still hungry. "You think there's time to - "

The doors opened and Lynn's eyes widened. Her heart jumped and her mind flashed from here to a dozen different places, the sounds of gunshots blasting out glass and windows.

There were few things that Lynn was more qualified at than the other students her age. She was not as gentle as Archie. She was not as profound as Natalie, as sharp as Keaton, forgiving as Eli, artistic as Amelia, or have good watches like Fossil or whatever his nickname had been. She couldn't even flop as good as Fish. But Lynn, for better or worse, was perhaps the single most qualified person to handle a drive-by.

"Get the - " Lynn started to shout, but she was too slow. She'd always been too slow. The machine guns thundered and Amelia's neck exploded beside her, splattering Lynn with blood she did not register she felt across her face. Lynn was already dropping her tray, already -

The blow connected with Lynn's head and she crumpled to the floor, the world spinning. Lynn spat out a tooth. It would grow back in two weeks or so. She looked up.

Che shook his right hand, grimacing. The knuckles were red. "You burned me."

"I'm sorry," Lynn said, automatically - you said I'm sorry whenever you could, because you never knew when you did something wrong, and you wanted to get ahead of it and make sure Che didn't get mad. But this time Che wasn't mad. He was teaching her to be tough. She had to be tough.

"Come here," he said, pulling her back inside the house. Calling it a house was charitable - a few of Che's business partners this week owned it, and nearly everything was in a state of disarray. The TV alone functioned flawlessly, and he sat Lynn down before it. Her backpack with her grade school homework sat forgotten leaning against the couch that had been baptized in cigarette smoke a thousand times over. Che put something on TV. An old fight. Some of Lynn's favorites - though she didn't recognize the fighter.

"His name was Smokin' Joe."

He looked down at Lynn, who grinned, a trickle of blood oozing out. "Like me."

Che nodded, giving her the quarter-smile. She only once or twice got a half-smile - when she'd done a really important job for him and when she'd (for a moment, Lynn thought about the bottle, breaking in her hand, and her face, but then it was gone) - but she got the quarter-smiles every now and then. "Like you. You know what Smokin' Joe did? He never took a step back. Not a single fuckin' one. Always forward. He could take it."

"I can take it too."

"Good," Che said. On the chair beside them, a man in a drug-induced stupor drooled listlessly and stared at the screen, unaware entirely they'd changed it, but to Lynn, she may as well have been in a palace, kneeling before the monarch who was knighting her. "Because when you're a little older, I'll need you to. You have to rush in and keep us safe. Because you can take the hits. The others can't, they - "

Lynn was moving forward when suddenly she wasn't. Lynn was on the floor. Had she tripped? She blinked, looking around. She had been shot before, but not like this. Something was wrong. The center of her chest was a bloody mess, which irritated her more than it did frighten her, and her legs refused to work. Lynn didn't hurt as much as she thought she should, which was to be expected. Just felt like getting punched, real hard, at least until everything started falling out. Lynn grunted and went to pull herself up. She couldn't. The smell of the cafeteria floor being scorched as she cauterized her wounds filled the air along with the smell of gunpowder and blood and the smell of panic, of a hundred people ruining themselves as their bodies shut down and the rest sweating and shaking.

Lynn blinked. "No," she murmured. "No, fuck, fuck, no, damnit, get up!" she tried to push herself up again and nothing happened. She felt down and grabbed at her leg. She felt nothing. She ran her hand over the wound and around to her back. Christ. In the spine. Lynn leaned back down, trying to present as small a profile as possible - which, mercifully, was not difficult for her. She was going to die as a cripple. Weak. Broken. Amelia. Amelia can get me closer. Lynn dragged herself a foot or two closer and looked at the girl in front of her. Lynn's mind had been racing so fast she forgot the girl was shot. She was already pretty pale but she was getting pale a lot faster, and all the hair on the right side of her head was matted thick with blood. Lynn looked up at her for assent, grimaced, and uttered a quick, "Sorry."

She didn't know, in that brief moment, if she was apologizing that it was going to hurt, or if that she was going to look like Lynn after. With the sound of bullets tearing through the air a foot and a half over her head, that thought occurred to Lynn. You're gonna be ugly now, you poor bitch.

Then Lynn grabbed a hand over as much of the wound as she could and grunted. There was the smell of flesh being flash-scorched and the exit wound sealing off as she cauterized as much as she dared. Lynn thought she'd gotten the most of it, and uttered another - rare, genuine - apology as she rolled back over. everything below the sternum was numb. She couldn't crawl closer, she thought, her mind racing. If she did, she'd get gunned down before she ever get close. How many of them were there? Lynn couldn't see particularly well over a corpse next to her, a girl that looked barely older than her.

Lynn shut it out of her mind. She'd seen people who started noticing things like the necklace of the state of Montana around her neck or the t-shirt with a witty caption that was riddled with bullet holes on her. If you noticed stuff like that instead of how many of them there were, or what they were packing, you got killed too. Lynn could see one about thirty feet away. Even if Amelia had been hidden, she thought, Lynn didn't think she could teleport both of them over. She looked back over at them, desperation gnawing at her. Fucking do something, she wanted to scream. You're going to die on the floor like a crippled fucking coward?

Lynn twisted her neck back around the other way with utter disregard for the state of spine. She could see the others, it looked like Eli had been winged, but -

- Archie. When did he - Lynn saw him on the ground, bleeding. If he wasn't turning, then it must be bad, it must be as bad as Amelia's or even worse. She hesitated. She could pull herself over, she could cauterize him. Lynn didn't even know if him turning would be bad. If they were all going to die, at least these machine gun fuckers - Gennedy, if I live, I will burn you worse than you'll burn in hell she thought, amidst it all, furious, furious that nothing had ever worked for her, that she was going to die on the loading bay floors a hundred yards from a box with the proof she needed to find them - at least they might die too.

The guns behind her kept thundering, and Lynn felt her stomach turn cold and sick.

How many people were they shooting?

Archie was only one. Fifteen or twenty feet back from her.

Lynn turned back. Che would've left him to die, too, a little voice told her. And me, a South African voice whispered. And maybe when it's done you can still have your way with him before -

Lynn twisted onto her side, grunting from the exertion. Christ, this was bad. She took a breath or two for a moment, trying to steady herself. She pushed how awful she felt - Archie, bleeding on the floor, staring right at you - not away, but down onto the embers, and she stoked the coals. She could feel herself getting hotter. Wouldn't matter. Lynn reckoned her lifespan was in seconds, and if she withered here at least she'd melt a few - four people vaporized - with her. She stared, looking for anything she could use. They were getting smoked -

Lynn grinned, pain shooting through her as she reached into her pocket. She had to try and balance herself with what few muscles remained functional to her as she drew out her pack of cigarettes, trembling in her hands. You pussy, she thought. Stop acting like you're losing your gunshot virginity and do something. Lynn opened up the packet, pulling out one cigarette. She gripped it for a moment, taking a deep breath. It flickered alight, and she tucked it down in the pack. Timing. Timing was everything. She waited one moment, two -

The cigarettes were half-lit now, and the fire was spreading. Lynn hurled it as best she could at the nearest gunman. She'd never taken into account how much your back and core were needed for a good throw, and it landed a few feet off the mark - but it was close enough. The gunman stopped, turning to look at it for just a bare moment. Maybe he thought it was a grenade, or some kind of trick.

Little of both. Lynn tried to block everything out - the throbbing pain in her core, the screams all around her, him curled up on the floor in his own blood, Eli's leg, Amelia's neck - and focus on the pack of cigarettes. She watched the flame blossom up more and more, devouring the pack through the cardboard. Lynn took a deep breath and felt it flicker closer to her, as if it was pulling and yearning to be back to its master. Lynn could almost feel its heat, she thought. Lynn turned her focus to the machinegun in the man's gloved hands, the barrel already hot from the half-a-hundred rounds he'd rattled through it.

"Holy shit!" He muttered, twisting his .45 to examine it. The barrel was red hot, and it had kicked twice as hard as it usually did. Che rubbed at his wrist and looked at it, smoke rolling off the muzzle.

