"[color=lightblue]You’re going to be a pilot.[/color]"

Quinn froze.

Cold sweat beaded on her neck, trickling around the little circles that she was suddenly very aware of.

[i][color=FFE63D]You're[/color][/i][color=FFE63D] [b]pilot[/b] [/color][i][color=skyblue]Dahlia,[/color] [color=FFE63D]right?[/color][/i]

[i][color=FFE63D]You said you were a [b]pilot[/b] too, right [/color][color=green]Safie?[/color][/i]

Her teeth started to chatter.

[i][color=green]If I’d have grown up here I’d never have become a [b]pilot[/b].[/color][/i]

She stared at Doctor Follen, eye twitching ever so slightly. It couldn't—that didn't make any—

"[color=FFE63D]No, I—No, no I can't, I—[/color]"

[color=lightblue][i]We have to make you so important to us that[/i] no one [i]can take you away.[/i][/color]

"[color=FFE63D]N—no, no no—[/color]" She clutched at Besca's arm again, this time with both hands, gripping it as tightly as she could with her aching body. "[color=FFE63D]Pilots—they—[/color]"

An image flashed in front of her eyes: Safie's Savior, head shorn from its shoulders, looming over the crumbled corpse of Hovvi. Another image: a Savior screaming towards the elevator out of the night, growing larger in her sight as she walked-stumbled-crawled away. A slideshow of violence shuttered across her mind. There was that keening sound again. 

...Oh. It was still her, wasn't it? 

But more images: Besca holding open the door. The cookies she'd bought on the street. Stroking her hair, [i][color=gray]Breathe. You didn't do anything wrong.[/color][/i] The needles at home, staring at the door, staring at the screen, lying on the bed for hours and hours and hours, days filled with white walls and gray and gray and gray. She didn't want to go back. She didn't didn't didn't. 

She clamped her mouth shut, cutting off the sound. She closed her eye and concentrated on Besca's hand on her shoulder. She didn't want to leave her. She couldn't leave her. If she left her, she didn't know what she'd do, what she [i]could[/i] do. Her teeth still chattered. She felt a little bit like she couldn't breathe. She didn't want to go back. She didn't want—Besca was there. Besca wouldn't let her go back. 

"[color=FFE63D]Th—[/color]"

She couldn't stop the chattering, cutting up her words and turning them almost incomprehensible. "[color=FFE63D]The—there's—rea—eal—lly...no o—o—other w—way?[/color]"