So she could only look to the side by straining her eyes, and she couldn’t see anything past the steel that bracketed her forehead. Couldn’t see if anyone else was trapped here. Dammit, dammit, this wasn’t how it was meant to go…

“You don’t seem pleased,” O’Hallow said sorrowfully. Xe stooped down to blink at her in sympathy. “Wasn’t this the plan?”

Orfeus gritted out, “Not this soon.” She didn’t have any damn backup…

“Oh,” O’Hallow said and shrugged. “Well, I’m moving it forward.” And xe laughed. “I’m making great strides forward. Just you wait.” Xe added in a mostly recognisable dialect of old Éirish Gaelic, “We all must look to the rising of the sun,” and Orfeus glared at xem.

“Why are you doing this?” she said. Significance seemed to feel like talking.

Significance smiled hesitantly, like she was the one acting strangely. “The same reason you do things, I’d thought,” xe said. “For the art and for the beauty. To progress and carry on.”

Orfeus blinked at xem tiredly. Blood was still running out of her, out, out through the tubes. “You strap people down and hook them into machinery and torture them…for the art.”

O’Hallow shook xyr head. “Only partly,” xe said. “I was trying to appeal to you. It’s for science, obviously.” Xe grinned. “Do you know how much energy I’ve generated?”

Orfeus said slowly, “The human body is not an efficient generator of energy.” O’Hallow only smiled. Orfeus frowned. She knew this. “Nowhere near as good as solar, even wind. We’re not worth the calories you put in.”

Significance tucked xyr hair behind xyr ear. “Maybe not most humans,” xe said. “But some of us, we’re set apart.”

Orfeus flinched back. O’Hallow laughed.

Xe gestured and said, “I’ve found I get best results from the passionate. But it might still just be confirmation bias. I need to be careful, to be methodical. Take my time.” Xe sighed. “Working alone is hard, isn’t it?”

“Yes, you’re very tragic,” Orfeus said. “You kidnap people for energy?”

“For experiments,” Significance said serenely. Xe grinned. “I call them lightning bugs! I just think it’s neat. Nice. Nifty. Do you want to see them? I can wheel you around. There were a lot of improvements in the mark four lab.”

Mark four? Orfeus said, as emotionless as she could, “Yes.”