Wildwing decided to refocus the Saurian’s attention on himself. The best plan he could formulate was forcing them to open the cell door. He could try to overpower whoever came to deal with him. It would be difficult with only a small blade, but it was the best he could do, and there was no one else that could do it. He deployed the skate of one of his boots, broke it free, wrapped one end in torn sleeve as a grip, and set to work trying to pry apart the seam between two steel panels that seemed most likely to give way.

His progress felt slow, and the edge of the panel threatened to slice his fingers as he worked under it. It came away inches at a time, with a screeching sound so loud and persistent, surely the lizards would have to come investigate. He could not tell in the dark if there was anything behind the panel that would yield escape, but that didn’t matter. He just had to keep making noise that sounded like he had found a way out.

Siege reappeared, though not in a hurry. He seemed irritated to have been given the task, and carried with him a laser rifle. The lizard stopped between Wildwing’s cell and Ariana’s, giving a light tap of a bar with the muzzle of a rifle, with the same nonchalance of checking the air pressure in a tire.

“Do you think that’s going to help?” he asked, eyeing the askew panel, amused.

“What are you going to do about it?” Wildwing responded. In better circumstances, could have mustered something a bit more witty, but hunger was starting to wear thin on his patience.

“Me?” Siege said, “I’m going to leave you out somewhere where there’s a lot of sun, and see if you can walk far enough for someone to find you. Maybe do it again, if the first time is fun enough.” He shrugged, “Then I might sit on a beach for a while, I haven’t decided.”

“You think I’m afraid of a little exercise?”

“I can find plenty of hot barren rocks in this solar system without air, if you need a challenge.”

“That your plan for all of us?” Wildwing nodded to indicate the other cells in the compartment.

Siege grumbled, “Senile garbage. I don’t touch it. I’d suggest you don’t either, but.” He shrugged again, leaving the implication in the air.

Wildwing scoffed. “What could Dragaunus have possibly gotten into that you of all people would find distasteful?”

Siege shook his head, and barked a genuinely, almost friendly laugh. “Ha! No, no, it’s just not any fun, caging you like little animals. Sneaking about. Hiding. It takes too long.” He smashed a large, orange fist against his chest. “If we’re going to keep a zoo, I’d at least find something big for you to share a cage with. Much more interesting!”

This seemed to delight him, and for a long moment he merely stood and leaned on his rifle and enjoyed the fantasy, before remembering where he was and straightening.

“But, you asked what I was going to do,” Siege turned his back on Wildwing and approached Tank’s enclosure, keying the console to open the bars. “You don’t care much what I do to you, but you care an awful lot about what happens to someone else when you misbehave, I bet.” Tank began swearing at him again, but took two cautious steps back into her cell just the same.

Wildwing saw his window of opportunity closing. He had to get his door open for his plan to work. “For someone that likes to throw around shows of force you spend a lot of time picking on people who can’t fight back.”

Siege paused and shrugged at him, “Ain’t stupid. I don’t know what you’re doing, but whatever it is, you think you’re being clever.” He smiled, because he must have been able to see Wildwing seething. “You really want me to open that cage, don’t you?”

Whatever was to come next was cut off by a series of troubling sounds that Wildwing didn’t immediately understand. There was a thud, somewhere in the broken ceiling above their heads, and a small clatter, as if a rodent were scurrying clumsily through the debris.

Then there was the distinct sound of metal twisting, buckling, screeching as it sheared under stress. A mass of machinery, tubes, wiring, duct work, and viscous orange fluid fell from the opening, landing square between Siege’s broad shoulders. The force knocked him off his feet, onto his stomach, first pining him before Wildwing’s enclosure, and then burying him as additional garbage came down. The mess piled up against his bars and the orange liquid began pooling on the floor.

Ariana had been screaming, only audible now that the room was still.

The pile of twisted metal did not move. The only sound left the dripping noise of fluid, and Ariana openly sobbing. It seemed that saying anything, that moving at all, would bring down the rest of the broken and battered Raptor on top of them. He did not think there was enough weight piled before him to actually crush Siege, between the lizard’s immense strength and the armor he was wrapped in, but perhaps he would be unable to pull himself out.

There was smaller, second clatter, that made Wildwing flinch. But it was not metal or machine, rather something lighter and softer fell from the ceiling, and landed atop the pile. A single, black, scraped and well worn woman’s boot.

Tank laughed, standing in her open cell with one boot and one threadbare sock on her feet.

“The fuck were you thinking?” Grumpy yelled at her.

“You’re just jealous I made your idea better,” Tank said to the dark, smug and satisfied, before leaning over the console and shouting across the heap of broken metal, in Ariana’s direction. “You okay, dear?”

Ariana did not answer, but could still be clearly heard crying.

Tank fussed with the controls before her, mumbling as she did so. As she struggled with the console, she peered over to the pile of debris occasionally, to gauge whether or not it had moved, before she continued on.

She made a sound of personal triumph, and Grumpy’s cell was the first open. He moved slowly, hunched over and cautious as he walked, as if he were in pain, though Wildwing could not tell what specifically was ailing him. The newcomer’s cell was next, and he pushed past Grumpy, impatient. He came into the light and stood straight with the exaggeration of someone that had been in a cramped space far longer than he actually had, and then he stopped, and paused, and looked directly at Wildwing.

No one had ever asked the newcomer for a name.

The two of them stared at each other, for a long, quiet moment, with the growing and dreadful recognition that they were each looking at a near copy of themselves.

It was not quite like looking into a mirror. This was closer to a time long before, when Wildwing had found his father’s yearbook. There was an echo there, the absolute unmistakable recognition of relation, that could have plausibly been mistaken for Wildwing himself, but there was something just slightly wrong with the image.

That had been a coincidental find. In this circumstance, however, there were vanishingly small possibility that this resemblance was benign. There was no such thing as coincidence. Not here. The Saurians had removed the Mask—the only way to quickly detect an impostor—and then had provided an impostor that could feasibly pass as himself.

“Get. Me. Out.” Wildwing instructed Tank, with a deadly calm.

The double, whatever it was, finished its gaping, stupid stare, and took off for the door without another word.