Tristan watched the newcomers with divided eyes, his stance uncertain but active. His instinct was to follow Tabitha, but...whatever she was talking about with the kid, there was a connection there, one his cyborg form might endanger. And she was armed, and she had always taken care of herself, had done so before he met her. She didn't need a guard dog. He didn't need a collar. Plus talk had been kind of heavy recently.

A little space might not go amiss.

Still, the village disturbed him, for reasons it wasn't too hard to identify. Free food and drink, the idyll environment, the smiles...maybe without the masks, or the deaths, or the Ghost Girl, he could have been sold on this image of a witchless Narnia. But the [color=82ca9d]scream[/color] in his Semblance was a context impossible to ignore. This other world was not an idyll. There were dangers here, and too much they didn't understand.

So knowledge was power. So Tristan sought empowerment. [color=82ca9d][i]Zino Bertram. A late arrival? Are you part of her plan?[/i][/color]

[color=82ca9d]"The Ghost Girl of Lightbridge,"[/color] he said quietly, [color=82ca9d]"Was a mystery and an urban legend when she first started to appear. She lured...well, maybe. She's not exactly transparent-"[/color]

He paused.

[color=82ca9d]"Sorry. Not a ghost joke. Anyway, she started showing up and people started dying. They stepped onto subway tracks and were killed by the train. Rumor was those people died trying to help her, but that's rumor, you know. Posthumous. She...gathered us. All of us together. When she brought us to the subway, it was-"[/color]

Another pause. Tristan was vaguely conscious of the acceleration of various processes, faster breathing, pistons shifting gears. [color=82ca9d]She made that fucking ringing noise with her mouth, that night in my office. She did things, said things...nobody's sure of her, but in aggregate...no. She isn't safe. She isn't an ally. A mistress, maybe. But if there's anything about her that's true, it's that she is a dead thing in important senses. If there's anything about her I know is a lie, it's the implication of her humanity.[/color]

[color=82ca9d]"-she made us offers. None of it made a lot of sense. I can't tell you why...most of us stepped onto the tracks, which is what she asked us to do. That and hold onto the masks. Some of us put them on. I guess you can tell,"[/color] said Tristan, one hand gesturing to himself, his pentacle of eyes always tracking. [color=82ca9d]"I don't think the mask is there anymore. At least, I don't feel like I'm wearing a mask, this is just...my face, now. I guess.

Anyway, most of us stepped onto the tracks. There was some, uh, excitement...the guy in the cocoon, he rushed Officer Keahi, back in the station. We're not really clear on why. I think he's just...that way. But the Ghost Girl wanted him, I guess. Wanted you too. And if you haven't figured it out already, that looks like it's probably a rigged game. You'll get the truth, maybe, but it's the truth about the mystery that she created, centered around your personal tragedy, which probably she arranged that too. You've been murdered and...reassembled, you said? all at her behest. When we got here, she said she wanted 'blades.' So far our free will hasn't actually been curtailed, but...you know, I think that's more about the cleverness of the strings she's drawing us along with than their absence. 

For example, here are the first other living things we've found, and there's something [i]wrong[/i] with these people, Mr. Bertram. With this place. I don't know if these folks were here before the Magician, or how long HE was here, or - what the fuck is anything, really. But I do know it's more than a little fucked up that these folks are in no shape to communicate to us anything at all about this world, its rules, its powers. Anything she hasn't approved for us to know. Anything that might be introduced in a context outside the one she has planned for it."[/color]

Tristan looked around at the others, a process that required less head movement than it might have once entailed. There were dichotomies forming, and alliances, and he wanted to see who was nodding along, who wasn't. Part of that was an old mentality and part of that was a new and alien paranoia. [color=82ca9d][i]But we don't know anything about each other, and suddenly it occurs to me that even if we ask...who's to say who's telling the truth?[/i][/color]

Suddenly he wished he'd gone after Tabitha after all. Standing together among the others, in the middle of a smiling crowd, on the eve of some great festival - more even than the dark of his office after-hours, Tristan felt very alone.