[b]Lynn[/b]

Lynn learned several things over the course of their brief dinner. The first was that her hunch about Archie not having any kind of a criminal past was backed up by his own admission - she didn't know anybody from her neck of the woods who had made it to tenth grade, let alone gotten there with a squeaky clean attendance record. Lynn did not enjoy admitting that there was the slim chance Archie didn't have some angle on this whole operation - so she didn't. There were still too many pieces missing from the puzzle for Lynn to look at the back of the box and say it was decisively a pic of Archie not being an asshole deep down. With enough time, the skeletons in everyone's closet started to rattle, and Lynn wasn't going to assume he didn't have a graveyard back there just because he had a drawl and a puppy dog smile. [i]So what got you strapped down on their rocketship, Boat Farmer?[/i] Lynn wondered. She figured there was a good chance the lizard killed somebody, but Archie seemed remarkably well-adjusted if that was the case. [i]Who knows, though,[/i] Lynn thought. [i]Didn't Dahmer work at a suicide hotline or something?[/i] Keaton proved herself to be what Lynn had suspected as well. [i]Smart.[/i] Lynn had a feeling that Keaton wasn't looking to make any enemies, but she wasn't looking to make any friends, either. What Lynn figured by that was that Keaton was willing to lie to the authorities insomuch as she could do it with her ass covered, which Lynn found partially annoying, but respected. At the very least, she wasn't still in the police station, like a certain black plague carrying, steel trap triggering rat that Lynn could think of.

Then Lynn learned she was right about Natalie too. [i]You didn't tell the truth, you snake,[/i] Lynn wanted to scream. [i]The truth is what they throw at you in the courtroom when you can't afford a good attorney. The truth is what you think you saw and what you told them in holding.[/i] There was no truth on the Promise. If they had so many cameras and a machine listening to their words, Lynn had no doubts they had all the truth they needed. Lynn reckoned this one would go marching to the electric chair telling herself it was just a pretty lightshow. Lynn had another, more fitting lightshow in mind, but there was no sense in escalating things here. [i]Dumb as she may be, she's a deterrent,[/i] Lynn thought. [i]Like a big, dumb, cop-loving nuke.[/i] It was just as likely to go off and kill her, Lynn figured, but whatever the Promise had up its sleeve was a little bit slower to go off with the two trigger-happy juggernauts at her side. Not, to clarify, to say that Lynn was scared of anyone or anything. She just had business to settle, and Natalie had earned the covetous position of being further down the list than she was the previous day.

The waitress bringing food helped settle things tremendously. Again, Lynn started when Archie reached over her for a moment, but her shoulders came back down after only a second. [i]Old habits.[/i] Lynn set to devouring everything that was put before her, eating with no semblance of grace or manners. In lock-up, they had maybe twenty minutes total to eat, including waiting in line to get food. Beforehand, Lynn had not been so culinarily deprived as Natalie, but she'd been in the same ballpark. Fast food was a bit of a fancy splurge out for her, and Lynn was leaning into the mentality that any given meal might be the last, whenever Gennedy decided to punch her ticket. So, she figured a pound and a half of Chinese food in ten minutes wasn't the worst way to go. Besides that, Lynn was eager to put some more meat on her bones. Before yesterday, Lynn had entertained the notion she might actually gain some weight and maybe manage to squeeze another inch or two out of her spine here on the Promise, but she didn't imagine she'd be around long enough for that to happen now. Still, Lynn's furnace went through a lot of coal. Better to keep it fed.

Lynn stopped eating when she saw Salamandra walk through the front door - the very reason Lynn had sat with her back to the exit (much as the clatter behind her had pissed her off). Lynn's mind went whirring and processing to place a name to a face. [i]Wasn't she locked up?[/i] Lynn thought. Che had mentioned something about her, and for a heartbeat Lynn wasn't in a Chinese restaurant, she was sitting on the floor [i]beside an easy chair held together by duct tape and cigarette-burn-scars, Che's dark eyes staring ahead, talking to himself more than her, with Lynn clinging to his every word. "We could be like the Fire Worms, I mean really put a fucking name out there. They want to kick me out? Fine. Don't fucking need them. Don't fucking need any of them". He swirled a bottle of beer in his left hand, the back of his right hand held to a busted lip, nursed on the cold of a ring.

"I could be a Fire Worm," Lynn said. The others couldn't, she knew, but she could, she could be firepower enough for all of them if she had to. She looked down at her arm, bruised black by the wrist, but her tattoo was starting to come in, she thought, and - 

"Yeah," Che had said, staring ahead. He took another drink. "Salamandra knows what the fuck she's doing. A dozen like her and I could run this fucking city."

