“I’m ninety percent sure she did something more. I was entirely at her mercy, and she wouldn’t hold back. I think she would touch me. I think she would alter me according to whatever twisted fantasies she has in the moment, then put me back to normal. I think she’d, um…”

I couldn’t bring myself to inhale, but I’d run out of breath to talk with, so my words kind of faded out into a breathy strain of a whisper.

They didn’t interrupt.

I found my breath again, a intake of air with a shudder to it, my skin crawling. I blinked rapidly a few times, looking back to that sticker.

“I don’t know,” I summed it up. “Worst-case scenario, she cloned me. It’s apparently something that was on her mind, if she was making another Goddess and a Mathers.”

“Okay,” Darnall said.

He wasn’t following the script at all. Barely touching the questions.

“I think it was bad,” I elaborated. “It’s an awful lot of unknown.”

“But you feel better?” he asked, gently.

“In ways,” I said, feeling at risk of letting my voice fade out into a strained whisper again. “It’s easier to hate her, and that makes it easier. I think I understand her motives and mind more than I did. I can see how the person I knew became the Red Queen, now. Before, it was a big, scary question mark, and that kind of question mark just appears and the questions appear in front of it… is she going to appear around the corner here? Surprise me? Is she targeting me? Is she sorry? Is she going to do something to make amends? When—”

And I lost the words again.

Elsewhere in the room, people bustled this way and that.

It would have been nice to have a private space, but at the same time, I could understand if there wasn’t anything conveniently close, and I didn’t want to move away, in case I could just have this fucking conversation over with and jump straight back into stuff I wanted and needed to be doing.

“She’s an exclamation point now, not a question mark. And it’s kind of really fucking viscerally satisfying that those exclamation points are appearing over people’s heads now, when I was fucking trying to warn them.”

I couldn’t help but glance at Jessica, glance away.

“Do you think she affected your mind, emotions, or memories?” Darnall asked.

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t rule it out, but I haven’t noticed anything.”

“Did feeling ‘better’, as you put it, start with that captivity?”

“No. I got a taste of control during the Teacher raid, but it was… a teammate died. Swansong.”