"Get away from him!" Seger pushes into the compartment as though the past five years—as though the past five minutes—never happened. She barely gets her hand on Nolan's shoulder before Creasy slams her into a bulkhead.

Nolan brushes imaginary contaminants from the place where Seger touched her. "Don't damage the head," she tells Creasy. "Could be a password in there."

"Everybody." Rowan, at least, is smart enough to stay in the corridor. "Just. Calm. Down."

Nolan snorts, shaking her head. "Or what, stumpfuck? Are you going call security? Are you going to have us ejected from the premises?"

Creasy's white eyes regard Seger from mere centimeters away, a promise of empty and mindless violence set above a grinning bulldozer jaw. Creasy, it is said, has a way with women. Not that he's ever fucked with Clarke. Not that anyone does, as a rule.

Rowan looks through the open hatch, her expression calm and self-assured. Clarke sees the plea hidden behind the confident façade. For a moment, she considers ignoring it. Her leg tingles maddeningly. At her elbow Creasy makes kissy-kissy noises at Seger, his hand viced around the doctor's jaw.

Clarke ignores him. "What's the deal, Grace?"

Nolan smiles harshly. "We managed to wake him up, but Normy here" —an absent punch at Klein's head— "put some kind of password on the table. We can't dial down the membrane."

Clarke turns to Erickson. "How you feeling?"

"They did something to me." He coughs. "When I was in coma."

"Yes we did. We saved his—" Creasy bumps Seger's head against the bulkhead. Seger shuts up.

Clarke keeps her eyes on Erickson. "Can you move without spilling your intestines all over?"

He twists clumsily around to show off his abdomen; the membrane stretches against his head and shoulder like an amniotic sac. "Miracles of modern medicine," he tells her, flopping onto his back. Sure enough, his insides have all been packed back where they belong. Fresh pink scars along his abs complement the older ones on his thorax.

Jerenice Seger looks very much as if she wants to say something. Dale Creasy looks very much as if he wants her to try.

"Let her talk," Clarke tells him. He loosens his grip just slightly; Seger looks at Clarke and keeps her mouth shut.

"So what's the story?" Clarke prompts. "Looks like you glued him back together okay. It's been almost three days."

"Three days," Seger repeats. Her voice is squeezed thin and reedy under Creasy's grip. "He was almost disemboweled, and you think three days is enough time to recover."