Rain slammed a hand against the glass barrier. Colt jumped like she’d been the one hit. The other two prisoners in the hallway jeered.

“Careful,” Stonewall said, his voice carrying.

Colt stared at Rain, who stared at her, his fist still resting against the glass. The glass was uncracked, but his mask had the stylized one running across it, through the one eye and up to the top corner.

“Let it go, Rain,” I said.

He pulled away, turned his back.

“I never really gave you a hard time about it,” Colt said.

He didn’t look at her.

“What you did. I could’ve hated you like they did, but I didn’t. I tried to be civil, I listened when you talked, mostly. I know I did some bad stuff, but so did you. If you get punishment pending, and you get to try to show you’re decent in the meantime, then why can’t I? Because it’s fucking personal?”

She almost sounded like the girl I’d first seen over Kenzie’s surveillance video, yelling at her mom, siding with Nailbiter, running away to go join the villains.

“I have remorse,” Rain said, half-turning. “I’ve tried to recognize what I did. To show that with my actions every step of the way.”

“How long did it fucking take you to get there? Because I’m not getting the chance.”

Rain turned away, and walked away.

About two steps. He stopped.

“Are you trying?” Swansong asked.

“Was he, after three weeks? Because I heard Cradle talk about some of it, when he was talking about the info he got on your team, and about Precipice specifically. It didn’t sound like it.”

Rain clenched a fist in front of him, then put it in his other hand, cracking the knuckles audibly through his gloves. He was stiff.

“Your choice,” Swansong said, as she walked up to Rain, their arms touching, her chin high. She was quiet as she said it. “Do you want to help her?”

“I thought we could be allies at first,” Rain said. “But now I think I despise her. She acts like we’re the same, but… she didn’t grow up like I did. She had a life I would’ve loved to have. I didn’t get a choice in how to think until it was almost too late, and I made the wrong choice, not to help those people. She—”

“—didn’t take enough opportunities to think for herself, maybe,” I said. “And this is how she ended up.”

Again, he cracked knuckles.

“I’m not advising you either way.”

“Not in the slightest?” he asked.