[b][center]Cordelia Lynn Holmes[/center][/b] Lynn very rarely felt as though she had picked up on something that Denim had not. The girl quickly and assertively stated that Nic wasn't a spy, which threw Lynn's mind for a stutter-step - [i]he just happens to be here? Now?[/i] - but Lynn quickly came to a possibility that Keaton either hadn't considered or hadn't verbalized - this guy may have just been completely nuts, or a moron, or something else like that. He didn't have to be as comatose as Gennedy's other lapdog to be as brain dead. Lynn chewed on her lip, watching Leotard and puzzling over the possibilities while Keaton spoke for a moment. Lynn spotted the bag of flour beside her and had a quiet grin. There were times that trying to be friends with Keaton was infuriating, frustrating, like standing in the shadow of a giant - but there were others when it was reaffirming, like the older girl had everything figured out, like she knew what was going on and could make it all - Lynn paused for a moment. ...Keaton was a friend, wasn't she? Lynn felt like the realization had almost caught her off-guard, it had been so natural and unquestioned. Denzel jarred her back to attention and she nodded, sitting next to her. The new boy kept glancing Eli's way and - and thought Eli was talking to her? Lynn once again looked between everyone at the table trying desperately to see some sort of facial cue or silently-mouthed phrase that would cue her in as to what the actual fuck was happening here. Amelia was glancing at her kind of weirdly, but Lynn had no idea if that was on her wavelength or not. Archie spoke up first. His voice was different, she thought - almost like it had been in the hospital room (and again, as had happened a hundred times in the time since she'd seen him last, she remembered it wouldn't happen again like a knife between the ribs or a bullet to the knee). Were they getting it? Did they understand what this meant? [i]Whatever guard those kids are under is more than enough,[/i] Lynn wanted to say. [i]Just go. Just fucking rush the escape pods and go.[/i] Archie said he would buy them all time. He got it. He got what this as. But he shouldn't have. He wasn't supposed to. [i]Would Spoons pull him back, I wonder?[/i] Lynn thought, for a minute gone entirely from the table, standing in whatever fluorescent-lit cell the kids were in, smoke and gunpowder around them. One was burning, melting in front of her, a Chinese boy, burning burning, Archie was there, shifting, and the others, shaved bald and tagged, collared and dressed in scratchy jumpsuits, looking on in horror. [i]What do you do if that's the choice?[/i] the whiskey-clinking voice asked, and Lynn buried the thought down as her hair and eyes flashed violet. Eli spoke next, and Lynn's mind began dizzying with the possibilities. For the first time, she thought, there was something of an actual chance that this could happen, and the anglerfish dream-trap of getting out and surviving and living somewhere on earth seemed all the more real for just a second. Just a little moment. Then it was gone. [i]People like me don't make it out,[/i] Lynn reminded herself soberly, and the flickering light pulled back away to a hospital bed for a while. A technomancer? That made sense. That made lots of sense. Someone like that could do lots of things. Lynn rolled the phone over in her hand, and a thought began to form. [i]...how strong are you, Cara? And how strong are you, Packet?[/i] Lynn looked around her, at everything wired to a grid, bound to a machine, interlaced with that always-watching detached voice. "Interesting," was all Lynn murmured as she mulled over the possibilities. [i]Airlocks. Oxygenators. Gravity...light...null tech.[/i] Spoons started up and Lynn was jolted back to attention - her mind seemed to wander so much more these days, and she coudn't figure out why - and pulled up her sleeves. Lynn had counted on the scars being there, but not the reason why. The more she talked, the more it seemed to come together. [i]Christ, Spoons.[/i] There was something there, too - organized crime? They'd found a way to make people paras? Spoons story made Lynn's blood boil (the steam gently rolled off her head) but there was some flickering beginning of an idea there as well, one Lynn did not have time to indulge. Amelia was speaking next, and she got the million dollar question Lynn wanted to ask but didn't know how. Before she could, Leotard piped up, and all the color guards in the world couldn't have handled the red flags. [i]He can release spores?[/i] Instinctively, Lynn wanted to reach to her face, to somehow check, but she had enough sense not to look rattled in front of this guy. If there was the slightest sign of doubt before a man in a fucking leotard, she was done for. Lynn did not believe for a minute he was entirely on the level. [i]Transmitting thoughts? That shit means he has to be in your neurons or whatever. No way that's all. No fucking way.[/i] Lynn let her mind race for a moment, like a pack of mad dogs chasing a dozen different scents. Could he even infect her? The last thermometer they'd attempted to use on Lynn had melted, and Lynn knew high temps killed bacteria. She'd never caught a cold once in her life, and even drugs and the like only worked on her if she focused on bringing her temperature down. What was the use if she was the only one unaffected? Showing people the vision of other people meant he had to have some kind of control over what they saw and perceived. He could get all the others killed - and was there any way of telling who was affected, Lynn wondered? Or if he was even speaking honestly at all. Lynn did not for one minute trust this slippery bastard. No one rolled up at the eleventh hour with mind-altering powers and a safehouse back on Earth. Lynn had been offered one too many dreams too good to be true to believe in this one. She forced herself to think a moment longer before ballparking the melting point of a picnic table and creme brulee'ing that leotard into it. [i]Keaton thinks he's not a spy. Unless he found her already, maybe she's right. Even Denim can be wrong, I guess, but this doesn't track. If he's capable of mind-altering -[/i] Lynn paused, trying to think it through. [i]If he's working for Gennedy, why would they want us to storm the Spire? Archie alone could fuck up whatever they have in place. That doesn't track. So he's gotta be - [/i] Lynn felt a little cold place inside all the fire. [i]There's someone else on this station who works a lot like you, though. Somebody who can be in a lot of places at once and see a lot of different things.