“I’d love to take on another recruit,” Lisa smiled.  She turned to me, “But she saw you first.”

Hah! Whaddaya say, Taylor?

I guess Taylor is going to be okay with Sierra’s wishes, though.

Sierra looked between the two of us, then asked Lisa, “You don’t work for Skitter?”

Not quite.

“Partners, believe it or not,” Lisa replied.  “We’re controlling different territories.”

Even though she clearly meant it in a different sense, I’m sure the shippers like the word “partners” here. 😉

“Oh.  Two territories.”

“Nine,” Lisa corrected her.  “Nine villains, nine territories.

Nine, you say? Are you just inflating the number, or are you counting outside the Undersiders?

Hm. Are the Travelers going through the same thing as the Undersiders, with a Trickster territory, a Sundancer territory, a Genesis territory and a Ballistic territory?

Oh, yeah: “Our group had discussed this, after talking to Coil the other night, and we’d hammered out more details yesterday, passing on the details to the Travelers.  Our methods would vary wildly, but we were all making our bids for territory this morning.” (11.2)

The city isn’t getting better and the people in charge aren’t up to the task, so we’re taking over.”

A pretty neat way to put it that helps to make it sound like you’re the good guys. Though it’s true, at least in Skitter’s case.

I had my doubts, but I didn’t want to shoot Lisa’s idea down.  So I looked to Sierra and asked, “Thoughts?”

She frowned.  “Can it be temporary?  I don’t want him to be locked into anything even after schools get going again and we’re trying to get things normal again.”

Of course. I don’t think Lisa’s the type to go “no he’s mine now mwahaha”.

“It can be temporary,” Lisa assured her.

“He doesn’t get hurt.”

“He’ll have one of those guys with him ninety percent of the time,” Lisa said, pointing to Minor, Jaw and Fish.

Sounds good to me.

I saw Sierra look at me, noting my injuries, and I knew exactly what she was thinking.  Still, she kept her mouth shut on that particular topic.

Ah, yeah. Point taken. It’s dangerous work even with the bodyguards.

“Okay.  But I join too, so I can keep an eye on him.”

Fair enough.

I guess Sierra and Bryce are going to be staying at the shelter instead of the Hive… though there wasn’t much space left there, right?

Well, at least we’ve got Charlotte as a potential Hive-mate.

“In small part because of that, yes,” I admitted, leaving it vague.

Yes, this is a good way to answer that. I approve.

Her forehead creased in a frown.

“Look,” I admitted, “I need to get back to my territory.  If you need a place to stay, you’re welcome to come with, but we do need to decide what to do with Bryce.”

Yes, do come with, Sierra 😀

Bryce is indeed a bit of an issue. I wonder what he’ll have to say when he wakes up.

“Can you keep him prisoner?  Until he comes to his senses?’

An interesting request, but it makes sense.

“I would if I thought it would do any good.  He’s only going to get angry and resentful at being locked up, and he’ll be all the more eager to run.”

Hm, good point.

“But he’s going to run anyways.”

Yes, probably, but if/when he does, we don’t want him to be even more eager to escape.

“Probably.  He won’t believe me if I tell him about his buddies.”  It doesn’t help that Lisa lied to him about Sierra.

Hm, yeah, you aren’t exactly the most trustworthy people from Bryce’s perspective.

“So what do we do?”

I was at a loss for an answer.  I turned and called across the room, “Lisa!”

When all else fails… 🙂

“But that girl said my brother was with the people from the Church, he could find them, or they could find him.”

Yeeeah, don’t think you need to worry about them anymore.

“They’re not a consideration any more,” I told her.

Her eyes widened.  “Because of what I asked you to do?”

Poor Sierra has so little of the context here and that leaves her quite confused. Maybe you should tell her the full story later, Taylor. 😛

What was the proper response, here?  I felt like anything I told her might offend her.  If I said yes, would she be horrified?  If I said no, would she see it as a failure on my part?

The best part of this is both things are true. Yes, Sierra asking Skitter to make them hurt did have an impact on Skitter’s decision about Thomas, but no, that’s not the main reason they’re out of the picture. Skitter didn’t make them hurt, but she did let them hurt.

But yeah, should probably go for a middle option here.

“He’ll lose his remaining fingers, keep the thumb,” the Doctor spoke.

Huh. Sounds like a pretty… strange and inconvenient state to have a hand in, but at least he’s keeping something.

“So he’ll have the rest of his life with that as a reminder of his bad call,” I told her.  “The real question is what we do with him.”

Ah, yes. And with Sierra, too. They are both aware of Skitter’s face now. Or, well, Bryce will be when he’s back to being conscious and presumably learns what happened from Sierra. Unless Sierra is sworn to not tell him who the girls who saved him were.

Sierra was so focused on the responsibility, the blame and the betrayal that I think it took her a few seconds to process the problems that came with getting her brother back.  I could see it hit her, the idea that she might have to repeat the experience of losing her brother, with all of the same pain and worry, the moment he got a chance to slip away.

…oh, right, that too.

Dr. Q apparently didn’t care about the drama.

Of course. He’s more the type to silently be like “Blasted capes and all their drama. Maybe I should quit and move to the Bahamas someday soon, just so I don’t have to listen to more whining about secret identities and allegiances and all that shit, or have my office regularly filled with bugs or lasers.”

Once he was more or less confident that Sierra wouldn’t be disturbing his patient, he got up and walked over to Charlotte to start patching up the girl.  I walked over to Sierra and led her away from her brother’s bedside to the far corner of the room, next to Charlotte and the doctor, where she wasn’t getting in anyone’s way.

Ooh, time for Sierra and Charlotte to meet? That ought to help reinforce Skitter’s good intentions to… well, both of them.