I ate the chicken, despite my body sending me five different signals saying I shouldn’t. Too full. No you’re not, stupid body, you ate a light dinner last night and had a meal barely bigger than your fist this morning. Nauseous. You’re being stupid. Overwhelming. It’s mild, actually taste it. Unfamiliar poison! The Wardens wouldn’t poison everyone on site by serving something dangerous in the cafeteria. Probably. Slimy. No, shut up internal voice, it’s a motherfucking delight of texture.

It was a policy of mine to never throw away food that an animal had contributed its life to, even if it was two strips of bacon on an egg sandwich.

I kept my mind busy, mulling over what I needed to go over with, with Tattletale. There were two key areas that were high-risk, if I was discounting Amy as the principal threat. Those areas had overlap. Contessa had blind spots. Dinah did too, but they seemed to operate differently, and Dinah had seen more clearly through the end of the world than Contessa had. According to Dinah.

For Contessa, it was blind spots. The biggest threats, giants, portals, and areas powers had maximal sway. There were a few capes who she couldn’t get past, and some were explicit, ones that were officially on the record, like how Teacher’s doorway to the source of powers had blocked her vision. Mama Mathers was explicit too. A whole area that even Contessa couldn’t turn her attention toward.

Other blind spots were implicit, threats that I had to assume were still threats because they were major and she hadn’t eliminated them yet. But that got hinky. It wasn’t as cut and dry as that, and my mind ticked over the various files and major cases, class-S threats… and there was a lot to unpack. A lot to consider, and dimensions to consider when weighing why Contessa hadn’t tackled them.

Then there was Dinah. The other circle in my little venn diagram. She was better at seeing past blind spots, as far as I could tell. But she had to ask. No solutions were neatly handed to her.

Which raised the question: what was insignificant enough to avoid being asked about or get attention, but capable of lurking close to a blind spot? Were we underestimating someone? Missing a signal or sign?

Eating was mechanical, bringing myself to put meal to mouth, chewing, acknowledging that the texture was top notch, the taste better. That it was good, that I was hungry.