Klegghorn was in the exact state Wildwing had recalled leaving him in weeks prior, the state that Klegghorn was always in: on the absolute edge of reason. Wildwing waved off Mallory at the top of Drake One’s platform, and she skulked away without another word. Her body language suggested that wherever she went, there would be a hurricane of profanity when she got there.

“Your gaggle called me for forty-three hours straight and the second you all get what you want, you immediately go silent,” Klegghorn scowled, watching her leave. “By the way, I do not appreciate that you have my home number.”

The first complaint was fair enough. They had spent the majority of the last few weeks entirely underground, for fear of contamination. In that state of panic, no one had done anything to inform Klegghorn of anything beyond telling him to stay away.

“Gaggle is geese,” Wildwing said.

“What?” Klegghorn paused in his tirade.

“We’re not geese. Geese don’t like us.”

“What do you mean geese don’t-” Klegghorn stopped himself with a halting gesture. “Nevermind, I do not care, I did not ask.”

“For the record, we have never shown up at your home to shout at you,” Wildwing said.

“I imagine that’s only a matter of time and luck,” Klegghorn snorted, but seemed to move past his personal complaints immediately into professional ones. “Your little arson actually did a lot for you. I’ve been through every statement and incident report, if anyone saw you between the fire and the space ship flying overhead, they didn’t recall it.” He fixed a firm glare on Wildwing, that was supposed to be withering, despite Klegghorn being by far the shorter of the two, “Don’t. Do it. Again.”

Wildwing could not make that promise, but he agreed to try.

Admonishment complete, Klegghorn sighed. “Six of you is a gimmick, people think it’s cute. Everyone assumes it’s just a thing to sell tickets. If you’re going to keep adding more, eventually someone’s going to notice that the mascot suits fit an awful lot better than the ones they have at Disneyland.”

“I don’t disagree,” Wildwing said, thoughtfully. “I don’t have a lot of control over it. Dragaunus brought them here, just like us.” Wildwing turned and led the way down the stairs from the platform, further into the base.

“Doesn’t matter who’s fault it is, your problem isn’t convincing me. Your problem is going to be convincing whoever comes knocking on my door,” Klegghorn said. “I thought for a while it was going to be men in black suits, but at this point my money is on the IRS,” he paused in his speech, still walking alongside, appraising Wildwing carefully. “Given that the last time we spoke, you insisted we were all going to die, I’d say you’re looking pretty good.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, and whether or not we all die is still up in the air,” Wildwing sighed. “But, you are right, someone could have told you.”

“Doesn’t matter anyway,” Klegghorn scoffed. “If I had decided to alert anyone that some weird alien virus was going to end civilization, they would have put me in my own drunk tank.”

“What I can tell you is things appear stable, but you may have been better off giving us a little more time.”

“You know how people greet you with ‘how you doing’, and you’re supposed to say something vaguely positive? I say I have a creeping sense of dread and a steady headache.”

“Let me know if you find anything to help that,” Wildwing murmured, and ushered him into the medical bay.

Emily and Winterwing had responded to the command to be there, under Tanya’s watchful eye. The two newcomers were pretending not to notice each other, as they had been doing for weeks. After the first building shift had reverted, Wildwing had thought their arguing had been resolved. Yet, since that day, the two had been engaged in a mutual silent treatment, like a pair of bickering children, and Wildwing had still not decided if it were genuine, or theatrics. For the moment he tolerated it. It made his life easier if they simply chose not to speak to each other, removing any concern of collusion between them.

Emily sat on the edge of one of the medicoms with legs dangling and kicking in boredom, and Winterwing bent over notes he had been taking on a pad, presumably more thoughts about the strange book they had found in the belly of the Raptor.

Wildwing had offered both of them actual living space, in a previously unused corner of the residential block. Perhaps the only positive effect of Lucretia DeCoy’s presence was the realization that they needed more rooms, in the eventuality that they had to house more than the six of them. The new corridor had been sitting vacant for months prior to their arrival, filled with optimism of a less lonely future. He had allowed them privacy in their living spaces, though it came with some strings. They were still to be supervised anywhere else, they were both given comm units for tracking, and they both were periodically subject to search. It was the best he could offer in circumstances where he still had to keep everyone else safe.

“Okay,” Klegghorn said. “I’ll bite. What happened to the other two?”

“The same thing that happened to the third. It’s not a virus, it’s a parasite,” Wildwing said. “It turned them inside out within a matter of hours.”

Emily made a face at Wildwing that suggested his lack of tact was not appreciated.

“Emily remains our only active case,” Tanya interjected, oblivious to the social dynamics unfolding around her. “And she’s doing quite well, given the circumstances.”

“Hurray,” Emily said, with false cheer.

“She’s healthy enough to be sarcastic,” Tanya added with satisfaction.

Klegghorn seemed to take this all in stride, in the way of a man who had been presented with far too many absurd things. Piling any more on top of him made effectively no difference. He wiped hands at his face to clear his thoughts, and asked, “So, what’s your plan?”

