A sparkle of lapis light had been the only thing that the first guard had seen before going down. The second guard seemed to be busy trying to kick the djinn because he was feeling, hmm, a mix of insecure and over-important it seemed like. Ugly emotions, but not atypical ones for guards. Set could have simply dropped him at the same time as his senior, but she hadn't been able to see both of them peeking around the door, so she'd only fired the one shot. Now that he was swinging at her, she took the moment to at least overawe him into a much more pleasant indigo sort of feeling. Her rift pulled her almost directly over him so that his whole vision became a swirl of emerald, ruby, and lapis linens right before her sandal took him in the face. She was rewarded with him blacking out and toppling from his chair with a low thud. Then her own landing planted her exactly where she wanted to be: right in front of the djinn. "Well, that was easy. Can't believe you tried to take a swing at me. Just...really?" The guard did not have much to say to this, but it made Set feel good about her moment and gave her a slight delay.

See, this  next part, this was always difficult. She had to reach out to the djinn so she could use the network. Set sighed, smoothed out her dress and tried to calm herself and reflect. The Annunaki called to the djinn constantly and for everything. Not just powering their cities, but even the smallest things like watering the gardens and opening doors. Annunaki lore had it that if the djinn were not forced into a sort of drunken compliance, they would choose nothing but the distant void and everything would fall into ruin. Set didn't believe that. She felt the pain in the djinn's heart every time she had to touch it. It sought freedom, but she did not think it wanted everything to be void and ruin (except perhaps by accident as a response to its pain). Nor did she think the djinn would simply flee if freed. It might eventually (and so what if it did, Earth had run just fine without djinn power), but when she touched the djinn it didn't seem uncaring. She thought they were probably curious beings in their natural state, though likely jealous of their freedom. Set's stance was that one ought never to be treated as more than a temporary ally. 

She sighed again. She wasn't calming down, just working herself up, and she had a job to do for her friends. She was just going to have the endure Caphtor's pain. She reached out a hand to the console, then slowly and carefully down to gently touch the genie herself. Not like a boot, god, can you imagine, Caphtor was skittish enough already without getting kicked for no reason! 

Then it was...like being on an ocean in a storm, except with no up and no down to separate reality into its planes. Just waves tossing in every direction. Pain flaring in violent reds and agonized whites. Slowly, slowly, Set coaxed it, holding onto her calm to avoid drowning. She couldn't end its pain, but she could avoid making it worse, could be something that some little piece of it knew was safe. It knew that in her gardens, but this was a new place and the guard kept trying to kick it, so it was being very slow, very cautious. She let herself drift and tuned out the world as she waited.

You might ask why she's bothering with the djinn, the guard seemed to be doing just fine looking at the screens. But, first of all, he wasn't that's why he was unconscious now, keep up. Second, she needed more than a cold, foreign interface she neither had training nor permission to be using. The djinn would act as her eyes and give her direct control over the observation systems. It was a neat trick, if you could endure it.

[Out of this world: 3+5+2=10. What's a new, interesting insight about our situation? Anathet may shift labels in response to it.]