“I assume we’re going to be working together, if we get out of this in one piece,” Damsel told Tattletale. “I’ll make my token effort to build something by giving you a small, miniscule amount of my faith.”

“That’s a bad basis for—”

“It’s more than I give others, Tattletale. Don’t be greedy.”

“Sure,” Tattletale said, sighing.

Everyone else made their quick vote, Love Lost pointing a claw at Tattletale to make hers.

Byron, Rain, and Kenzie were the only ones in favor of my path.

We started off.

Have to find a way over, have to see if we can’t work something out with these panels and getting into the guts of this system. Have to see if we can’t slow Teacher down or at least figure out what he’s doing here.

Easy enough, right?

The panicked, frustrated feeling hadn’t quite been extinguished, and the tension of the moment sat uneasily within me.

I didn’t like that this was the second time we’d voted, and that I had to reconcile that I’d hated that I’d gone along with the decision to split up when I’d known deep down inside that it wasn’t the way to go… and now I was accepting another lost vote.

Did I believe this to be wrong?

No.

Not exactly. I could think of supporting arguments.

But I didn’t trust Tattletale. I’d seen a glimpse of who she really was, and I’d seen how very real that glimpse of her still was, when the first sign of anyone sympathizing or trying to connect with her over it had seen her go straight for the jugular.

Blaming me for what Amy had done to me.

Shitty, but understandable. And only minimally to do with my lack of trust for her.

Take this ‘Livsey’ kid out of the equation, and all that was left was the power and the identity the power had helped build up.

And we were rushing toward it.

There had to be other options, and I focused on sorting them out.

“Damsel,” I said, a little out of breath. We couldn’t slide downhill in the direction we wanted to go.

“What?”

“When you do the transition, from injured to healed, you did your own, right?”

“So?”

“So… how do you control it?”

“Be less incompetent.”

“Damsel,” I said, my voice hard, serious. “Don’t fuck around. You’re the expert, somehow. Strut your fucking stuff.”

“You’re all of the choices, already. Find the face you want, move toward it, let it move toward you. Pass each other.”

“That’s…”

“Instinct,” she said. “When we die, we all end up in a place like this. Images in crystal, flickering memories. But it wasn’t this broken up before. The next death will be worse. Shallower, more intense. Lonelier.”

“Swansong’s death is worse than it was before?” Kenzie asked.

“Who cares?” Damsel asked.