The remaining Garde are waiting in the penthouse living room. They’re already discussing the nightmare situation, which is pretty much what we’ve been doing for the last couple hours without making any progress.

“Ella did that to me before,” Marina is saying, her voice hushed. “Sucked me into her dream. I should have warned him, should’ve warned everyone. But I was touching her before, when I first tried to wake her up, and nothing happened. I was in such a panic. . . .”

Sitting next to her on the couch, Eight puts his arm around Marina’s shoulders. She leans against him as he says, “It’s okay. You couldn’t have known this would happen.”

Nine is pacing back and forth across the length of the room, which is actually an improvement over him pacing across the ceiling. He’d probably still be wearing a track into the space around the chandelier if Six hadn’t snapped at him for being annoying. For once, he didn’t bother with a comeback and simply resumed his pacing somewhere less obtrusive. He looks up at me hopefully when I reenter.

“Well?” Nine asks.

I shake my head. “No change. They still haven’t woken up.”

Five slaps his hands on his legs in frustration. “This sucks. I feel useless sitting here.”

Six’s brow was knit in consternation when I first entered, but she looks up when Five speaks. She nods her head slowly, considering. “We should talk about that.”

“About what?” Marina asks.

“About continuing on with the mission. Five’s Chest isn’t going to recover itself.”

Nine stops pacing, considering what Six has just said. Marina looks aghast at the notion of going on a mission.

“You want to leave now?” Marina asks. “Have you gone crazy?”

“Six is right,” Five jumps in. “We’re not doing any good sitting around here.”

“Our friends are in there comatose and you just want to leave them?” hisses Marina.

“You make it sound cold, but I’m just trying to be practical,” Six says. It sounds similar to what she was telling me on the roof, how she’s reluctant to start a relationship because of that moment where things go to shit. It seems like that moment is here.

“It is practical, but that doesn’t mean it’s right,” I murmur. I don’t mean to say that out loud, but it’s been a long night and there’s a lot on my mind.

A shadow of hurt passes over Six’s face, but it’s gone as soon as she looks away from me. She turns to Nine. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Nine says. “I don’t like abandoning John and the squirt.”

“If even Nine’s backing down from a mission, then you know it’s not the right idea,” snaps Marina, sounding exasperated. “What if they need us, Six?”