Rachel and I made our way up the last stretch of stairs toward the top floor, the building quieter the higher we climbed, like the noise of everything below just couldn’t be bothered to follow us this far.
"Nobody’s found them, right?" I asked, keeping my voice low.
"No one," Rachel said, shaking her head. "We’ve been making sure of it. People know better than to wander too high up by now. We put it out there, quietly that Lucy was being kept on the upper floors. Told people it’d be better if they didn’t co up here unless they wanted to run into soone from Callighan’s group alone." She paused. "It worked. Nobody’s been curious enough to push it."
"So they know what we’re doing with Lucy." It wasn’t really a question. I already knew the answer. "I’m guessing the reaction wasn’t exactly warm?"
She sighed. That kind of sigh that already tells you everything before the words co.
"Let guess," I said. "Brad’s group led the charge."
"It was like he’d been sitting there waiting for sothing, anything he could use," Rachel replied, her tone sowhere between tired and mildly impressed at how predictable he was. "The second word got around he jumped on it. But we managed to hold it together. Got enough people settled down and convinced that it was fine." She glanced at . "Honestly though, that was almost entirely Margaret. You know how people are with her, half this place would walk through fire if she told them it was a good idea, and the other half know better than to argue with soone that trusted."
"Right, that’s Margaret," I said, smiling faintly despite myself.
Then the smile faded.
"But if they reacted that strongly over Lucy, soone who’s just a person, just a woman from the other side, what happens when they find out we’ve got an actual alien sitting up here above their heads?"
Rachel was quiet for a beat.
"Let’s hope that doesn’t happen anyti soon," she said carefully.
Yeah. Let’s not even think about it.
We reached Kunta’s door and I turned the handle quietly, easing it open, then stopped halfway through as voices drifted out from inside.
"What? Seriously?" That was Kunta, and I could already picture the expression on her face without needing to see it, cross-legged sowhere on that oversized bed, eyebrows up, completely absorbed in whatever she’d just been told.
"Yeah." Rebecca’s voice, dry, coming from sowhere near the edge of the bed. "We knew Ryan before all of this. And trust , he was nothing like he is now. He was, God, how do I put this withdrawn. Couldn’t really hold eye contact with Rachel for more than two seconds without his ears going red. He’d stutter sotis. Around too, honestly."
"So what changed?" Kunta asked, leaning in.
"The Symbiote, probably. Or maybe he just took advantage of the fact that nobody out here knew who he used to be and decided to reinvent himself entirely. Who knows."
"Rebecca!" Daisy’s voice cut in sharply, sowhere from deeper on the bed. "That’s an!"
"I’m not being an, I’m being accurate. I’ve known him longer than you have, Daisy."
"Everyone changes though. Because of everything that happened—"
"He changed too much," she said. "I don’t even rember him being that tall before, for one thing."
"Really?" Daisy’s voice imdiately shifted into sothing more curious, lighter. "What else? What about his face, his eyes?"
There was a brief silence following Daisy’s question.
"His face is mostly the sa," Rebecca said, her tone a little more asured now. "Jaw looks sharper maybe. And his eyes were always..." She trailed off, like the words had gotten away from her mid-sentence. "They were always that... beautiful gray..."
I pushed the door the rest of the way open.
Rebecca’s gaze snapped up at exactly the wrong mont and locked straight onto mine. Every muscle in her body went rigid. She sat there for a half second completely frozen, staring at standing in the doorway, and then the color hit her face all at once, deep, mortified red climbing from her neck up.
Rachel let out a quiet sigh beside .
"Y... you!" Rebecca scrambled off the bed, on her feet before she’d even finished the thought. "You heard us?!"
"Heard everything," I said.
The red got worse. She looked like she wanted the floor to open up.
I stepped inside properly and let my eyes move across the three of them, Kunta still settled comfortably on the bed, Daisy looking sowhere between guilty and amused, Rebecca standing there trying to pull herself together.
"Since when did you three get this close?" I asked, caught off guard by how easy they all looked together.
"Is that a problem?" Kunta asked, not missing a beat, one eyebrow arched like she was daring to say yes.