“Plan?” Wildwing coughed. “We’re equipped to fight four lizards and their little robot army. No one gave us resources for infectious diseases.”

“So, your plan is to sit tight and hope everything turns out okay,” Klegghorn observed. When Wildwing said nothing, the human made an exasperated noise. “Christ, the reason no one called me is you have no idea what you’re doing.”

“We’ve kept quarantine and daily observation of everyone. No evidence of spread. We lost two—three—but we are investigating treatment at the pace we’re able to.”

Klegghorn pondered this, considering them all in turn. “This thing isn’t a bioweapon,” he concluded.

“It tears people apart,” Wildwing objected.

Klegghorn shook his head. “I’m not going to claim to be an expert on anything, but I did have to sit through a lot of meetings after a subway attack. Something meant to hurt people on a mass scale needs to be fast and nearly invisible to break containment.” Klegghorn gestured to Emily. “After three weeks you have one case.”

Wildwing frowned, his eyebrows knitting together. It was not as if Klegghorn were wrong. The parasite appeared an ineffective weapon, for all the effort that had been put into it. Yet, he was inclined not to believe in coincidence. They did not find four sick people in the belly of the Raptor for no reason.

Tanya set down her tray of medical devices and spoke aloud his thoughts: “I don’t understand what Dragaunus stands to gain from it, then.”

“What do you think?” Wildwing asked Emily directly.

Emily blinked in surprise. He realized with a tiny sliver of guilt that he had not expected to be addressed directly. They had spent the last couple of weeks talking about her, even with her in the room, and so very rarely talking to her. It was perhaps no wonder that she was not ‘cooperative’.

“I’m...I don’t know,” Emily said, but seemed to shift her gaze from him, to a corner of the room, squinting as if to focus on a thought, “it doesn’t seem…useful.”

“If it’s not a bioweapon, why do they want it back so badly?” Wildwing asked the room.

“Wildwing,” Klegghorn said, “Your lizards do all sorts of goofy shit.”

Wildwing tilted his head to the side, “That is one way to put it.”

“From start to finish it’s been nothing but fucking nonsense,” Klegghorn continued, making a sweeping gesture that was implied to encompass everything. “Biological warfare seems… downright banal, compared to weather machines and pulling down asteroids and dinosaurs and a volcano and whatever else you have chosen not to tell me about.

“You’re taking this at face value, and you should know better by now. If it’s a weapon it absolutely does not do anything you think it will.”

Wildwing had no choice but to take this into consideration, though it brought him no closer to an answer. If the obvious path was not Dragaunus’s plan, that left a multitude of bizarre possibilities that the team had no way to anticipate or prepare for.

Emily interrupted his thoughts, suddenly sitting up straight and saying in a way that sounded as if she had been internally rehearsing: “I want to join the team.”

“What?” Winterwing blurted, his vow of mutual silence broken.

Wildwing was just as bewildered by the request. Emily had never shown interest in being anything more than their sullen visitor. Something had changed. Something had changed, and he did not know what it was, and he did not like it. All he could think to do was stall. “I would have to discuss that with everyone. Their first question is going to be ‘why’.”

She still did not make eye contact with him, instead staring hard at the corner again, “They set the river on fire.”

Wildwing hesitated, “What?”

“I think what you want is for me to promise to be selfless and fight for justice, or whatever,” she said. “I don’t care. I just want to never have to deal with any of this again.”

Winterwing made a noise that might have been a scoff of disapproval.

Emily sighed audibly. “Everyone else has a job. Even you,” she gestured to the notes in Winterwing’s hands.

“So, what? They said you can help without fighting armored lizards,” Winterwing argued.

“I can’t, though. They tried taking me again.”

“What are you talking about?” Winterwing asked.

“Last night,” Emily said. “While I was trying to sleep.” She snuck a glance at Wildwing, perhaps realizing she should have told them immediately, and realizing the omission did not reflect well on her.

Wildwing attempted to circumvent whatever this small argument was really about, pulling it back to what mattered. “That isn’t possible, not with the teleportation shield.”

“I don’t...” Emily struggled with words for a moment. “I don’t think whatever he does is teleportation.”

“If that’s true, how are you still here?”

“I didn’t want to go,” she said. She saw the rest of the room staring at her. “Something’s different. He couldn’t force me, like before.”

“Emily,” Winterwing said sharply. “You are going to get yourself killed.”

“What do you care?” Emily snapped back at him. She pushed off the scanning bed, brushing past Wildwing, and effectively stomped down the hallway, rounding a corner and vanishing from sight. Wildwing watched her go, finding himself curious rather than annoyed. She appeared genuine, he thought. Perhaps they had not actually prevented whatever Wraith was trying to do when they recovered her from the Raptor, and had only delayed it.

Winterwing noticed the idle eyes of the room coming towards him, and proceeded to become engrossed in his notes.

Someone would have to go retrieve Emily, of course, as the corner she had chosen would lead her no where except a closet of cleaning supplies.