Wildwing was in no great mood, but he eventually found enough of himself to leave his quarters. He did not bother with presentatbility-–he was not feeling quite that good, thank you–-and he wore what he had been in the day before, minus a jacket that he had no interest in ever touching again.

He tried his best to keep that outward stoicism that he practiced, just in case anyone saw him, but the past couple days could have only been described as an emotional roller coaster, and he was beyond exhausted with all of it. One way or another, when this was all over, he was going to take a long nap, even if it meant picking a spot Mallory could not find. Though, if things didn’t go well, his long nap would end up being a permanent one.

He hoped that, while he had given himself a break, Tanya had had some luck. He could have called her to ask, but was feeling the restless need to walk. If there were an emergency, he was reachable, and no one had tried. That was good, he told himself.

He did not know the last time he had eaten, suspected it may have been the offering of bagel, which was probably reason enough to eat again. He did not particularly want to go to the kitchen, knowing what—who—was there, but he was going to have to confront it eventually, so he might as well get it out of the way.

Wildwing had no idea what to do about the double, and still had not gleaned the value of Winterwing yet. He was not a good copy. He was not compliant, or helpful, or particularly friendly. Wildwing did not understand why Dragaunus wanted him at all.

The alternative was that Dragaunus hadn’t wanted him and the entire encounter was a large mistake, which made even less sense.

Duke must have heard him coming, and was standing nonchalantly in the hallway when he turned the last corner. Or perhaps he had juts been standing there by coincidence, hoping that someone, anyone, would be willing to swap duties with him.

“I’d say you’re a sight for sore eyes but-” Duke said, gesturing to the eye patch.

“I feel like you’ve been working on that one for a bit,” Wildwing remarked.

“There ain’t a whole lot goin’ on, if I’m honest. You show me a safe you need open or a paintin’ you need swapped with a forgery or a debt collected or a-” he stopped for a moment here, perhaps catching the look on Wildwing’s face “-or a baby saved from a mousetrap or somethin’, that I can do for you. The deadly diseases and the ancient cursed books are a little beyond my area of expertise.”

“No luck, then,” Wildwing said.

“Well, I guess it depends on what you’d call luck,” Duke coughed. “If you wanted the cure handed to you tied up nice and pretty, not really. If you wanted your bud there to make a giant mess of the kitchen table and tucker himself out in the process, yeah, it worked pretty well. Found some more poetry he liked, I think.” He grinned.

Wildwing leaned against the opposing wall, and grumbled a little. “I suppose I was still hoping.”

“Eh, they had it for a reason, just because the answer isn’t easy doesn’t mean it’s not in there.”

“What if the book was just left there on purpose to distract us from something else?”

Duke thought about this for a moment. “Clever idea, I suppose. Between you and me I think you’re a little more clever than the Saurians are, though.”

“Well, it’s nice of you to say, anyway. I’m not quite feeling it,” Wildwing shook his head. “Clever might not have been stuck in there for a few days, wasting time.”

“Clever might also be not beatin’ yourself up for it,” Duke shrugged. “Plenty of folks already in line to do it.”

Wildwing had no immediate response that was not just a continuation of his self deprecation, so he remained silent.

It was in this state that Tanya came across them both, holding a blue screen and looking as agitated as ever. “You’re both here, well, good, good I guess, yeah,” she stopped and looked at the screen, as if she had forgotten what she was agitated about.

“Aren’t you-Don’t you have a patient?” Wildwing asked.

Tanya shook her head. “I’m…. going to have to try to open her up, and I am not looking forward to it,” she lowered the pad and sighed. “I think I can’t fix this one.”

“I’m sorry, Tanya,” he said.

“The good news I have is I think the rest of us are fine. Probably even your-” she nodded to the kitchen. “Wherever this thing came from, it’s extremely weak outside the body. It’s nearly impossible to pass. Everyone infected must have been directly injected with it.”

Wildwing glanced to Duke, unsure. “What’s the point of developing a bio-weapon if it barely does anything?”

“Maybe clever was catchin’ it in time,” Duke shrugged.

“I’ll set up a testing protocol, to be sure, but I think we’re going to be okay. Which brings me to the second interesting bit of news,” she handed the screen to Duke, who looked at it doubtfully.

“Oh, eh, it’s, it’s very nice,” Duke said. Wildwing looked over his shoulder, and could only make out two spiraling patterns of dots.

“You’re holding it upside down,” Tanya sighed, taking it from him and turning the screen over. “You’re related to her.”

“What,” Duke frowned.

“No, see, see, the mitochondrial base pairs, you have the same mother.”

“I thought you said you weren’t a medical doctor.”

“This is barely high school biology,” Tanya scoffed.