Lynn looked down at the side of the chair, resting a short finger against the cloth, letting her touch burn a hole in the side - [/i]

"Look alive," Lynn muttered under her breath. Lynn looked outside and saw - Christ. Her nose wrinkled instinctively. Lynn had seen some shit before, but something like that was not anything anyone could see and reasonably not take a second to process. Still, there'd be time to throw up about it later (a real possibility, Lynn thought, as the rapidly-devoured meals sat swirling in her stomach). Lynn started to say they needed to shut the fuck up and stay seated, but everyone flipped at the exact same moment. Spoons was staring past Salamandra - [i]don't fucking stare at her, Spoons, that's asking to get your ass kicked[/i] - into the spirit world and Archie had gotten up, tried to run away, and gotten caught by her. [i]Yeah, I believe you made it to tenth grade without any fuck-ups. Clearly nobody ever beat you up if that's how you run away.[/i] She roasted him a bit but nothing serious, Lynn thought. Archie would be fine if he didn't do anything dumb, like becoming a giant lizard.

Lynn's mind, at that moment, had a great deal to consider in a very short amount of time. Lynn, for all of her rationalizing and paranoid thinking, was not really much of a thinker. She was more instinctual. She could play the game and try to out-fox when she had to, but that was a means to an end. Lynn trusted her gut. Figuring out the fifteen ways in which Gennedy had likely bugged her apartment was the sort of rationalism built over the foundation of [i]he's going to hurt you[/i] and not any kind of clearly-articulated thesis Lynn could put together. So Lynn glanced over Salamandra and tried to piece together the first reaction she could have based off the clusterfuck that ewnt down.

One. [i]Guy outside. Nasty. Tough. Don't want to tussle with that. Killer. Could probably take him. Why bother?[/i]

Two. [i]Works with Salamandra. She putting out hits on innocents now? Didn't seem like her style.[/i]

Three. [i]She's in scrubs. Salamandra either broke out dressed as a nurse or something's fishy there. No fucking MD's for her in LA.[/i]

Four. [i]Archie's going to get actually killed if he goes lizard. That means everybody else too, and Spoons is just going to make things worse.[/i]

Five. [i]That hit from the Promise is coming, and this sure as hell looks like it.[/i]

Five point five. [i]Salamandra isn't the type to do anybody's dirty work, I don't think. Maybe she'd kill some kids, but I don't know if she'd do it because the jailers told her to. Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn't explain those scrubs. [/i]

Six. [i]If this is a breakout, I want the fuck in.[/i]

"Salamandra," Lynn said. She stayed seated in front of her food, hands on the table. Lynn was perfectly willing to throw down with her, although even in the most delusional corner of her mind, Lynn didn't favor their chances. Lynn had ridden with some tough crowds, and gotten through more than a few tough scrapes, but she knew Salamandra was a league above. Still, there was four of them and one of her. [i]Two. There's whatever the fuck R.L. Stine motherfucker is outside. No, she said them. There's more.[/i] Lynn kept her cool, trying to keep an ear out for anything behind them other the panicked running of the restaurant staff. [i]I'm about to blow a hole in another kitchen, aren't I?[/i] "Some of us are here under the needle too. Maybe we want in if there's something going on, if we know what it is." Lynn rolled her sleeves up, baring her tattoos. "So if you're looking for company, maybe I'll buy dinner." 

There was enough distance that, if Salamandra wanted to whip her ass for that, Lynn could scramble back. If she snapped Archie's neck in retribution, not much Lynn could've done anyway. She was a bit comfortable playing with Archie as a hostage, because she figured in a worst case scenario, he went croc and Lynn could scamper away in the chaos. Some part of her, though, seemed to twist over. [i]Good enough to eat?[/i] Lynn turned to Keaton and tried to shoot her a knowing glance. [i]What the fuck is going on here, Denim?[/i] was mixed with [i]Thanks for not doing any dumb shit like Spoons and Boat Farmer[/i] Before turning her eyes back towards Salamandra but pointedly not directly in her eyes. "Don't mind her," Lynn said, gesturing to Spoons. "She was just on her way out." Lynn figured Spoons could handle herself outside - she could probably bitchslap the Skull Guy back to Earth if she had to - but in here she was going to tweak out and piss Salamandra off. That meant Archie tweaking out, which meant everybody died. [i]If I die, nobody finds out about this shit, and the kids keep getting the needle.[/i] Plus, maybe Salamandra was onto something here. If she was a prisoner, Lynn had a feeling she wasn't getting anything close to due process. Lynn couldn't really fault a sister for a little jailbreak. Now, the murdering random women on the street, that did admittedly push Lynn a little closer to the "fuck this bitch and anyone who looks like her" side of things, but Lynn was enough on the fence to hear her out, should Salamandra be in a talking mood - and Lynn figured after five years in lockup, she just might be.

And if one thing was for sure, if Gennedy wasn't behind this, the clumsiest of hits, she was going to rotisserie cook his ass for being incompetent enough to let this happen again.