"Is that bad?"

"No," Che murmured, thinking, and grinning - a half-grin - staring at the weapon in his hand. "It's good. It's very good. We - "

Lynn saw as he kept firing, the barrel getting red hot. It was just water in a mug. She just had to boil the water. Not anybody else near her, not the bodies in front of her twitching and convulsing - not Montana Girl, who probably said smart ass things that would've annoyed Lynn, just the water in the mug. Lynn took another deep breath, pushing it all out. This was like round seven or eight. You were starting to get battered pretty bad but you weren't out yet. Lynn tried to feel the heat, tried to feel it with her own, as if she could set the whole world on fire with just a spark if she had to. The cigarette pack flared up beside the man, jumping to a foot and a half tall before it died back down, the cigarettes burned through. The strain of it was pulling at every inch of Lynn, as if each part of her body had tried to pull against itself, and she could feel her own flames flickering down as she pushed herself too hard. Christ the only class I'm passing is power training, let me fucking do this.

The man screamed in pain, hopping back. The tip of his barrel was white-hot, and some of the metal had dripped down onto his shoe, melting through. Lynn felt as though Spoons had picked up a freight train and beaten her with it. The edges of her vision were darkening and there was a dull thudding somewhere in her skull. Or chest. Both. She kept going. Once Lynn Frazier got smokin', after all, you couldn't stop her, and Eli and Lucy and Clarita were behind her. She bit down as hard as she could to keep from screaming and drawing any more attention than a girl on fire already would, and pushed the heat as much as she could - half her strength gone to fanning the thermal energy, the other to keeping it in the mug, to just the boiling water, to not letting the mug break.

He desperately tried to lift the machine gun and take aim, but the barrel was warping. He pulled the trigger and nothing happened. He fumbled, trying to clear the chamber, and that set it off. The bullet in the chamber exploded prematurely, and its brothers and sisters in the ammo box followed suit. Each one seemed to hit Lynn with a punch in the gut from the force it took to wear down their points of combustion, to aggravate the heat and flame that made them burst open, and to make the steel of the gun melt quicker.

The machine gun exploded in his hands, sending shrapnel back into his chest and arms, and making molten metal splatter up onto him. The man screamed in a language Lynn thought she vaguely recognized. Fish? she thought for a moment, blearily. Everything was spinning. You're joining me soon, bitch, she heard Salamandra giggle, wheezing as she leaned back against the wall. Was someone choking her? Lynn was having trouble catching her breath. The back of her neck felt bare, which didn't make sense, because she had hair there - and her skin felt cold, but there should've been clothes. Smoke clung to her, and the hand she was holding out to the gunman had fallen to the elbow, and then the wrist. No weight Lynn had ever lifted was so heavy as keeping her fingers off the ground, trying to strain her abilities, to hit this man with all the force she had, and more precision than she was capable of. Chinese, Lynn thought. Or, close the fuck enough, no one cares if a corpse is wrong.

"Hey fucker," Lynn wheezed. "I can't see the Great Wall from up here after all, you know, you - "

The man was screaming, reaching up with his mangled hands to his ski mask, which he was able to rip off with scalded fingers. Lynn hadn't been able to see before, but the molten metal had splashed to his face and was fusing the mask to his skin. Fucking right, Lynn thought. You're the sort of bastard who kills -

He looked up at Lynn with wide, horrified eyes. He was screaming. He couldn't have been more than thirteen years old. He was screaming. He had gangly long arms that were longer than his legs, they hadn't growed evenly. He was screaming. His face where he was trying to grow in facial hair was burning, melting through, superheated metal or molten barrel, it didn't matter, he couldn't get it off, couldn't get it out. He was screaming.

Lynn stared, suddenly colder than she had ever been in her whole life. "No. No, no, I didn't, I'm not, I didn't - "

Lynn turned, where one of his comrades had seen what happened. She knew what happened next. She wanted to think of a lot of things, but none of them came to her. Lynn ground her teeth against one another and tried to push herself up, to die on her feet, but nothing was working. The comrade raised a rifle and fired off a burst. Only one hit. Only one needed to. Keaton, Lynn thought, wildly. "The loading docks, the, they're, you have - "

Lynn had been hit very hard in her life. She had taken punches from fully grown men, and had Natalie thrown into her by a full-powered Archie, and been beaten at the hands of Salamandra. She had been shot before this, by bigger bullets at closer range. She'd been beaten in prison, in the ring, and jumped on the street.

Not a single blow to the head rocked her spine as much as that bullet did. If her skull had still been in tact, she might've snapped about how she'd been hit by a .45 round before, and it had hurt a hell of a lot worse. Instead her head snapped. It was slammed against the ground and went still. The world was running in front of her eyes, but half of it was dark. The floor was cool. Someone had spilled something. It felt wet. Warm. Lynn tried to move to get closer to the warm, because she was cold, she was very cold, but she couldn't move. Her legs weren't working. She didn't think any of her was working. Someone had spilled something. Her head hurt. Was she drunk? I killed a kid, Lynn thought, but even her thoughts were slurring. Was she back in the woods? I drank too much, Lynn thought. I drank too much. This was a bad joke. Keaton or Eli or Che would come and fix this. The restaurant, she's gonna get out of the restaurant and get him. She's gonna hurt him. But that didn't make sense. She had to cauterize him. There were lights, flickering, flickering. She couldn't see as good. There was something dripping in her left eye, she couldn't see so good out of it. There was no noise, though, and she thought they should be. No one was screaming any more. Lynn knew that was good.

Lynn blinked.

Or winked.

Name Change Request

Please change my username to "Luminous Beings" because I'm a filthy Yoda stan. Thank you.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Lynn

Lynn looked up at Amelia as she spoke, her eyes doing their usual routine of comparing the girl against herself. As per usual, Lynn came up short. Though Amelia was maybe four inches taller at most, she had a good twenty pounds on Lynn. Lynn tried to puzzle a birth year or something of significance from her as she spoke. She can't be much older than me, Lynn thought. Christ. As she glanced around, it was clear that passers-by thought similarly. They looked at Amelia differently, like she was a teenager, and the looks at Lynn were more mixed. Some looked at her height, or the skeleton arms that extended from the six-times-over rolled up sleeves of her hoodie, and some at her tattoos. I gotta start rolling with some blind motherfuckers or something.

Lynn smirked at Amelia's comment. Well, at least she got it. Getting it was a hard concept to explain. Lynn wasn't entirely sure that Amelia Got It, but she Got It more than Nat, or him, or most. For a moment, unbidden, the drunk-hazed over memory of Watch Boy blurred into her mind. He Got It, Lynn thought. She hadn't really tried to sift through the foggy recollections of that night very much, but as she did, she remembered distinctly thinking there was something about him. Yeah, he walked like he just got out of boot camp. Lynn filed it away for later. He might be something worth looking into. Or, if nothing else, that watch was worth a few days' work at Vaquero. Lynn listened to Amelia's words with great interest, though she continued to eat and rarely looked back up at her once she started talking. It's a joke. But I wanna know what you think the punch line is.

Lynn's attempt at getting a firmer grasp on just who the girl who could teleport anywhere and stayed on the Promise was snapped as soon as she started talking about the jacket. In her algebra class, Lynn felt firmly like someone had picked her up and dropped her into Russia. Lynn's academic career was, in a word, abysmal, and each class the Promise threw at her seemed like some kind of cruel joke. They were talking about all kinds of academic sanctions and other things, or even putting her back a few grades, just because she missed a few (read: all) of her assigned tutoring sessions. The only classes she eked out a respectable performance in were her power training classes and in Spanish, where the teacher at least acknowledged she had a very functional, if crude, grasp of the language. In power training, Lynn was reminded of some of the boxing gyms near where she lived. Those were one of the few ways to Get Out, to find something in your life that had some semblance of discipline and order and meaning. Lynn had always wanted to join. Che wouldn't allow it.

But none of her classes hit Lynn with that feeling of utter helplessness and complete, dizzying confusion as what Amelia was talking about.