"I’m glad Rebecca’s finally making friends, really," I said, letting my eyes move between the three of them. "I just would’ve preferred not to be the subject of the whole conversation. To put it gently."
Were they doing this every ti I wasn’t around? Just sitting up here picking apart like so kind of group hobby?
"You’re not that interesting, don’t worry about it," Kunta said, waving a hand dismissively. Sonny tilted his chanical head beside her as if nodding along in agreent.
That robot dog was sothing else.
"Funny," I said, "considering I just walked in on a pretty in-depth discussion about ."
"Because you are interesting, Ryan," Rachel said, laughing softly beside .
"He’s, he’s not! I didn’t even want to talk about him in the first place!" Rebecca cut in imdiately, her voice pitching up slightly.
"But you’re the one who brought him up, Rebecca," Daisy pointed out, perfectly calm, which sohow made it worse.
"Hey!" The red was back on Rebecca’s face, deeper this ti, spreading all the way to the tips of her ears.
She looked really embarrassed, like a kid who’d been caught by a parent mid-act, hand still in the cookie jar, no plausible excuse left to reach for. There was sothing almost endearing about it that I had no business finding endearing.
"I’m leaving!" She let out, pushing off the bed and making a beeline for the door.
She got about two steps before she realized I was still standing in the doorway, filling the fra, and had nowhere to go. She pulled up short and looked up at , not quite eting my eyes, more like a silent, loaded request for to move.
I found myself smiling a little at her.
Couldn’t really help it.
No matter how much she talked about behind my back, I really couldn’t find it in to be annoyed at this girl. Not really.
Rebecca caught the smile and imdiately looked away, the flush on her cheeks doing nothing to settle down.
I stepped aside. She slipped past and disappeared into the hallway at a pace that was technically not running but wasn’t far off either.
"By the Gods." Kunta watched her go with sothing between amusent and mock concern. "You made her flee the room. Are you really that unbearable, Symbiote Host?"
The smile on my face twitched slightly.
"I have a na," I said.
"Symbiote Host suits you fine," she said, smirking, reaching down to scratch behind Sonny’s ear like she hadn’t just said sothing irritating. "Though, if you tell your Symbiote’s actual na, I’ll use that instead. Deal?"
I was sincerely tempted to just say Dullahan right there on the spot, purely to watch her expression collapse into sothing between dread and disbelief. The look alone would’ve been worth it.
I held back. Barely.
"You’d rather I didn’t," I said simply.
She snickered. "Probably so obscure nobody na anyway."
"How old are you?"
The smirk dropped off her face instantly, replaced by a sharp glare. "What kind of question is that?!"
"Just wondering," I said.
I let it hang there and moved on before she could figure out whether to be offended or not. "Anyway. Stay up here, help Mark when he needs it. That’s all I’m asking."
Kunta’s expression softened just a fraction, not that she’d ever admit it. "That old man is genuinely one of a kind," she muttered, almost to herself. "I didn’t think a human mind could work like that. He’s irritatingly impressive."
"You look like a random eight year old human girl half the ti, so I wouldn’t throw stones," I said.
"SONNY!" She didn’t even finish the sentence. "ATTACK!"
The chanical dog launched off the bed like it had been waiting its entire existence for that exact command, moving fast enough that for half a second I thought I’d actually have to do sothing about it, and then it hit a wall of deep crimson and bounced off harmlessly, stopping cold in the air.
Rachel’s doing.
She exhaled slowly through her nose, sighing softly.
"Alright, that’s enough, Kunta."
Kunta grumbled sothing under her breath, then extended her hand reluctantly. "Co back, Sonny."
The dog turned around and trotted back to her imdiately. Calm, obedient, like nothing had happened.
What the heck?
She listened to Rachel. Just like that.
I filed that away quietly and didn’t comnt on it.
"Rachel," I said instead, turning toward her. "Your barrier, I thought it broke when Sonny hit it the first ti, back when all that happened. How is it stronger?"
Rachel’s expression shifted into sothing warm and quietly pleased, like she’d been waiting for to notice.
"You’re not the only one getting stronger, you know," she said simply.
I looked at her for a mont, then let out a soft laugh. Sothing about hearing that really made happy.
"I guess not," I said. "That’s actually really good to hear."
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