A couple of Labyrinth things: 1) She never said that Burnscar was there for Spitfire, you just assumed that because of the elemental connection and the early focus on Spitfire – Elle was actually looking for her phone to tell the Crew Burnscar was here for her. 2) Her nightmare asylum probably doesn’t reflect reality, given the walls are lined with blades etc.

1) She didn’t explicitly say it, but I believe the early focus on Spitfire – while definitely meant to make the reader believe Burnscar was after her, which it successfully did – reflected Labyrinth being under the same impression. More importantly, Labyrinth’s narration sounded surprised by the realization that Burnscar was after her, like it was a twist. It was a twist to the reader, thanks to the misdirection that was done through the focus of Labyrinth’s narration, Burnscar’s apparent targeting of Spitfire during the combat, and the pattern seemingly established by the previous two Interludes of the Slaughterhouse members seeking out someone they could relate to. If it wasn’t a twist to Labyrinth too, though, why did she react like she did?

It makes more sense for Labyrinth to have seen it coming, but the execution of the twist for the audience makes it seem like she didn’t.

2) Who knows. I mean, sure, it makes a lot of sense for the nightmare asylum to be exaggerated in terms of how bad it is, but in this crapsack world, I could see the real asylum possibly being almost as bad. Maybe not quite at “walls lined with blades” levels, but there’s probably a reason the asylum was such a nightmare for her in the first place, beyond just the mental state she was in when she was there. Also, if I’m not mistaken, Interlude 5 had Gregor describing the Crew as “rescuing” Labyrinth from the asylum, further suggesting it wasn’t all that great.

Regarding your theories about trigger events, I think you might be thinking too literally or directly about it. Taylor didn’t get a power to help her escape the locker, but one that (attempted to) deal with the real, underlying problem: her loneliness. She had no friends, nobody to help her; now she has lots of friends! (What do you mean insects aren’t friends? They do what she says, right? What’s the difference?)

Yeah, this is pretty much how I’d interpreted that specific event, though I hadn’t tied it to her general loneliness, but rather her isolation in the moment. This goes back to the days before the dandelions were introduced, when I was theorizing that trigger events involved the body reacting to something by reaching far beyond its normal capabilities – in Taylor’s case, her brain reacting to the locker isolating her from the world by reaching out to the bugs within range.

I do suppose you have a point in that maybe I’ve been a bit too superficial with my takes on how this could work for others.