There was not a single part of what she said that Lynn could grab onto to understand. Having parents that took you shopping. Their being the worst. Clothes fancier than department stores. Their watching closely enough to force your fashion. Someone shaping you into a lady, which was some ethereal idea Lynn had given up on attaining around the age of ten. Having the money to buy something like that casually - and younger than they already were.

Lynn had thought going up to the Promise was going to be something that was utterly unnerving, the sort of shattering change that upended everything. But it was just a nicer-looking detention center with a better view. The last thirty seconds jarred her more than the rocket trip, than the meetings spent handcuffed to a table talking about the Promise's rehabilitation rates, than all of it.

Lynn wondered what Amelia's parents looked like. Her mom was easy, just - her, but older, more wrinkled, maybe, probably saggy the way old people got. Her father was middling height, his face an unformed blur, the space beyond the edges of the map. Lynn could understand someone's parents being the worst - she'd seen a fair few like that, and to the extent Gary had been a parent, he'd certainly been a strong contender for the worst as well (Again, the thought of him catching justice in prison brought an unconscious smile to Lynn's lips, the mental image of him throwing up a worthless, burned hand to stop an ass-beating the only pleasant vision of violence Lynn's imagination liked to conjure up). But how could parents that took you shopping for clothes be the worst? Lynn had parents, for a bit, the way crutches give you a leg again when you've broken it through and through. Lucy - her family. That had been good. But then Lynn had burned their house down, and the fuzzy haze of what Amelia talked about, of what Amelia had, had burned with it. They'd never said that was why. They'd waited a few months. But the conversation had come with the coded words they always used. Financial limitations and better situation for everyone and you'll always be welcome here. Lynn was angry at Amelia's story, but not sure who to direct it at, which made her angrier.

Lynn stared back at Amelia. Does she have a reason? Is it just being a brat? Lynn's hunch that she hadn't ever seen anything in the way of real shit seemed backed up so far - although in fairness to the girl, Lynn thought that of most people. Maybe she had now. She'd seen a man get his head blown halfway to hell and not lost her shit. She'd stayed in the woods, when Lynn had bet fully on her running.

Lynn swallowed the chunk of her cheeseburger she'd been chewing on for a good minute. "Huh," she said, still trying to process all the nuances and implications of Amelia's story. The last, least important part of the story that baffled Lynn was why Amelia didn't just steal both jackets. That seemed like such a plain and obvious solution to her. She could teleport. The fuck? Had Lynn been given a private moment to jot down her thoughts in her notebook, she would carved out a column on the page littered with lyrics and idle charcoal sketches to label Amelia firmly under the "NO FUCKING IDEA" category of humans.

And last but not least, whatever Amelia thought was pricey was certainly going to be beyond the pale for Lynn. Looks like I'm stealing a jacket, she thought. I could probably turn out Fish and make a few bucks, though. "It's a cool jacket," Lynn said, her tone more or less neutral. When Lynn was busy thinking, she liked to throw out anything non-committal. If they knew what was going on, they had something over you, and she didn't want Amelia knowing how little she understood her. Lynn briefly considered saying something incredibly jarring, to try and see how the girl would take it, but she was too shaken herself to pull that off.

She looked up and saw Keaton and Eli across the way. A quick flash of not jealousy, because Lynn didn't care, but something - flashed through her gut. Well how come they're hanging out and didn't ask me? Lynn wondered. That would complicate things. She needed to tell Keaton about her suspicions about the docking bay. Lynn would not ever have admitted it to herself, but she was practically giddy to tell the girl something she'd puzzled out on her own. I'm not dumb, Lynn thought. No one gives a fuck about algebra or stupid British novels or biology anyway. "Do we get to haze the new fish at all? Maybe that break dancing bastard will come kick somebody again."

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Lynn

Lynn looked up from the half-eaten sandwich (it sat atop five chicken tenders, fries, some egg rolls, a cheeseburger, and chips and salsa, all piled monstrously onto a cafeteria tray that even the strength-augmented Lynn seemed to have to trade off hands every few moments to hold steadily) she was chewing on to examine Amelia. Truthfully, Lynn had forgotten her nickname for her. Amelia was a tricky one for Lynn to pin down, which irritated Lynn to some degree. Lynn that she had Amelia on lock from that day in the woods - she saw too much, got scared, and ran on home. Lynn was fine with that, because running on home meant she wasn't in Lynn's way for anything. Admittedly, Amelia kept trying to start up conversations with her, which Lynn didn't fully understand. Lynn eyed over her leather jacket and thought for a moment as she chewed. As equal parts hunger and power move, Lynn rarely responded to people as soon as they talked to her when she was eating. In her experience, it fucked with them a little bit when they had to wonder if cafeteria food was more immediately important than they were.

But then Amelia had gone and not been an absolute pussy the night with Arianna. Neither she nor Eli had. Eli she figured was a fifty-fifty chance. The sheltered ones always think they have to play the hero. But Lynn had Amelia pegged as the type who liked to play at scoundrel but ran home when things got a little too real. She'd stuck around for the real. Lynn wouldn't have faulted anyone for leaving the mutilated Radvi when they saw that. Even for Lynn, that was some rough shit to look at. It made you kind of a coward, but that was Lynn's baseline for anyone who hadn't been to prison. Amelia had even come out into the woods after her, which irritated Lynn, but she had to admit that was because she had been a little bitch that night, and the presence of others to serve as witnesses to her bitchery only cemented it. Had they left her alone, she would've kept Schrodinger's little bitch locked in the box and away from prying eyes. Lynn knew the minute any of them thought she needed a get off the streets program or an inspirational talk about how much she could be, they would never leave her alone.

So when Lynn looked up at Amelia, it was with a hint of curiosity. Was she growing some balls? Or did she just want to play a hero? And why did she keep talking to Lynn? Lynn couldn't figure that one out, either. She must've wanted her food. There's, like, literally infinite food over there, though.

"Love horse," Lynn muttered. "That's what I oughta call that hostess." she swallowed and rolled her neck, stretching idly. "Oh, you know. Just seeing the sights." Lynn baptized a fry in ketchup and chewed on it. "Maybe I figure when the next lizard rages out on day one they'll need me to kick his ass again." Lynn funneled more food into her mouth with no regard for table manners. "Or maybe," Lynn said, figuring she'd toy with Amelia - or, at least, get a feeling for what she was here for - "I want to see what kind of jewelry's all the rage on Earth now." she swallowed and slurped at the largest size cup the cafeteria offered, filling her stomach with Coke. "You know. Necklaces. Bracelets. That sort of thing. I hear the cops practically hand them out to paras these days."

Lynn picked up the burger, leaning comfortably against the wall. They had about an hour or so, Lynn figured. Waiting didn't bother her. She'd done a lot of nothing but waiting in juvy. Now, though, there seemed to be more...company...in her thoughts when she waited. She didn't like that. So if Amelia wanted to distract her for a minute, that was fine, but Lynn was still unsure of this girl's motives.

That jacket. Lynn looked back at her, curious. "That jacket," Lynn said, curious. "You..." she examined it for a minute. "That from like a motorcycle or something?" Those things could take a little punishment, tough leather, lots of pockets -

There was a click in Lynn's head, and she grinned.

Knight takes fucking pawn, Gennedy. She had an idea. As always, Keaton could workshop it. The jacket wouldn't matter if she got captured trying to slip into the docking bay, but still - still. Something there to tuck away for later.

"Where'd you get it? Is there a store for it here?"

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Cordelia Lynn Holmes

Pork stuffed dumplings. They sat in the center of the table, sizzling hot. Lynn couldn't have any.

Archie had ordered them. Lynn sat next to Keaton, who picked at her meal dutifully, and Natalie rattled on about how she’d only told the truth. The truth, Lynn wanted to scoff, but knew not to start shit here, not when they’d just gotten in the clear for a few more precious hours. When Lynn moved her shoulder, pain rocketed down the joint, flaring up her entire shoulder blade. Lynn gasped with surprise.

