[b]Lynn[/b] Lynn walked. She was fuming. Literally. Her ears were ringing and Lynn's hands were buried deep into her pockets. She feared if she had them at her sides, she'd have nothing to keep her from igniting and burning a trail visible from - well, space - through the forest. Faces swam up into her field of view. Natalie. Clarita. Archie. Che. Amelia. Megan. Keaton. Lucy. For a brief moment she couldn't remember if it had been Archie who had stayed behind at the scene or Che, if the dead body had been wearing a Promise uniform or - Lynn closed her eyes and stopped walking. It had been some twenty minutes, and even she could not stay truly furious that long. Her heart still thundered in her ears but it was slower, more methodical. Amelia and Keaton had come along for a bit before Lynn told them to say nothing to the police when they got brought in. Absolutely nothing. The police had nothing on them. But someone was going to talk. The faces swam back. Someone always talked. Even if they didn't rat her out right away. Someone would. They'd threaten Spoons or Archie or Keaton with jail time and one of them would blubber away. [i]I cannot believe I am fucking thinking this but Amelia may be the one person I can even halfway fucking rely upon right now.[/i] Lynn looked around the forest. It was poorly lit aside from the light the glowing girl gave off, which made the shadows dance behind every branch, flickering and darting away as Lynn turned to face them square-on. She was as alone as she reckoned she could be. The gentle rush of the river had let her a while ago, and Lynn saw no signs of any academic buildings or anything nearby. She thought back to what happened, trying to organize her thoughts. That was how people got caught. They didn't get organized. Lynn closed her eyes, pushing the fear that she'd be killed next out of her mind for a moment. She had practice with that. Evidence. Lynn didn't touch anything at the scene and didn't leave any hair that wasn't ash. She didn't think there was any hard evidence, and if the ground was muddy, she was sure there were enough footprints to make hers clearly distinguished. Motive. Lynn didn't know that guy. He wasn't a cop, so he didn't deserve to die out of hand. So there was nothing there. Opportunity. Lynn frowned. There was no way Lynn could've carved him up, and no burn marks on him, anyway. Plus she had to have tortured him - there was no way she had time to do that in the hospital. She'd been under constant surveillance. Lynn frowned. [i]Cara.[/i] Lynn chewed on her lip, which was already close to bleeding in the brisk air. It didn't matter they had nothing on her. She was an easy fall guy, she knew, and she didn't expect to not get locked up for this, but they had no solid case at all. [i]I was always going to get the needle. Before I came on this fucking spaceship. Before I ever met Che. Before any of this shit. They should've put it in my arm the minute my mother looked in my eyes and saw they'd changed. And they should've stuck her, too.[/i] Camera footage of her going in the woods, and that was literally it. [i]They've got me in the hospital, spotted by the nurses an hour before. They have, like, medical logs and shit.[/i] Damnit they had nothing on any of them. Nothing. [i]Why did you call the cops?[/i] Lynn thought, furiously. Or maybe she said it out loud. She wasn't sure. [i]I could've kept you all safe. I wouldn't have fucked up this time.[/i] Lynn stared into the dark, eyes blank. "I could've lived, you stupid shits," Lynn muttered. "We all could've lived." The hit-by-Archie. The Freaky-D thing. This. There was something going on. There always was, but Lynn knew it. Amelia disappearing when the beast came out, and telling them this just crucially, implicating them all. Keaton coming up oh-so-conveniently. Natalie calling the feds. There was something here. Something. Maybe all of them. Lynn sat down in the woods. She dimmed down her flames and listened for a moment, quiet. She heard nothing. Lynn took off her hoodie and folded it gently. "Cara," Lynn called out. There was only silence. Cordelia Lynn Holmes did not own a cell phone. She waited. "Cara," she said again. Nothing. Lynn looked around the woods. "Come the fuck out if you're here," Lynn said into the dark. If there was some fucker out here carving people up, maybe this was what the principal did to get his rocks off or something, Lynn didn't intend to be a sitting duck in a holding cell. Nothing. Lynn waited ten more minutes. Then she rose to her feet and put her hoodie back on slowly. She'd calmed down, her mind clear. As clear as it could be. They'd seen too much, Lynn knew. Someone was going to talk. Someone was going to say something. They always did. And if they got to talking, that meant they'd pin this on Lynn. She was the easy fuckin' mark. Fresh out the psych ward and we place her at the scene of the crime. Lynn had a sneaking suspicion there weren't going to be much in the way of lawyers or due process on this ship. Then they'd put the collar in. Then they'd come cleaning house. [i]Che would be fuckin' proud, wouldn't he.[/i] Lynn closed her eyes and focused. She ran her mind at it every angle she could think of, but it didn't matter. She wished Denim was here to Rain Man some other way. But best Lynn could see it, she was dead in a week. Maybe two. They'd pin her for this. They always did. She'd been guilty of everything from the oven overheating halfway across the house when she was six to the juvy officer burning his toast at home one morning. Then they put a necklace on her. Then she's crippled. Then they get her. Lynn hadn't really expected to make it eight years of probation without getting airlocked. Maybe part of her had. The dumb part. The flowers part. Flowers got you a bullet here. She should've told Archie to fuck off the minute he asked her what her name was. The truth was it wouldn't have mattered. [i]If not today, then it would've been tomorrow.