[b]Lynn[/b]

Lynn's anger at Amelia simmered off into something closer to disgust. Unsurprisingly, Amelia just wanted to play at being criminal. [i]The guy kicked a kid in the face with a steel-toed boot and you went chasing for his autograph,[/i] Lynn wanted to scream at her. That was decidedly un-Lucy of her, but it was there. Lynn wanted to ask if she'd ever been kicked with a steel-toed boot, or if she'd care to experience, but -

But that would not help. Lynn closed her eyes and grinded her teeth with the sort of intensity that normally reduced enamel to dust. She had to focus. She would have time to customize an ass-beating for each one of them later but right now they needed to focus, get their story straight, and get clear. Lynn did not have high hopes that any of them would manage to keep quiet and avoid narc'ing for much longer than a few days, but that was a few days to come up with alibis and whatnot. Maybe somebody else would get pinned for it in the meantime and they'd be in the clear.

Lynn wanted to laugh at that.

Lynn also, as a sign of how serious the situation was, neglected to comment on Amelia diving back into the closet, although the temptation did occur to her. Lynn searched her instincts about Amelia. She knew there was something fishy about some of these fuckers, but she couldn't pin down what. Amelia's story seemed to check out. If she was involved in all this, why would she make running away so obvious? Beyond that, Lynn didn't think Amelia had the stomach for it. She was taking the love scratches on the cadaver a little seriously. Everyone was, but she had to admit that Amelia's reaction - of sprinting away before remembering she could teleport, seemingly (Lynn, unsurprisingly, not having the tightest grasp on the quantum mechanics behind Amelia's abilities) - didn't really track with someone who was in on this conspiracy. Her gut instinct on meeting Amelia had been that this girl had not ever seen any real shit. Lynn's standards for real shit were, also unsurprisingly, pretty specific to whatever Lynn herself had personally endured, but this was tracking. [i]She's a weak link,[/i] Lynn thought, [i]And I think fifteen minutes in a police room would get a confession out of her, but I don't think she's in on this.[/i] There was always the chance Lynn was wrong. Lynn was very willing to assume there were errors in her logic so long as it allowed her to continue her suspicions of someone. So she wasn't clearing Amelia, per se, but she loosened up her grip on Amelia and stood up. "What'd this Jigsaw bitch look like?" Lynn asked, her tone still sharp and clear. [i]Keep channeling Lucy, Lucy always knew what to do.[/i] Lynn, by virtue of a number of tough scrapes, had a knack for keeping cool in crisis situations. People who froze up in a street fight or panicked and ran when there were gunshots did not tend to have the opportunity to improve their skills in future encounters. 

Of course, the debilitating drawback was that Lynn could never really turn it off. When she slept. When she walked around. When a car honked suddenly or someone shouted out of nowhere. 

Lynn stood, her mind whirring. Smoke drifted out of her ears absentmindedly, so faint as to be barely perceptible to someone without augmented vision. Torturing this guy? That made sense, Lynn supposed. No law enforcement up here, and no real way of getting contact down to earth. Between the Big Brother AI and whatever system they had to get internet and stuff here, Lynn figured they had a pretty ironclad system of censorship on communications. Lynn had figured this was the next base thing to a FEMA camp when they'd strapped her into the shuttle, but Lynn had not been blessed with a myriad of options for her life at that point. Add in a bunch of kids and no lawyers and no protection and -

Lynn was shaking. She was going to tear that AP Bio bitch's throat out. [i]They could make kids go missing even easier than this poor fucker. Little girls. Foster kids. Juvy kids. Kids with no moms or dads or case workers or - [/i]

Keaton spoke and Lynn blinked. She was back in the woods with the others. "I - the fuck?" Lynn said, staring at Keaton. Denim had those Dustin Hoffman powers from that movie. She stared at her, bewildered. Lynn had no idea you could even have powers like that. Everybody she'd known back on Earth had had, like, directly applicable shit. There was a guy who could move things with his mind, just barely, who got his ass beat by casino staff for fudging die rolls. Another guy could make enough electricity to tase you, but it left him in a coma for the rest of the day. But this mind stuff? Lynn wondered what Denim could tell about her from just looking at her. Did she know anything about Lynn? Lynn felt naked in front of her, like they'd tied that hospital gown back around her, flimsy in the cool breeze. Regardless, it explained how she'd found them out here, Lynn guessed, and that might be useful figuring out what was going on here - although Lynn wanted to know more about what she could do with that. There was a non-zero chance Keaton didn't have these powers, and was just saying this to go along with the narrative. [i]That would track. Maybe she and Amelia are both in on this. I hadn't considered that. They both bounced as soon as Archie started to get scaly. Maybe they knew.[/i]

Lynn glanced back at Amelia. It was possible. But not particularly likely, she was forced to admit.