“Aw, fuck,” she muttered, wincing and reaching with her good arm to massage it. How had she hurt it? She looked down at her arm, hanging limp and loose. The door, Lynn thought. Archie threw me into the door, I caught Spoons in the air. Lynn looked up, blinking. That wasn’t right. She still hadn’t been served yet, and the growling in her stomach grew louder and louder, like a prisoner rattling her ribcage like the bars of her cell. “Hey, how come - “

Archie was across from her. “"Shit, that sounds a lot like how dad used to be. Sorry you had to deal with that. At least the power was coolish, right?" Lynn zoned out for a moment, the gears in her head whirring as best they could with the pain of her arm, wretched and worthless, at her side. She’d heard all this before. She turned to Keaton, some kind of sinking feeling dragging down her starving stomach. “Keat,” she murmured, “I need you - I can’t figure out why - “

Archie had kept talking. “ - hope my incident on the first day isn't too much of a red mark. Worst I've had up until now on any kind of record was a detention in 10th grade." Lynn turned back and stared at him, ignoring Spoons and Denim alike. She could feel her hair, mousy auburn and not glowing at all, falling over her face in messy strands, disorganized as the thoughts in the head of the girl who had them. Why can’t anyone see my fucking arm? one half of her mind thought. The other focused on Archie. I don’t know if a deadbeat father is better than a revolving door of replacement ones. Or...Christ, nothing on your record until tenth grade? I didn't make it to tenth grade. Lynn could only think of her own record, a mountain of detention slips and elementary school write-ups before they’d transitioned to court orders and penitentiary forms. She bet Archie had good grades. Not as good as Denim, but okay, and okay was better than Lynn’s, and he probably never got in fights, he brought people flowers, and he never - the glass bottle hot as a sun for a moment before it burst, a shard firmly lodged in the bridge of her nose, clothes burning // a house, burning, burning more than a bottle of kerosone and dish soap should’ve // the gun barrel red as her hair, someone shouting “ìMátenlos, mátenlos!” and - //

Lynn remembered. This wasn’t right, there was going to be something bad, the breakout, or at least something like that. Arianna. The blue woman. She was small and scared but that wasn't right, the shovel, the flash, the burn. “Archie shut the fuck up, there’s - there’s a guy outside, some skull motherfucker, he - “

Keaton kept eating, and Spoons kept talking about some Spoons shit, the silver collar on her necklace beeping every few moments. Archie looked over at her with that look, bored and utterly fascinated all at once.

“Archie she’s - she wants to - “ Lynn couldn’t bring herself to say it. Her mind went to Gary, and the brutal shock he’d been in for when he’d gotten creative ideas, but Archie wasn’t like that. This was her. It had been the grace of God or the luck of the devil, whichever had felt more inclined to help Lynn that day, that had let her take out the lizard the first time. She could do it with a hand tied behind her back. Feverishly, Lynn tried to massage feeling back into her arm but it wouldn’t move. “Archie, please! Both of you, two, we have to fucking go!”

Archie turned to Lynn and gave her his characteristic, goofy grin. “Why?” he said, lighthearted as always. “You wouldn’t stop if we were here or not.” He looked down at the dumplings and shook his head. “You hate me. You burnt me.”

Archie’s chair was pulled backwards suddenly, and the legs of his seat were broken by a well-practiced axe kick, splintering the wood and causing the young man to fall onto his back as the seat fell apart. A hand, dark and glowing as magma fell against the table, and Lynn could- for the first time in her life- feel the heat behind her. She felt breath against her left ear. The drinks at the table were hissing as the liquids boiled. “You can’t burn me, though.”

Lynn turned to grab Keaton, to tell her to go, but it wasn’t her anymore, it was Lucy in an oversized denim jacket, threadbare and worn, a stained shirt pulling at the seams across her protruded stomach. Spoons was gone too, a Hispanic girl about eleven years old in her place, pulling at the cold silver around her neck. Lynn had the dropping feeling, the right at the top of the roller coaster drop feeling, of knowing that the worst is not about to come, that it’s there, waiting. She let her eyes pass over Archie - who should have been Archie - but it was Che, sitting as casually as he always did, his dark eyes boring back into her own and making hers look away, making them cold and small. The hand on her shoulder burned, and she understood why Archie hated her, why they all looked at her how they did. Lynn shrieked, trying to shove back but her arm wouldn’t work. It did nothing. Even if it would have the woman was too strong. Lynn struggled to push herself up out of the booth but a thunderclap of pain burst open in her knee and she crumpled back down, her right leg suddenly as worthless as her arm. “No, no, that’s not right, it - “ she looked down at her leg. All that remained of her kneecap was a bloody ruin of cloth and bone and bullet. Lynn wanted to look up at Salamandra, to stare her down as she did it, but her head wouldn’t turn. She couldn't look at Salamandra and none of them would look at Lynn as she looked to each of them, begging for help.

“You want so badly to be like them.” the voice said, still hot against her ear. “You want your perverted sense of normal. But you’re not. You wanted my help.” A hand, hot as burning coals against Lynn’s skin, grabbed her by the hair and twisted her head until she was staring down eyes as angry and yellow as the sun. There was a crunch of wood below her and the chair collapsed, but she was held up by whatever had its ironclad grasp of her head. She lurched, and was thrown away from the table like a dog discarding its chew toy. Lynn his the ground in a mess of limbs, but she had full view of Salamandra- the woman made of fire, with her foot against Archie’s chest and a predatory look on her inhuman features. The twin suns shifted from the boy to her once again, and she grinned. “You wanted to be just like me.”

“Don’t,” Lynn said, her voice croaking as she suffocated on the smoke. Salamandra stomped down on him - but she couldn’t tell if it was Che or Archie, or if there was any difference anymore. Keaton sat, pregnant and tired-looking, doing nothing as it went on. Behind her, the back of the restaurant was full of Christmas trees, and Salamandra had lit them all ablaze before walking in. Or did I? Lynn tried to remember. She burned a Christmas tree, one time. It had burned the house. It was Lucy's house. Her brain wasn’t working. Somewhere, deep down, she knew none of this was right - she should be healing, she shouldn’t be burned, she - Salamandra should be dead - but her brain was a small scrap of meat being pulled at by the mad dogs that were all the injuries on her body. Lynn struggled to pull herself up with one decent arm and leg and couldn’t, even with the wall behind her for support. She turned, grateful at least that it was her useless arm that had been scalded, and saw a dent in the restaurant’s wall, where someone had smashed something into it again, and again, and again. The linoleum floor below it was melted and hardened back over, an ugly scar of synthetic magma. Lynn looked back. “I didn’t…” she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. She was going to be sick. “Che,” Lynn said, feeble even to herself. He was under Salamandra’s foot, looking at her, bored and fascinated at once, and pulling the petals off flowers. He held them against the woman's skin one by one and they caught fire, ash dusting down over him. He didn’t see to mind. “I need your help with something, Lynn.” He'd said that before, too, she knew.

“Che, Che I’m gonna die, she’s gonna - “

“The warehouse. I need you to come down with me and take care of something.” His voice was the way it always was. His tone was completely urgent and completely relaxed. She didn’t have a choice, because you never did with Che, but why would you want one, because he knew what the right thing was, and he had kept them all together so far. You just had to trust him. Even if it seemed wrong, it was right. For a bewildering moment, Lynn’s dizzy eyes noticed the hint of pudginess on his features, and the quality of the clothes he wore. That’s not right, though, Lynn thought. We had to steal just to get by, that’s why we all went hungry - he wouldn’t have...he didn’t have any more than we did. He rolled a quarter over his hand, because he was always doing something like that, fidgeting or playing with one thing or the other. Lynn felt like he was always bored with life, even though she had seen him angry, so furious he put holes in walls, or so furious he didn’t even raise his voice, he just spoke in a tone so cold and neutral they all wanted to curl up inside themselves. They had to do that sometimes. Lynn taught Clarita and Megan. When you saw things you weren't supposed to. You just went somewhere else. But that didn’t matter, because - well, his voice was never sweet, but there were times it was something like that, and that evened it out. But this Che was more like Archie, she thought, and she didn’t get it. Che would’ve helped fight Salamandra. Would he? Lynn thought, trying to remember. He didn’t at the end. Something at the end went wrong. None of them would help. Some sobering thought came. They wouldn't help, she remembered. They fucked me over. All of them fucked me over.