[/i] Lynn tried to remember the night in the forest. Had he been there? [i]Wait, Leotard was Rolex - that motherfucker. That same motherfucker.[/i] What had Arianna said? They're keeping them upstairs. Arianna wanted them in the Spire, it would seem - and this one had waltzed up and offered to help them. He'd been there right after the cop had shot himself, Lynn remembered. It was coming together. Lynn glanced at Keaton to see if she had put anything together. Lynn stayed quiet for the moment. [i]If Arianna thinks she has one over on us, then she could be listening now through him,[/i] Lynn thought. [i]If she needs us in the Spire, that must be something she wants there. Some kind of fucking leverage.[/i] Lynn had no intention of doing the hard work for Arianna or dying at the hands of Gennedy. This was a one-way trip but she did not plan on taking a round to the head again for the sake of the bitch who helped let Salamandra loose. [i]I'll stay quiet. He can't get to me, but he might be affecting the others.[/i] He'd come with Denzel, Spoons, and Archie, which meant any of them might be addled. Lynn needed to know more about what exactly he could do. If he pieced together she was immune, then he'd likely go for her. [i]Friends close and enemies closer, you ballet-dancing motherfucker.[/i] And as all that raced through her head, she realized there was a moment of quiet at the table, and no one had said it. She didn't know if any of them had realized it or not. "It's worth saying," Lynn said, taking a moment before she said anything more, feeling like she was climbing out of the bed and writing the note all over again, "Getting to Leotard's vacation house back on Earth is probably not happening if you do this. I'm going to the Spire. But if you go, we're probably going to have to kill someone - "[i]her eyes bulging as her skull slammed into the wall of the restaurant[/i] " - and if that's not your shit, then that's fine. But you should all decide right now if you're fine killing whoever's up there. They haven't been keeping kids under lock and key without making someone a fuckton of money. They're not going to let them walk away. Gennedy, Ebony and Ivory, whoever the fuck is up there - anyone who knew about this and didn't do anything has all this to answer for." Lynn paused for a moment, the anger roiling through her voice, but her hair and eyes stayed calm. They burned like a welder's torch, intensely hot and narrowly focused. "I mean - if you don't want to go, I think you should fucking make a break for the pods. As the Chinese fuckers proved - " [i]burning, melting, screaming, a kid, screaming, the gun barrel dripping onto his[/i] - Lynn blinked, losing her train of thought for a moment " - it - they - these dipshits can't keep us safe. They haven't given a fuck about us since they interrogated us. They can't keep what's going on here stable and shit. It's been one breakout after the next." Lynn paused. "It's a matter of time until the next one's too big, or the next terrorists bring better guns, or whatever. I haven't - I'm not going off this station - " [i]ever[/i] " - until somebody answers for this shit. I don't give a fuck anymore. Anyone who says, you know, that a bunch of fucking children can be imprisoned and tortured on, they can fuck right off. I've been to a parahuman prison. I've got some serious doubts whatever's in the Spire is really that much nicer. I don't give a shit if they've got people like Sa - " Lynn shivered " - lamandra there, there's kids. Kids with dolls. Anybody who puts a kid in a prison cell and stabs them with needles, I don't give a shit. But if that's not what you want to do then I don't think it's, you know, a pussy move or whatever if you go to the pods." There was a part of Lynn inside her chest that was looking out between her ribs, shaking and rattling them, screaming at everyone to fucking do it, to go. [i]I don't sleep good anymore,[/i] Lynn wanted to tell them. Spoons might get it, she thought, but the others? She didn't want to see that. She didn't want to see Eli stabbing someone or Keaton having to strangle a guard to death. Archie had already, she imagined, killed someone when he was a lizard, but that was different. That was just a bad dream. She wanted them to get on the fucking pods and leave. Even if they got gunned down outside the loading bay that was better than waking up every day wondering when it would be. The little false hope light flickered back out again for just a moment, and she thought about Archie making it back to his boat farm, just living somewhere quiet by the ocean, fishing or whatever. Lynn had never seen the ocean. Not until she was in outer space. [i]I don't want to see you people fucking die.[/i] "I dunno. I don't - " Lynn paused again, searching for the words. "You guys should just put some thought into it is all. Because if you go up there and you haven't made up your mind and shit then the guy who has is going to get you. Then that's another motherfucker I have to deal with."