Wildwing had enough space and light to pace, and little else to do. His companion–Ariana, he reminded himself–was quiet most of the time. That was fine, for now. They had plenty to talk about, but the compartment itself seemed antagonistic to sound, whether or not there were extra ears listening.

He was sure that it had only been a couple of hours since his capture, but didn’t even have a chronometer to confirm it, anymore. Yet another ever-present perk of the Mask, gone forever.

The bars would not budge. They appeared to be the only thing in the whole ship that still worked flawlessly. He had some hope that he could use the blade of his ice skates to work between the paneling of the interior wall and perhaps engineer an escape that way, but that would take time, and would not be quiet in the doing. He did not know if he should risk it. Once he revealed that he had a sharp edge, that was the very last of his tools and resources gone if taken away.

The quiet dialogue in his head, going back and forth between options, trying each again in turn and discarding them over and over, occasionally landed on ‘golly, things would be a lot easier if someone would come rescue me’.

Unproductive. He refused to be helpless. He had spent months in the camps feeling helpless, and even this brief glimpse of that previous incarceration was intolerable.

Besides, it was entirely possible the rest of the Team needed his help. He had no way to know.

Wildwing was trying to feel one of those seams in the wall for a point of attack, where the red steel paneling joined together, pretending that he was definitely not feeling the seam. He hoped that the darkness hindered observation of him just as well as it hindered him.

He was interrupted by a long stream of swearing–some of it inventive, most not–coming from the hallway leading into the cellblock compartment.

The unmistakable round silhouette of Siege appeared in the doorway, with a screaming, swearing body under one arm, and a much more limp one in the other, and Chameleon trailing after him, wailing right back at the luggage.

Siege ignored all of it with just the slightest twitch of an eye, an otherwise indifferent wall of muscle and spikes. He tossed both bodies into separate cells across the room, locked them in without thought via the central console, and grasped the smaller lizard by the tail, preparing to drag him back out of the room. He took a short moment to glance in Wildwing’s direction, but was disinterested in what he saw, and moved again to leave.

“I’m the one who gets in trouble if something happens to them,” Siege growled to his companion.

“It bit me!” Chameleon complained.

“Good.”

Then they were gone.

Another string of swearing, from the cell directly across the circular block, facing his own. The light shone a bit better on that side, and he could see the occupant getting to her feet, rearranging clothing, and then looking straight back at him with the dead seriousness of someone looking for an argument. She was shorter than him, with rounded and stocky.Her clothing appeared old and tattered. Her hair was the strange deep blue of a lake at midday, she glared icy blue eyes through the bars over her bill. She stared straight at him, though he suspected she could not make out much of him beyond an outline. And when the shadow fell on her face in a certain way, it almost appeared to him, though he could not tell at his distance, that they glowed slightly, in the dark. He was not sure what to make of that.

“Okay, so, what the fuck?” she asked. “I was sleeping. What did I do to get in here?” She glanced at the gash in the ceiling, and the sagging machinery pushing in. “Well, that’s not up to code.”

“Shut up,” came a hoarse answer, the second body tossed in to one of the deeper corners of dark. “I swear, just shut up, you’ve been complaining this whole time, it hasn’t helped.”

“Sorry, was I suppose to be cheerful?” she leaned against the bars, feigning boredom. Her attention wandered back to Wildwing, and she smiled, suddenly conversational, “What you in for, and why are you in your pajamas?”

Exhausted, frustrated, and feeling none of the camaraderie she was pretending, he crossed his arms and answered flatly, “Crimes against the Empire.”

“Oh, honey, obviously,” she laughed just the same. “Isn’t everyone?”

He pointed up to the gash in the ceiling, “shot down the ship.”

“Huh,” she squinted, as if seeing the mess of cable and duct-work for the first time, scrutinizing the damage. “Is there any particular reason you didn’t finish the job, Pajamas?”

To which he had no response, and she seemed satisfied in the little flash of anger that she saw in him. It must not have been as hard to see through the gloom as he thought. He should not have said anything.

Her gaze drifted to his right, past the wall he shared with the quiet voice of Ariana, into her cell, “And you, little thing? You’re going to tell me you drowned some Saurian’s mother?”

“I’m a dental hygienist,” Ariana answered, sounding mildly offended.

“Oh, you definitely deserve to be in here, then.”

As irritated as he was, Wildwing now had a new problem. Chameleon had come and gone, in plain view. He knew for sure that the voice he had been talking to had not been the shapeshifter. Ariana was a real person. Maybe not a friend or ally, but real.

There were three of them, now. They all appeared to be authentic, living people.

The Saurians were collecting them–ducks, specifically–for something.