Lynn knew that had happened before too, they’d gone to a warehouse, it was the one the fight club was at, but she couldn’t remember what or why, or why Che wouldn’t help her. Salamandra was going to kill him, and she was going to do things to Archie, but he just kept pulling flowers, doing nothing. Amelia wasn’t even here. Eli was somewhere, and Lynn tried to figure out how she knew both that Eli existed and that she hadn’t met Eli yet. Lynn’s orange jumpsuit was singed and shredded, struggling to offer her any privacy, and she could see through the window a crowd was gathering, staring. Lynn turned back to Salamandra. “You were gonna kill me,” Lynn said, her voice wheezing. “You - when Gennedy put me away. You would’ve shivved me.” It sounded like a lie, even to her. She knew it was at least a little true. She knew because she would’ve done the same thing to her. “I…” Lynn’s voice trailed off, lost between the pain in her knee and her nose and her shoulder and all the burned skin on her neck and arm, the scarred marks where Salamandra had lain her fingers.

“I told you to leave.” Salamandra said to her. Archie, or Che, or whoever it had been was gone now. “But you didn’t. I didn’t kill you.”

There was an earth shattering roar from somewhere within the bowels of the restaurant, out of view. It was enough to make even the living flame before her uneasy. Salamandra shook her head and locked eyes with Lynn. “I didn’t kill you.”

She approached with purpose to every step until she was right on top of Lynn, six or seven feet over the girl on the floor. Lynn threw her good hand and the woman didn’t even attempt to block it, her hand hitting the woman’s calf and doing nothing. She had Lynn by her collar- somehow burning the skin against her knuckles but not the clothes she wore. With her off hand Salamandra forced her against the wall where the dent was. For a brief moment, Lynn was aware of how painfully tight the skin around the bridge of her nose was, of how opening her mouth to scream pulled the gash apart even further - but then the woman’s burning fingers were on her throat and smoke was in her mouth and she could not even scream. Salamandra had her by her hair, the slight sting of knotted tangles being ripped lost in the frenzy of everything else. Through Salamandra’s legs, she could see Archie on the floor, unharmed but for a hand that was completely burned off. Keaton and Natalie had just gone. The crowd outside lost interest, and the Christmas trees burned farther and farther away as Salamandra’s hands tightened. She saw shapes, but it was hard to make out where colors began and ended. Lynn couldn’t hear in the ear against the wall anymore, and was only vaguely aware of something running out of her ear and down her cheek before sizzling and scalding her skin.

“I didn’t kill you.”

Somewhere, Che was telling her she was a pussy, that she wasn’t even fighting any more, but Lynn’s fingers couldn’t find anywhere weak or exposed on the woman, everywhere she touched only burned.

She felt the pull of her hair again and a pain in her eyes as she realized they were boiling, and the world was dark and on fire before her skull dented the wall again, her throat tighter and tighter.

“I didn’t kill you.”

Again. Lynn didn’t feel the pain in her knee any longer, and she could remember the warehouse and the pistol blast for only a moment before it was gone too, and her weak arm wasn’t even her weak arm anymore, because the other one was burned useless from trying to pry the devil’s hands off her throat. She didn’t feel anything but her head, the way the skin on her lips peeled back and the blood thundered in the vessels around her skull.

“I didn’t kill you.”

Lynn felt her head go back against the wall one more time and blinked.

She was on the floor of her dorm room. Her clothes were burned off. She had not woken in a cold sweat, but her whole body was steaming, and there was the smell of burning synthetic fabric from where she’d scorched the mattress before falling over. The back of her head smarted from where she’d hit the floor, and Lynn pulled herself up against the base of the bed, knees to her chest, gasping. She’d disabled the fire alarm on her room on day one - one of the few security oversights the Promise had caught and fully decided to ignore - and Lynn was free to fumble at the pile of belongings next to her bed that had scattered when she fell. She grabbed a pack of cigarettes and got one into her mouth, the end lighting as soon as her fingers wrapped around it.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Lynn muttered, rocking back and forth. The Xan was right there. Right there. She just had to grab it and take one and she could go back to sleep.

Lynn grabbed the bottle and hurled it across the room. She’d probably ruined the fucking thing with the heat anyways. The cigarette was burned out about thirty seconds after Lynn put it to her lips, and she grabbed for another one, breathing deep. As she did, her skin and hair shimmered like coals, surging back to life with a blast of air and dying back down as it went away. Lynn idly ran her thumb, nail chewed to the cuticle, across the jagged scar on her kneecap.

Lynn sat still for a few minutes, breathing. She grabbed for her phone and flipped it open, eyes watering from the bright light. ”Hey I know this is really weird but can I just come over and sleep on the floor or something I won’t make any noise I just - Lynn stopped, watching the line flicker as she thought of the next letter. She deleted the message and shut it, putting the phone back down.

She climbed back into bed and stared up at the ceiling.

After an hour of that, she got her things and went to the gym.

in collaboration with JunkMail

---

The time in the hospital had been frustrating. The doctor patiently explained the concepts of healthy self-image and proper, balanced diets to Lynn, and marvelled at how quickly her appetite seemed to return. Lynn's stay was only two days, but she was able to have a bit of fun with it. Lynn, in a tearful display of thanks, palmed the doctor's wallet from his lab coat and ordered flowers to her own room. She left the wallet on the table next to some brochures ("I'm so forgetful!") and went down to the front desk.

"He's not supposed to have visitors," they told her.

"Please," Lynn said. "I helped save him and I just want to be sure he's okay. I promise I won't get him sick. My temperature's too high."

The woman relented - Radvi had stabilized, after all - and permitted Lynn a short visit.

"I think the docs here are as dumb as the cops," Lynn said, throwing the flowers down onto the bedside table and lounging in the chair next to Radvi. It seldom happened that Lynn was wrong - in her experience, she was right about nearly everything - but she had been wrong on this one. He had survived. His face was bandaged and gauzed so heavily you could barely see the eye that he had left, and he had all those Darth Vader machines hooked up to him. "You shitting in a bag and all, I guess?" Lynn asked, staring at him. No response.

"Well, I'm a woman of my word. Flowers. You can thank the pediatrician they have on staff. If I really wanted to do Arianna's job for her, I'd just get him assigned to take care of you." Lynn stared at the body and the machines that breathed it. "Jesus. You're fucked." Lynn leaned back in the chair, resting her feet on the hospital bed. "You know, I figure this is the safest place on the Promise right now. This room. Because I remember - " she almost said Keaton telling me, but Cara was always, always listening. Her gloating had almost gotten her. "I remember someone telling me that after that little event at the mall, the cops had come after that robot. And yet you come running through the woods with him. And Gennedy tells me that robot's dead when he did his illegal shakedown, which you seem to be fine with." Lynn rocked back and forth, sipping on the weight gain shake she was required to drink every four hours. Admittedly, they did taste good, but Lynn was sure that was only because that doctor had nothing to do with their preparation. She brushed a glowing white strand of hair out of her face and kept talking. "So I think maybe all you uniforms aren't on the same page. I think maybe you found out some shit, which is why only you came out in the woods, what with those trackers and whatnot. So if I was Arianna, and I'm not, for whoever's listening - I'd try and make you look as crazy and dumb as possible. Which is pretty easy, given, you know." Lynn shrugged. Lynn chewed on her lip. It wasn't fun when he was asleep. In fact, she felt like a bit of a bitch.

Not enough to stop, but still. Lynn crushed her guilt, the way you were supposed to do. He's a part of it, Lynn told herself. It doesn't matter Eli doesn't see it in him. He kills kids.

Then it felt sweet again.

