Were we? I didn’t feel like I had my mental footing, after the realization of what Goddess had done. I didn’t feel especially bothered by the realization either, but I couldn’t find a train of thought that went anywhere and that did bother me. It wasn’t that they were stalling or being derailed, but that it was a complete and total paradigm shift to switch over to thinking of something that would work for both Breakthrough and Goddess. My eyes darted over the room and looking at anything, everything, in my effort to find inspiration. Everything except the image of Amy on the wall.

“Give them a moment. Once they’re with us, this discussion will move more smoothly,” Goddess said. She sounded calmer than before.

“I—” Amy started.

“It’s fine,” I said, authoritative. If I’d had my aura, I might even have used it for punctuation, for all the good it would do against Amy. I didn’t want to let her respond if it meant I had to hear her voice. “Let’s do what we need to do, you can leave for some world where you get to be a queen, and I never have to see you again.”

“That’s—” Amy started. She winced. “That’s a gut punch, Vicky. For what it’s worth—”

“It’s not worth anything.”

“She was going to come after you all anyway. I convinced her to talk to you and your team—”

“We talked,” Goddess said.

“—but you didn’t talk enough before doing this. Please believe me, Victoria, I didn’t want this.”

A refrain that I’d heard before, that played through my nightmares. I shook my head, as if that could cast off words or whatever else. “Just stop, please. Stop talking. Leave, get lost. Please, you owe me that much,” I talked over her, too impatient and angry. It was worse because I was experiencing a moment’s hesitation, a lurching feeling like I stood on a cliff’s edge and I was unable to fly.

“I do, but—there’s no point where I’ve done enough to make up for it? I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.”

Did she mean to let bygones be bygones, as if that was even possible? Was I misunderstanding? ‘Done enough to make up for it?’

“I mean, I’m doing more harm if I let this happen,” she said, as if to clarify, her voice quiet. She sounded lost, a little hollowed out.

I tried to ignore her, my skin crawling. She sounded lost, hollowed out, and she communicated that same sensation or experience to me with her voice. It wasn’t an unfamiliar voice, either. I heard voices like that around the edges of my nightmares, images and scenes my brain couldn’t keep in my long-term memory.