Khepri. The words were intimidating to hear, especially spoken so frankly.

“You said things are different now. Different how?” I asked.

“The last time, I thought I’d done something unforgivable and irrevocable. I ruined you. It’s… freeing, you know? To hit rock bottom. To lose everything. I was in the deepest, darkest pit on earth, surrounded by monsters, in what a lot of people would call hell. It gives you courage, to know that there’s nothing you could do that would be worse than what’s already happened.”

“Amy,” I said. “What you did was unforgivable and irrevocable.”

She shook her head.

“You… I live with what happened to me every minute of every day. I slept with a guy yesterday morning, and you’d better believe it impacted every second of that experience.”

“You’re just saying that to hurt me.”

“A bit, yeah!” I told her. “But more importantly, that’s… nothing’s changed from back then. Whatever courage or bullshit you’re saying is linked to you being at rock bottom… fucking hello, Amy, you’re in a dungeon in a strange Earth, and the world’s about to end! Where the hell do you think you are?”

“Is this productive?” Darnall asked.

“She’s at—” I turned. “You’re at fucking rock bottom, Amy! In that vision I saw us being friends. I saw us happy we might be in the same art class together. I loved that girl who retreated into books and hated ninety percent of middle school and high school, but stuck her chin out and did stuff because she was brave. We lost that and that’s a fucking tragedy. And I am sorry, I really am, for the parts I played in that tragedy unfolding. But don’t pretend that what you did—a set of choices you made—isn’t something that I’m going to be carrying until the world ends in two fucking hours!”

“I’m not pretending. But it’s still different now,” she said. “I made all these resolutions, I told myself I’d use what I figured out about passengers to help save the world, if only I could get out of the Birdcage. I put everything on the line. I thought that was it. I was convinced you were dead. And then Khepri drops you off, a few feet in front of me.”

I was still breathing hard from shouting. I watched her, her eyes on her feet.

“I could fix things,” she told me, and her eyes met mine. “Erase your memory, alter your emotions. Whatever happened to your body, I could alter it. Change it back.”

“Like you fixed Hunter?” I asked her, my throat tight, a feeling like if I swallowed wrong bile might rise in my throat.

“I was getting to that,” she said.

“Please get to that, then,” I told her.