"Okay, what we need to - " Lynn stopped as Natalie spoke. Her words almost didn't register. There was a ringing in her ears from somewhere. Lynn's hair was blazing, short-cropped and ragged though it was in the week since Archie's freakout. Lynn was ten feet closer to Natalie before she had processed what the girl had said. There was no way to make the words in her head coalesce into something that could come out of her mouth, she could only grab her and make her understand the magnitude of what the [i]fuck[/i] she had done, Christ, she was stupid, so stupid, to have even gotten into this situation with Dipshit Flower Boy and the others, hadn't she learned? 

Lynn stopped, standing in place. Heat roiled off of her, the few inches around her hot as an oven. Lynn's eyes glowed like charcoals someone had dowsed in lighter fluid as she looked up at Natalie, still about ten more feet away. There was some faraway part of her that was keeping her foot rooted in place by telling her that if Lynn stayed here to roast this bitch like a Thanksgiving turkey, they would for sure get her, and they would get her for the dead body too, and she'd be strapped to a chair with a needle in her arm by the end of the week. Archie would flip out. They could pin this all on her. That was what they wanted. They wanted this scapegoat. The psychic had said they dumped it here. There was still a chance. There was still a tiny chance to walk away but -

[i]Fuck that. I'm not a little bitch. Who does this overgrown Linkin Park album think she is? None of them get it. Not a single fucking one. And she doesn't think twice before calling the feds right to us? Right fucking to us? Like they won't be able to track the rest of us down? They're gonna put a cleaver in all their heads and put my prints on the knife. I've been here one week and she thinks she can do this to me. Fuck me over to get ahead. I should've known. I should've blown out that kitchen with her in it, I should've - [/i] Lynn could feel a throbbing pain in her right kneecap, like it was splitting open, and the sound of sirens. Lynn was shaking, visibly, from the anger. She was so close. She was on the right path. She wasn't getting caught up in any stupid shit. She was trying to keep her head down. Then Spoons has to ruin everything. Spoons. Spoons was the pain in her kneecap and the way that silver collar around her neck felt and the bloody Promise uniform on that dead body. Spoons was having to spend in a week in the hospital when everybody else got to walk away after two days. Spoons was all of that. Spoons was fucking dead.

"Natalie," she said. "You - " Lynn forced her mouth shut. She could feel her heart beating itself against her thin chest, like it wanted to get out and strangle her too. [i]Witnesses. Three of them. You can melt her eyes like candle wax and one of the other three will get you down. Amelia will get away and get the cops. Natalie can punch you into the stratosphere if you do this. Archie will grab you from behind. [/i] Her face was cherry red, a literal vein pulsing on her forehead. [i]Think logically through your actions,[/i] she could hear the counselor saying, [i]When these moments of emotional stress come. We hold onto our anger because it makes us feel powerful in situations we cannot control. [/i] If Lynn stayed, she was confident she could kill Natalie. She might die. She'd definitely be arrested. And they'd kill her for breaking her probation terms. They might torture her. They might lock her up somewhere in this place and filet her like that man on the river. And all that might happen and there was the chance she might not get to kill Natalie first. That meant it wouldn't be worth it. That meant she would get the needle for nothing. Lynn was not a bitch, and Natalie had made them all look like bitches, but Lynn was not trying to die today. 

"Natalie," Lynn said, a hairsbreadth more control measured in her voice. Her eyes were wide and not particularly focused on the other girl. "I am getting out of here, because I am not a complete fucking narc, and I do not want to die." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "If they ask you who else was here when you found the human cutting board, you think about what the cafeteria looked like when you walked out of the fucking freezer before you answer. You think real fuckin' hard." She stared up at Natalie, every single ounce of her desire to break her in half pouring into her glare. [i]I was so close. You people are fucking ruining this for me. You're going to get me killed. You're going to get me arrested and killed because it's all a fucking game to you rich pricks. This is the same thing as before. Sons of bitches like you always do this. Always.[/i] A part of her felt cold and small, curled up beside a singed, sixty-five pound bag of potatoes in a musty storeroom. [i]I saved you people.[/i] Lynn didn't care how strong she was. She didn't care if Natalie ripped her in half. She would get her. She would get her for this. [i]All of my life you people have been trying to fuck me over and not a single one of you has gotten me in the dirt yet.[/i]

Lynn bit her tongue as hard she could, salt and iron filling her mouth. It gave her something to focus on. "Those of you who don't want to wind up like the river rat, you leave. I don't care if you come with me or not, but you [i]don't[/i] fucking mention I was here." Lynn felt like explaining to them the specific ramifications of that course of actions, but stopped herself. She opened her mouth, closed it, and turned and walked away from Natalie at a quick but controlled pace. Her anger was there, oh it was there and it wanted to burn this forest down and let the feds try to figure out whose teeth were whose, but Lynn was walking and her more composed response to crises was coming back. You never ran. Running was what got you caught. Lynn kept her arms folded across her hoodie so she could get them up quickly if Natalie tried to jump her from behind like the coward snitch she was. There would be no fingerprints from Cordelia Lynn Holmes at the scene. She kept her hair burning to keep any of her hair from drifting out.

Lynn's list of people who needed a thorough and immediate ass-beating had expanded. There was whoever this Biology lady was, and there was Spoons.