"You know, I didn't get a good look at you in the station. Surprised I'm not already hauled back in. Probably guilty of keeping too much blood in your body or something. But you're older than I thought. I guess, you know - " Lynn shrugged. He would've gotten it if he was awake. "But still." Lynn leaned over and picked up his hand. Cold. "No ring. So - " she paused, looking. On the table was a necklace, which men shouldn't wear in Lynn's opinion unless they had giant clocks attached to them or were made of pure gold, on which a ring rested. A bracelet, too, not entirely unlike - Lynn shifted on her feet, letting Radvi's hand fall from hers. She hadn't pulled that bracelet out in...in a while. Lynn looked back at him, embarrassed for feeling embarrassed in front of a half-dead man. "...divorced, then?" Lynn asked. "Not surprising. Probably a revolving bedroom door back home when you're up here and she's down there. Shame about the kid though." Lynn stared down at him, feeling her blood literally boil. How do you be a part of this when you have a fucking kid, Radvi? Lynn stood up. The nurses would come soon. She looked down at him. He looked weak and broken and pathetic. It scared her. That taser, she thought. That taser is the only thing between you and him. Except they won't spend the money to keep you alive.

"I don't know your first name," Lynn said softly. "Don't really give a shit. But I'll level with you. If you hadn't come, there's a good chance Arianna kills me. I'm not saying I owe you one. Maybe so, maybe not. There's a lot more on that scoreboard to sort out. But when I see her, I'll get one in for you." Lynn put her hands in her pockets and turned to walk away.

"Because fuck knows you won't be able to shoot her."

---

The restaurant was busy, as always.

Lynn was scraping food off into the trash. How do people throw away this much? Shit doesn't grow on trees. Well, she supposed some of it did. Not the chickens and cows or whatever thou-

"Ignacio," Lynn asked, eyes widening. "Where do they keep all that shit?"

Ignacio looked at her tentatively, not willing to give an answer that may incriminate him in a court of law.

"I mean, like - food."

"The fridge."

"No, fucker, I mean, like - " she paused, mind racing. Of course. It's how D got on. "Where - where does all this come from? Do they grow it here? Like is there a farm section with cows and stuff?"

He looked at her like she was insane. "They just ship it all up. I've got a friend who helps move all that stuff. Para. Strong guy. It's easy for him."

Lynn turned back to the plate, grinning. "Huh. Interesting. Where do they unload it?"

"I guess same place the kids come on, I don't know. You going to do your job or you gonna ask about how they keep the lights on next?"

"No problem," Lynn said, smiling.

---

Lynn knelt in the forest, rolling over a tape measure in her hands. The taser had been gone when she'd gone back. She'd scoured the area, but someone else had gotten it. Arianna. She turned her mind to the question at hand.

"This is fucked up," she muttered to herself. "Alright, I guess a twelve year old's probably, like, I dunno. Four and a half feet?" Lynn looked at the tape measure. "Well, shit, I could've just laid down." She knelt, staring at the tiles, visualizing it. "And maybe, like, a foot deep?" she chewed on the back of her hand. "I'm not really a good frame of reference there. But would they...would it be in like a pod? Like some Matrix shit, or..." Lynn's mind wandered off. They'd need to move people in bulk. They got food in on the Promise once a month. Would they move in more people with the other students? That was probably too high-profile. Or was that exactly the point? To smuggle in the test subjects while everyone else was having fun?

Lynn drummed her fingers on her hands. Kids are gonna die because you're too dumb, a voice told her. It had a vague South African accent.

Lynn stared back at the dirt. "So...I guess this doesn't matter if I don't know, like, the ship size." she closed her eyes and tried to remember the shuttle up. They'd fit about fifty kids in there, she thought, but maybe more or less. Surely they could fit more if they were all unconscious. "No, they have to be strapped like that, or they'll just get killed by the recoil when they hit space." Space recoil. That wasn't right. She needed to bounce this off Keaton. "So...are there secret shipments? I'd hide them in the other stuff, personally. So they must be paying off these dock workers." Yeah, that seemed right. "Even if, like, there's just two really strong motherfuckers carrying all these bodies, they gotta - " Lynn stopped, thinking. No, that wasn't right. If it was hidden as something else, maybe they really wouldn't.

She hadn't established much, least of all the volume of a twelve year old, but it was a start. While Lynn's spatial reasoning needed fine-tuning, she was confident she was on, if not the right trail, at least a trail that might at one point intersect with the right one. She'd need Keaton for the rest of this.

---

"Be at the loading bay or be square!"

Lynn had looked at her phone. "Huh. So Cara was white."

---

Lynn leaned back against the wall of the Loading Bay. She felt safest with her back to a wall. "They really cleaned this motherfucker up, huh?" she muttered, looking around. She was waiting for the new arrivals, a tray of food from the cafteria in one hand, the other shoveling it into her face. Lynn did not turn down any opportunities to eat, particularly if it was out in public. I just need to shut that doctor and his emails up. Lynn swallowed. She would rather have been around the more private areas of the loading bay, but they were tricky to get to, and security was too high since the breakout. Eyes were everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. This would have to do. She could pass something useful along to Keaton if nothing else. I'll count the number of kids, Lynn thought. Maybe try and get back towards the shuttle if I can. I bet I could get one of them to claim he dropped something in the hallway back. Lynn didn't like that. Too many things could go wrong. Still, Lynn was starting to bet against the Promise's security whenever she could.

She leaned back, chewing, the fork and knife on her plate unused and forgotten. There'd be something useful out of this.

If nothing else, she wanted to see the ones who came on in chains, in collars, who had as much hate across their faces at this pretty prison as she had.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Cordelia Lynn Holmes

Lynn had seen and done a lot in her sixteen (potentially - Lynn's birth records were neither the most accurate nor the most accessible) years, both those spent on the earth and above it. She had many what she may call "four a.m." experiences - those being times or instances when something was so strange and twisted and warped, it could not have happened at any other time. It was the sort of thing you could only experience with someone else because it was so singular - just a brief, fleeting minute. Seeing a crackhead in a Gravity Falls t-shirt trying to break open a soda machine for money and getting baptised in Fanta. Seeing someone attempt to start a riot, slip, and instead create a strange, prison-wide moment of unity in laughing. Seeing a boy turn into an eleven foot tall lizard after a metallic robot dropped down, music blaring, and kicked him in the head.

"We should - "

Lynn was in the hospital. It was four a.m. in her head.

Lynn would've felt bad for Radvi if he was awake, because she instinctively seized as tight as she could onto whatever she was holding, which happened to be an exposed part of his jawbone. Lynn had taken some nasty punches that left her head spinning but nothing like this. The air was all of a sudden different, clean and sanitized and bleached, and there was fluorescent light stabbing into her eyes, and they were surrounded by people. It was like going from being asleep to all of a roller coaster in under a second, and when the rollercoaster ended she was back asleep in a bad dream.

Lynn stumbled up from the body. Had she entered the doors normally, she would already have been restrained by doctors and checked for injuries. As it was, the sheer element of surprise had stunned the nurses nearby and Lynn was able to make it to the closest trash can where she hurled what little material was still left in her stomach. Lab coats had swarmed Radvi already and taken him away, and Lynn washed her hands of it. He was a dead man, but the others were welcome to try their best. She planned on walking home, showering, and sleeping.

"Go straight to hell, Amelia, what, what the fu-" Lynn's chest clenched. Her chest and belly were sore from the vomiting and she heaved again, her heart rate finally starting to slow down from the complete panic.

Lynn turned and looked up, thin wisps of smoke curling off her lips. A doctor had turned the corner due to all the clamor. Wait, she recognized him. The motherfucker with the puppets!

"Lynn," he said, a look of concern on his face - one slightly more paternal than any given person may have at seeing a person covered in blood. He fumbled in his pocket for a brochure, one she'd read out of boredom and burned out of greater boredom - Healthy Weight Goals and Dangerous Weight Loss. "You don't need to vomit, you -"

"I hate this motherfucking station," Lynn whispered to herself, fingers bending the metal of the trash can.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Cordelia Lynn Holmes

"Yeah, she's getting help," Lynn said, fortunate to have someone else here with her. "Grab your t-shirt or something and hold it on my back for a sec then - " Lynn turned back to Eli, but she was in some kind of trance, crying and completely zoned out, shaking and trembling. She'd seen it before. Amelia in the woods last time, for starters, but a lot of times before then. Him trying to run in the restaurant or Spoons up and leaving. At least that was a little better. This looked worse, and Lynn had seen that too. That feeling of "Fuck me," Lynn muttered to herself again, turning back to the dead man. Lynn had seen a great number of injuries, and cared to a great many more. Not with any real semblance of medical expertise, mind you, but she may have qualified as a nurse in the Revolutionary War or something similar.