“I didn’t go to high school,” he looked at Wildwing. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well, welcome to where I’ve been the last three days,” Wildwing answered, with just a hint of amusement.

“Look, it’s really simple-” Tanya began.

“No one’s questioning the science,” Wildwing stepped in. “If you say that’s how it is, we believe you. The part that isn’t making sense is how this happened.” Heforestalled her again when she opened her bill. “Not literally how it happened, thank you.”

“I’ll question the science a little,” Duke interjected. “How you know she’s my sister and not some other Duke’s sister.”

Tanya blinked. “That’s…. needlessly complex.”

“Needlessly complex is movin’ to a different universe because your plans to be a dictator of a planet didn’t pan out,” Duke wagged a finger.

Tanya stared at him for a moment, before looking doubtfully back to her pad. “Okay, okay, what I’m seeing here is I have not facilitated a family reunion.”

“You’re disappointed.”

“I, I mean, a little? Yes?”

“I’m not going to pretend to understand everything going on,” Wildwing interjected, “but it does seem a bit suspect that out of all the people we could encounter, the odds of a copy of myself and a sibling of yours” and then, a correction when he saw Duke’s scowl, “of someone’s, seem astonishingly small.”

“I don’t, I don’t know,” Tanya mumbled. “Dragaunus’ gateway technology means he might have access to infinite possibilities. Or he may just be limited to a few. I, uh, have not asked him. Whatever the answer is, you’re right that it’s… a tiny probability to have happened by accident.”

“Doesn’t explain why though,” Duke grumbled. “Lucretia at least had the business of being smart, this guy is either good at playing dumb or literally has nothing and knows nothing.”

“And Emily is hardly in a position to do anything to us,” Wildwing agreed. “So, neither of them have been feeding us actionable information, they’re not trying to ingratiate themselves, one’s incredibly ill, and beyond who they physically are, they seem unremarkable. What good do either of them do for Dragaunus?”

“Maybe they’re just supposed to be frustratin’,” Duke chuckled, dryly.

“It’s working,” Wildwing said.

They were plunged into a darkness that Wildwing had never experienced before in the Pond. It was just long enough that he remembered the weight of all the steel and earth and pavement above them. Knowing it was there but being unable to see anything, everything felt suddenly unstable, unstuck, and ready to crush them. There was a sound he hadn’t heard before, not in this place, of everything electrical and mechanical suddenly stopping, all the unnoticed systems that kept the Pond habitable came to a halt.

The emergency lighting came on at last, a low glowing of red that barely registered, but shapes defined themselves as his eyes adjusted.

He wished for the thousandth, maybe two-thousandth time, to have the Mask with him. It would have been able to correct and adjust before he could blink.

“So,” Duke’s nonchalant voice interrupted the moment of guilt. “Has the hallway to the kitchen always been a wall?”

The question was absurd, but sure enough, what had been an open archway that connected to the kitchen was now a wall. Wildwing stared at it, dumbfounded. It was solid, and cold to the touch, and while sections of the Pond were fitted with blast doors for emergency, he had heard no mechanism close a door, nor did he see any evidence that a door existed in this spot. Just a wall.

“There’s one on the other side, too!” came Tanya’s voice in the gloom, and her shape resolved before them. “We have maybe five-hundred square feet.”

“We’re cut off from main power,” Wildwing muttered. “We’ve been boxed in.”

“By what?” Tanya said, exasperated. “Why is this happening right now?”

Wildwing frowned at the wall, as if it would do any good to glare his displeasure at it. “We learned something new and immediately we got cut off from everyone else.”

Duke activated his saber. “I’m not fond of bein’ locked up.”

“No, wait!” Tanya said, grasping his shoulder. “Whatever we’re in right now shouldn’t exist. These walls appeared, and that’s not supposed to be able to happen. Not here. Not with the shield generator.”

“What do you think it is?” Wildwing asked.

“I don’t know, there’s a million things I’d have to measure to know, and all I have is the omnitool.” She pondered the wall before them, her brow furrowed. “This is very inconvienent.”

“Maybe let’s not punch a hole in it quite yet,” Wildwing concluded, and Duke shrugged, putting the saber away.

The older drake said simply, and then looked up towards the ceiling. “Think we’re still gettin’ air?”

“I wasn’t worried about it until you asked,” Wildwing admitted.

“Oh this, this is… this is fine. I’ll, uh. Well, maybe not fine, but I’ll see what readings I can get, huh?” Tanya said, flustered, tapping at the controls on her wrist.

“Sure,” Wildwing agreed. “The others will know we’re missing.”

“If they’re not in the same situation,” Duke corrected.

“You’re both wasting air,” Tanya said.