Another turn of certain keys, and the bugs resumed their process of feeding him what they’d collected, finding their nooks and their holes in the honeycomb portions of their father-mother.

With her power and with all of the focus in that power that Teacher had gifted her, she controlled the path of it. She chose the designs that would have been nearly random before, put her hands on controls, and painted him with her own brushes. To make him the beautiful sort of alien.

“Holy shit-fuck,” she heard.

“Is there a problem?” she asked, turning. Spawner turned with her, as did her other boys.

Scapegoat grabbed his helmet and pulled it back on. He was silent for long seconds. He was intact now. His doll wasn’t.

“No problem.”

“You used up your last doll. We should open the doors, have the injured carried out, and see about getting you some more. In the meantime, you should give some volition to my boys and dull the senses of one of your other dolls, so we can use them in a pinch.”

The goat boy stared down at the ground, shaking. The helmet hid his face from her.

“Yes?” she asked.

“…Yes.”

“Good. What a gentleman, doing as the lady asks.”

“Open the doors,” he said, giving his instructions to the thralls.

“And keep them open.”

Ingenue turned.

Standing with light behind her, illumination from the daylight that touched the platform outside the hallway, was one of the Breakthrough members. Dusty, scraped here and there, with a bandage at her side.

Swansong, wasn’t it?

All poise, back straight, hair short, a cute white dress, a band of black across the eyes, that smoked from the edges.

It made Ingenue think of the girl who had first stepped from that elevator and into the Birdcage.

She saw the slight movement of the hand, perpetual. A nervous twitch that never stopped, thumb moving in a circular motion. The tongue that licked lips and didn’t give or find moisture. Dry mouth.

That reminded Ingenue of her eighteen-year-old self even more. They’d put her on drugs from the moment they brought her in, and when the balance was off… well, not those specific side effects. Swansong’s drugs weren’t her own. But enough girls in her cell block had been instructed to take their own medications, and she’d found it easiest if she kept track of who needed to take what and ensure they took it.

Not that she would threaten them or anything.

“Poor girl,” she said. “You look so tired. Could we call a truce?”

“Truce? That implies a kind of equality is possible, and you are too far beneath me for anything of the sort.”