Besides, there were always people who would take a hideous scar and a few seconds of searing pain over a hospital visit that ended in handcuffs. This was...hideous. He didn't look human any more, and had it been any other time, the irony of that may have made Lynn laugh until she cried. Lynn had no love for Radvi, and didn't delude herself into thinking she was helping Radvi for any particularly altruistic reasons, but this was horrific. And she was in it. She was in him. As he breathed, his skull shifted, and she could see bone and sinew pull from one another each time he did, the ruined mess of his face shredded and bleeding out over Lynn's hands. She was soaked to her forearms in blood, and the ground she kneeled in was quickly turning into crimson mud. What was left of one of his eyes spilled over her knuckles. "What the fuck, Cara, hurry up!"

Then he and Natalie arrived. Lynn couldn't turn away without taking too much pressure off, but he started shouting like he fucking owned the place. Call Cara? I did. And he was sitting there comforting fucking Eli while she tried to stop Carrie with hemophilia from gushing out all over her face. Lynn's face was inches from Radvi's mutilated skull. She could smell nothing but iron and blood. Behind her, she could hear Archie's voice rising in pitch and intensity. You absolute bastard, she wanted to shriek, biting her tongue only because she knew it would kill them all faster. You come down here only to kill us all. Lynn felt the heat in her chest longing to be let out, to dance down her fingers and scorch away all the open spots, but she knew better. When he dies of burns they'll say it was me. They'll say he would've lived. No shit he was hurt, no shit D needed to be getting help, no shit they should call Cara.

"Someone fucking help me," Lynn muttered. Christ. She was in a pit full of mouthbreathers, and she counted the one who tap-danced on kids' faces among them.

Then out of the continuous meandering of panic came one person with their shit together and Lynn could not believe it was Amelia fucking Nelson. Vaguely, Lynn tucked away a reminder to herself to perhaps reappraise her opinion of the girl. Maybe she found the balls this guy probably shot off himself in the woods back there. She appeared, which may have startled Lynn more had she not been wrist deep in a man's skull, and wisely pointed out that she could carry them all back. "Fucking do it," Lynn said, not thinking of witnesses. He was going to flip any time soon and she wasn't going to be stuck in the death pit with the lizard when it did happen. Eli was cool. She didn't want to leave Eli to the wolves. But she couldn't die in here. There were people. People with dolls. She had to keep from losing it.

Lynn lost it when Denim came and opened up Cara.

"No fucking shit!" Lynn snapped back at Cara. "Which wounds need focusing? Bitch, there's a hole in his head! No, scratch that, he has like 10% head and 90% hole! It looks like Gennedy skullfucked him harder than he tries to fuck us!" It was more than this. She felt naked in here with all of them, with her, and with Denzel sitting there on a vision quest or some shit, after - how much did she remember? What the fuck did I tell her? - and a robot confirmed dead and back to life more times than Elvis staring wordlessly at them the whole time. How many times does this bastard have to be at the scene of a crime before we stop getting hauled in, huh? All of them just standing there. There was the steel staccato beat of her brain running through the ways they could pin this on her, what would happen if she went down now that Keaton was on the scene, if Arianna came back, if Salamandra still had people in prison. And in the dark part of her brain that ran through that, everything else was soaked in this cop's blood and brain matter, and everyone behind her seemed to be having a tea party behind her.
And on top of that, he was here, and he meant a great many things, Godzilla chief among them. Eli started talking about where the bullet hit, which seemed like the most no shit Sherlock analysis to Lynn, until she realized she must've been using illusions on him. Why? Lynn wanted to ask, from the only cold place in her body at the moment. Why play tricks on a dead man?

The dude from earlier - the watch guy - Shit, was he Fossil? joined the party, and Lynn nearly evaporated the deadfall into steam. We can have a class reunion but not a single one of you can get your hands bloody, is that fucking it? She turned back to the half-skull ahead of her, Radvi's eyes aimlessly staring back into hers. She'd - she'd seen gunshot wounds before. Lynn found herself rocking back and forth trying to keep as much pressure on him as she could, her stomach churning inside her. Lynn had an iron stomach, and was not about to let any weakness seep out in front of any of them, but there was nothing but liquor in her belly and nothing but bad memories in her head. Lynn had been shot before. Worse than this guy, she would argue, even if she still had her face attached afterwards.

"Anything obvious?" Lynn shouted. "You could grab a tampon from any one of these pussies and come fucking staunch the bleeding!" Lynn shouted, her hair flaring with purple light. Let me hear it, Spoons. Let me hear you say you're worried about my flipping out. And, oh, you saw me here first, didn't you, maybe I had something to do with this.

And then the kicker.

He grabbed Eli in his arms, sending another corkscrew into Lynn's gut, and fucking gave her orders. Looked at her and barked at her. Like a dog. Like his bitch. It was the first time he'd looked at her all night. So he could carry 5'8 and beautiful to the fucking hospital? What was wrong with her? I fucking faced her, Lynn wanted to scream. Who do you think was dead if this dipshit hadn't shot himself first, Anderson? Did you look in the woods? Did you ask? Did you see if I was fucking shot? But you're taking her to the hospital, aren't you?

Lynn looked down at the body before her. You're a get out of jail free card, Lynn said. I don't expect anything more. I've got a pretty good idea of how people on this station say thank you. You stop a lizard, they haul you in. You kill a - Lynn's mind slipped for a second, like static on a tv, and there were four people, gone, vaporized, ash, and the feeling of her jaw shifted out of place by an elbow, and then she was back staring at Radvi's mangled jaw, shaking as she pressed down harder. She'd seen enough people hurt to know when one was no longer a person, and instead a temporarily breathing body. The for-now person's tongue and the muscles of his cheek and bits of bone were pressing into the palms of her hands, like when she was little and she'd cover Lucy's mouth with her hand to shut her up, and Lucy would lick it to make her let go. Through it all, she kept her power in line, not once burning a single cell on his dead man's body. Not one. Not that it would matter. Lynn could make fire, but you should see what Gennedy could pull out of thin air.

A thought came to her, from him, from the last time in the woods, from hospitals, from gunshots, from Che. It and the laughter hit her as suddenly as the gunshot that put this dumbass on his ass. "I tell you what," she murmured down to him, watching him gurgle and cough by pure reflex. "If you survive, I'll bring you flowers in the hospital."

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

CORDELIA LYNN HOLMES

Lynn was getting sick of this shit.

There was rustling in the woods behind her and Lynn tensed, primed to grab this bitch and rotisserie cook her ass. You two dipshits, Lynn cursed. One of you can teleport and the other can do illusions and you come sprinting out the fucking woods? Lynn's mind quickly disregarded that - no, it couldn't have been them, it was a third party - or Arianna's back up, or dipshits from the hangout in the woods. Either way Lynn moved forward. Arianna had failed Lynn's little test. She wasn't a prisoner here - and if she was willing to lie to Lynn, she merited an ass-beating.

Behind her, a voice shouted for her to move. Holmes? Lynn obliged, moving to the side in such a way she could keep her eye on Arianna while watching this newcomer. The cop? Rafferty? And the cyborg dancer. Interesting, Lynn thought. Gennedy had told her that the robot was dead, and she'd seen him before in the mall, but Keaton said the other cops had chased after him. But now he was working with one. Division in the ranks, Lynn thought, a smile stretching across her flushed face. Lynn was not entirely sure which people were putting pieces on the board, but she was starting to get an idea of who the players were. If this cop wanted to take the fall for attacking her, Lynn wasn't going to stop him.

