“Normally, I’d say something about your clear inclination toward hoarding, but at the moment, I’m too grateful.” Jack took the box and wipes, setting the latter aside before opening the former to reveal four pairs of wire-framed glasses nestled in a bed of velvet. She selected the first pair, held it in front of her eyes, winced, and reached for the second. “I’ll just be a moment.”

“Jill never wore glasses,” said Kade.

“Jill was, perhaps, comforted by seeing the world wrapped in cotton fluff and stripped of hard edges,” said Jack, discarding the second pair of glasses. “She’s needed corrective lenses as long as I have. She simply lacked the incentive to wear them. Eye protection is of the utmost importance in the laboratory setting. I would have worn plain glass, had I not needed something more functional. Once the acid becomes airborne, it’s no one’s friend.”

“Ah,” said Kade. More gently, he began, “Jack, about your sister—”

“Not yet.” Jack held the third pair of glasses up to her face, nodded, and reached for the cleaning cloths. “I’m remembering how to breathe. Please, be patient with me. Be patient with both of us. Although…” She caught Alexis’s wrist, fingers expertly pinning down the other girl’s pulse. “If we could take a moment for me to perform a quick restorative procedure for Alexis’s benefit, I would be immensely grateful.”

Alexis signed something. Sumi smirked.

“Your girlfriend says you’re hot when you get all science-y,” she reported.

“My girlfriend is a genius of incomparable scope and should be listened to in all things,” said Jack. She slipped the glasses onto her face, pushing them up the bridge of her nose with one black-gloved finger until they were positioned perfectly. Then she sighed, the deep, satisfied sigh of someone who’d just seen the world come—quite literally—into focus. “Much better.”

“Does that mean you’re ready to tell us what happened?” asked Kade.

“A moment.” Jack turned to Alexis, hands moving in a sharp, interrogative gesture.

Alexis motioned to Sumi, then turned her attention to Jack, her own hands beginning to move faster. There was no language barrier between them: they had clearly been communicating in this manner for some time. They had found a simple intimacy in sign, making it entirely their own. Sometimes they’d abandon signs in the middle of a gesture, their message already conveyed, language become shorthand become intuitive understanding.

It was beautiful and strange and it made Christopher’s ears burn with something like jealousy, and something like longing, and something like regret. He’d been that close to someone, once. He would be again, if he could ever find the way to Mariposa.

If he could ever find his own way home.