[CENTER][b]Cordelia Lynn Holmes[/b][/center]

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. [i]On seventeen counts of arson, eight of petty vandalism, three of petty theft - [/i]

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. [i]No fireplace in a meth house,[/i] 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. [i]That wasn't how the chair's arm was,[/i] Lynn thought. [i]There was nowhere for it to hook in, this isn't right, who's that girl, why is there - [/i]

"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. [i]That's not right either,[/i] Lynn thought, feverishly. [i]Clarita poured, I never got to, I would've set it on fire, but she's not here, and - [/i] "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]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 - [/i]

[i]Fuck this.[/i]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 [i]should[/i] 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]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 - [/i] 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. [i]Is it better to have a liar who pretends to give a fuck, or no one at all?[/i]

"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 [i]made it[/i]. 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. [i]He's fucking lying, be smart for once in your stupid life and stop listening,[/i] 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. [i]We all make mistakes but we don't fucking do what we did,[/i] 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. [i]The gun melted, it melted onto his shoe and he couldn't - [/i] "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 [i]in[/i] 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. [i] Are you gonna ignore yourself, Lynn? He only knows what you do. That means what he says is what you're thinking.[/i]

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. [i]Don't be a bitch now. Don't die like a little bitch.[/i] "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. [i]What if,[/i] 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. [i]You already killed one kid, Lynn,[/i] someone said. [i]What's a few more? It's already too late.[/i]

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]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]

"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 [i]him[/i] -

"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 [i]small[/i], 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. [i]You stupid girl. You stupid bitch.[/i] 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. [i]What did I tell her?[/i] "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?"