He drew out a taser but - no. That wasn't a taser. Lynn had been shocked by enough of them to know. Fire dancing across her shoulders, Lynn felt her blood run cold. Those fucking bastards, she realized, eyes widening. I hope they both die. I hope they both fucking die. Radvi shot her with the taser and the woman simply disintegrated into blue goo. Does it do that to every para, or just her? Lynn wondered, feeling her feet dance in her shoes. If Radvi turned to her she wasn't going to take chances, not with that fucking thing in his hands.

But he kept going. Lynn followed cautiously. He reloaded. He'd shot twice. Lynn tucked that information away for later. As far as she was concerned, this situation had just become a win-win. Gennedy's attack dog dying, Arianna dying, Arianna getting apprehended, Arianna just showing off her abilities - whatever information Lynn got was useful, and Keaton could process it better than she could. Lynn stayed close - far enough to duck behind a tree if Radvi tried to tase her, close enough that no witnesses could claim in good faith that her actions were construable as those of a little bitch.

Radvi went out into the woods, D close behind. Then Arianna trucked him. She threw the robot down the deadfall, and Lynn's eyes narrowed. Strong and fast, Lynn thought. And there's two of her. She flipped Radvi like - _Salamandra and grabbed the taser, snapping it in half. Well, there's at least one good thing that bitch did. Radvi's pistol fired off and she took the shots like they were nothing. Lynn was still confident she could win that fight - a statement that applies to literally anyone Lynn is considering fighting - but she was going to be tough. When the shots hit her, she rippled like jelly. There had been some kind of blue slime back there, too. This bitch is Flubber, Lynn thought.

Arianna threw him down the deadfall too, and Lynn braced herself to get involved. There was one more gunshot, but there was no way that Radvi could have - "Christ, they're all as dumb as Gennedy," Lynn muttered. She stayed low and still, watching. Arianna seemed to melt into the dirt, and after a few moments the forest returned to normal. Lynn cocked her head, waiting for the woman to reappear, to materialize behind her, but it seemed she'd gotten while the getting was good.

First things first.

Lynn went over to the broken taser and grabbed it, examining it gently in her hands. She was far too hot right now to risk holding it for long, so she scrambled over to a tree a few yards out the way and tucked the remaining pieces under a rock. This wasn't the best hiding spot, but Lynn was slightly drunk and there wasn't a lot of time. She was more than likely going to be interrogated for this, and she didn't want that on her when it happened. Still, it could be useful. Maybe Keaton could reverse-engineer it or do some science shit to it. She made a mental note of what the tree looked like - exactly like every other tree, it seemed - and stood back up.

Then Lynn went over to the deadfall, looking down. Her body cast enough light in the dark forest that she could see well enough, and she looked for a moment for a clear spot. Even the robot looked severely fucked up. I take it back, he and Cara should hook up. Lynn took a step or two to the side and then jumped down. As she jumped, a surge of warm hair seemed to burst up beneath her and she fell at perhaps half the speed the laws of physics would normally dictate that she should, walking out of the six foot drop. She looked around for a brief moment, wondering vaguely how she was supposed to get out.

"Shit," she muttered. She turned back to Radvi. He'd really managed to fuck himself. There wasn't a much better way to put it. Lynn went to pull the sleeves up over her hands but her hoodie was back in the dorm room. Damnit. Not that she was getting a real trial here, but she wasn't leaving fingerprints. Lynn kneeled down before Radvi, the smell of iron and gunpowder overwhelming. Lynn had seen people get shot before - for a brief moment, Lynn heard a scream, like hers, just like hers, and she was younger, and she was cold, colder than she had - but no one had managed to shoot themselves to this degree.

"I don't know if you can hear me," Lynn said, looking down at the mangled bloody ruin of Radvi's face, "But if you keep doing stuff this dumb, you'll have Gennedy's job in no time." Lynn considered cauterizing it but that would basically just mean burning off his face at this point. Lynn, for all the ire she held for the powers that be on the Promise, was not about to not help this man. She was far too implicated at this point. It took only a few seconds of mental calculus to decide on that. She could be placed here by Eli and Amelia, one or both of whom would definitely flip. Wasn't Eli talking to this cop before? Yeah, it wouldn't take much convincing there. They leave, gunshots, dead cop, Lynn over the body. If she was in prison, she couldn't help Keaton. Helping him might even get some of the heat off her back, and give them more wiggle room for their investigation. Plus, there was the robot there. She didn't know if he would narc or not - he assaulted children, so she leaned towards no - but she'd have to melt his ass too, and that would for sure put her at the scene of the crime.

And, a very quiet voice, one that sounded like Lucy, or maybe Eli, or maybe Keaton, reminded Lynn it was the right thing to do. Even if he lived, he wasn't going to be back in action anytime soon. He wouldn't be hurting any kids. A cog out of the ugly, rusted machine that let Arianna murder hundreds and kept children locked up (upstairs?) was happening either way.

Lynn closed her eyes for a moment, knowing that time was of the essence, but hating herself for what she was about to do. All she could think of was Che walking to the edge of the deadfall, looking down, shaking his head. God, if anyone she knew from juvy knew about this.

"Gearbox," Lynn said, turning to Freaky D. Maybe he was a Roomba, maybe he was a parahuman, maybe he was a Decepticon, maybe he was one of those dudes from that band. Lynn didn't care, but didn't feel particularly inclined to treat him with much consideration. D was a staunch negative in her book. "I don't know if you have, like, 5G or some shit in there, but call some medics or some shit." Lynn pulled out her cell phone and turned it on, waiting for it to come up. Lynn scanned around for any cloth she could use. Her own clothes hung to her in shredded, smoking rags, and she resolved to get something heat-retardant. How come we don't have those X-men suits, huh? "Or start making a way out of here." she looked at him. Did this thing even speak English? "Like a ladder. Ladder." she mimed it. "And I swear to fuck, if you try to dropkick me like you did Anderson, I will melt you down into a - " Lynn paused. Damnit, she almost had it. She was still a little drunk, and her mind was racing. "Just...whatever." Lynn turned back to Radvi, offered the least convincing sorry in human history, and ripped off a chunk of his pants as quickly as she could. If he was awake or alive, that probably was not pleasant. Lynn balled up the cloth in her hands, noting that there was some dirt, but her options weren't really great. It quickly became warm in her hands anyway, and she hoped that was good enough. Lynn pressed the cloth to the open maw that was half of Radvi's face and tried to angle him so the blood flowed off him and not back down his throat. He'd probably already swallowed half his teeth or something.

Lynn's phone buzzed with a ringtone that had not been utilized in most phones since the late 90s. "Cara," Lynn said, her forearms soaked in blood. If I go to fucking prison or get the needle for this, I swear to God.

"Yes, Miss Holm - "

"Alert someone on security who's not a dipshit that there's a dipshit who shot himself. We need, like, help, or whatever. I don't know his name. You know where I am."

"Who else is with you?"

Lynn paused. She turned and looked at D, who was twitching. Even the fucking machines have panic attacks here. Lynn wasn't sure what the play here was. Did this guy want her to say? Lynn was not about to pin someone else to this scene. That was a major little bitch move. She said nothing. D could speak for himself. Well, figuratively. She didn't know if she had to knock on his head in binary or something to get a message through. "This guy's gonna be as dead as Gary if you don't hurry your ass up, Cara, maybe tell me how to put someone's jaw back on?"

Lynn felt her back uncomfortably open to the ledge above. If Arianna was waiting, trying to lure someone in, her plan was working. Why is it always terrible options? "You stupid motherfucker," Lynn muttered to herself, pressing as hard as she dared on Radvi's open face. "Christ." She had an eye on Radvi's pistol but had not touched it. If Arianna came back, she'd make good use of it. She'd eaten the bullets before, but bullets had a bit more kick around Lynn. Lynn was a firm believer that no one was ever improved by being shot a couple of times. Briefly, Lynn considered emptying the gun into the dirt to try and draw more help, but decided against it. This was as much as she was sticking her ass on the line for a Promise police officer.

Lynn was left, in the isolated part of your brain that thinks strange things in terrible times, wondering if she should get drunk more or less often.