Once they were clear, she picked up the song where she left off to clear her mind again, already starting to feel the effect of so many minds mingling with her own combined with heavy use of active magic. Had she not pushed this far, she might have had the presence of mind to push the back of the car down when braking to keep the wheels on the ground, or at least wear her seatbelt. Alas, she did neither, and the unexpected tilt introduced her forehead to the windshield frame, a fitting dot behind what was by any metric a shit day. Too tired to chew the well-meaning maniac out for excessive use of force against the Bazaar police, Avelyn got out of the car, giving Joey a quick [color=#FF2E00]“Thanks for the lift.”[/color] as she passed him and went to find the good doctor to get something to kill the headache before it killed her and to figure out just what in the name of everything both holy and unholy happened in that market.

Exiting the cargo bay, she found everyone in the lobby, discussing some newcomers. And a casualty. Well, not KIA, but AWOL. That could be even worse if Phi for some reason turned traitor. [i]‘Contingency plan, Avelyn. Now might be a good time to start thinking about what you’re gonna do if these people fail… Or [i]when[/i] they fail.’[/i] She thought glumly before turning to Flame to speak.  [color=#FF2E00]“You want someone’s brain picked apart?”[/color] she started cheerfully before turning to Natasha and switching to a much less chirpy tone, [color=#FF2E00]“It might be worth scanning everyone else as well with one of our number gone, it’s not unheard of for people like us to lose their marbles and go back to the Ascendancy. Now, I hate breaching people’s privacy as much as the next guy, but if someone else wants to up and vanish without a word or worse, I think it’d be good to know in advance. Only problem being that there’s no one to check me. Also, what Laurey said. First, let’s get far away from here while we still can. Second, I’d rather Klein waited a few hours, my head hurts enough as it is. Lock him in a storage closet in the meantime if you don’t trust him to wander around.”[/color] she added in a tone that left one wondering if she was serious or not, [color=#FF2E00]“Speaking of the headache, doc, little help? It feels like someone stuck a fork in my brain.”[/color]