[/i] There were still a lot of kids on here. Lynn closed her eyes. She couldn't fight these fuckers. If she tried to burn down the police station or something they'd just activate the killswitch remotely. Lynn started walking back to the dorms, mind racing. Probably not much time, not much time at all. Lynn walked quickly, tripping and stumbling as she went. Her mind wasn't focused. Finally, Lynn settled upon a building she had not ever set foot in before. A library. Lynn sat down at one of the computers and was able to get onto the internet. ([i]rebelgirl2016[/i] and [i]tysonVfrazier[/i], respectively, get one into Lynn's gmail, for the curious). Lynn stopped for a moment, trying to figure out who to talk to. [i]The girls.[/i] No. That was...no. She frowned. This was a long shot if ever there was one. It relied on Hardwin being not only smart enough, but giving enough of a shit, to help her. She then typed in the email address of her case manager. [i]Dear Ms. Hardwin, Hey. I am good. Just got out of the hospital but not hurt. I am emailing to let you know things are really good here. I actually think some of my teachers are like Gary. I think I saw Clarita here in one of my classes. Anyway please tell Daniel I'm good as soon as you can because I know he was wondering. I will for sure talk to you again by Saturday. Lynn.[/i] she hit send and anxiously watched the loading screen. It appeared to have gone through. Lynn figured maybe they could catch it anyway, but...but fuck it. She had to try something. She ran back through the email, thinking. Hardwin had to have known that was code. There was no way Lynn started off a letter saying [i]dear[/i], and she and her case manager had mutual disdain to begin with. Lynn could not remember addressing her by "Ms." at any point in her life, aside from possibly as "Miss Lucifer". Gary was - well, Gary was in fucking prison, so that ought to ring a bell. She certainly didn't see Clarita up here. And the only person who worked for the government whom Lynn had ever felt a shred of respect for was her public defender. She turned back to look at the rest of the library. The few students who were in there studying were failing to hide their glances at the tattooed girl who walked in, flickering occasionally, and typed an email with the emotional intensity of a man on death row. Lynn just laughed, drawing their focus more. [i]Christ, I'm really fucked this time.[/i] She wished that butcher knife had hit her a few feet higher. It would've saved her some trouble. Lynn went back to her dorm and got into her bunk. She slept surprisingly well. Corpses often did. Lynn came to the room calmly. She had slept the best she had all week, unperturbed by hospital monitors or nurses coming along and taking her temperature a little more brusquely than was strictly warranted by medical science. When they came to her door, she let them knock. She had a suspicion there was no warrant, and she had preparations to make, anyway. Lynn put on as many articles of clothing as she could onto herself, for once not needing to cinch her belt to the final slot. Lynn had dealt with her fair share of power-nullifiers in her time, and did not intend for the world to see her shivering and blue like a little bitch in the middle of the precinct compound. That, and it was funny to make the cops wait. Lynn said absolutely nothing as she walked along to the station, aside from idly noting the physical characteristics of her captors/escorts. One was tall. Another had a noteworthy mole. Lynn refrained from asking about its effect upon his sexual life. She could play nice when there was a gun to her head. Or, at the very least, she could hold her tongue until she could really piss someone off. When she came in, only Archie was already there, eating a donut. Damnit Boat Farmer, she thought. [i]Once you eat the donuts you’re putty in their hands.[/i] She gave him a nod that, she hoped, revealed nothing, and kept going to her seat, sitting down calmly. Lynn was used to waiting. Lynn was used to waiting on a police line-up. She was used to the uncomfy chairs and the harsh fluorescent lights. She had been given donuts before, and coffee, and she’d been given a baton to the back. It depended on the mood. Where you got into trouble was you started eating the donuts, and your fat ass forgot they had one hand on the baton the whole time. Lynn leaned her head back and stared ahead aimlessly, saying nothing, staying quiet. She ran over her evidence in her head, but she was not doing it with the ferocity of the night before. Lynn had put it together. They found out too much. Maybe one of the dumb ones got to walk away from this, but Lynn was toast. She was more toast than she had ever been. [i]They will all sell you up the river,[/i] Lynn thought. And yet she wasn't upset. She felt weirdly, truly happy. She almost wanted to joke with Archie, or think of something to piss Spoons off before she had to walk inside. [i]I should be livid,[/i] Lynn thought, and she was, when she thought about what was going to happen next. [i]They're going to keep doing this.[/i] Maybe her email reached somebody. Maybe, maybe. A death sentence was kinda liberating, Lynn mused, which was difficult for her to wrap her mind around. She had never expected to live very long, but she had never expected to die so soon either. In scary situations, you just didn't think about it, and she'd never much imagined life beyond 22 or 23, but this was different. One day, or the next, or the next, they were going to kill her. She was a burnout with no one to miss her, and she'd seen some Skull and Crossbones shit. It just made sense. She leaned back and waited, and thought about the kids.