It was long moments before she could even piece together what the others were saying and doing.  She was lying down, her head on Sundancer’s lap, a cold cloth against her forehead.  Oliver leaned next to her, holding a bowl of cold water.

It is done.

I have a feeling Coil is going to be pressuring her to tell him about what she saw immediately, with no regard for her state.

“-running out of time!” Trickster shouted.

Ah, right, we don’t know how long she’s been out, and they do have limited time.

Coil stood just behind Trickster, arms folded, staring out over the railing, at his underground base. 

Considering tactics?

“Give her a moment,” Sundancer said.  “Whatever that was, it just knocked the poor kid out.”

“That deadline she gave us?  It’s here.  Now.”

Oh wow, she was out that long?

I mean, it can’t be quite there. If it was, there’d be a ~40% chance each of them were dead already, including Dinah. But chances are we don’t have much time before Crawler busts in.

She had come close to experiencing it once, early on in her captivity.  Never again.  She would obey Coil in everything he asked for before she risked that happening again.

Hm. Except if she wants to go on without ever experiencing this… that means she’d need to take the drugs continuously her whole life.

“Okay,” she murmured.  She picked out one of the paths where they survived.  Even looking too closely at it made her head throb, like it was in a massive vise and someone had just cranked it a fraction tighter.

Ow.

So yeah, let’s see what you can do here.

Some of the possible worlds around the fringes of her consciousness disintegrated into a mess of disordered scenes as she pushed forward.  The scenes and images of the less possible worlds flew around her mind like razor-sharp leaves in a gale, cutting at everything they touched.  “It hurts.”

The more she zooms in on one branch, the more the others start beating on her…

Metaphorically, at the very least.

“Now, pet.  As quickly as you can.”

He didn’t know.  It was something else, like trying to will herself to stick a hot poker in her body, in her brain, knowing it would remain there and burn her for weeks before it cooled.

That does sound a little unpleasant. A teeny bit.

“Why is she so against this?” Trickster asked.

“Headaches,” Dinah answered, pressing her hands to her head,  “It breaks my power.  It takes days, sometimes weeks before everything is sorted out and working again.

Sounds like not just a headache, but a full-on burnout.

Headaches the entire time, until everything is sorted out, worse headaches if I try to get numbers in the meantime.  Have to be careful, can’t muddle things up.  Can’t lie about the numbers, can’t look at what happens, or it just becomes chaos.

Huh, that’s interesting, she’s sworn to honesty by the power, or she risks it leaving her for a while.

Also, if looking at what happens causes a burnout, I suppose the glimpses she already gets of each branch are part of why the power causes headaches if she uses it too much normally as well.

Safer to keep a distance, to make and follow rules.  Safer to just ask the questions and let things fall into place.”

I suppose that makes sense.

“Pet,” Coil said.

What she didn’t get from his tone, she grasped from the vague images she saw of her most immediate possible futures.

That sounds ominous.

“No,” she pleaded, before he’d even told her what he wanted.

“It’s necessary.  I want you to look at a future where we survived, and I want you to tell us what happened.”

Ohh, that’s a pretty neat touch. Her ability lets her see moments from each branch, but she can focus on a specific branch and look through it for the course of events that led there. Sounds like that takes a lot of mental power, though.

“No.  Please,” she begged.

“Now, pet.”

I feel like it says a lot about how much mental power, that Dinah doesn’t want to do this even though it seems to be their only solid way out of this mess.

This isn’t going to be pleasant.

“A start,” Coil noted.

Something about the image bothered her.  She pushed forward, seeing the possible realities that unfolded after that.  Very, very few extended any meaningful distance into the future.

…well then. “Oh but we almost certainly die within an hour and ten minutes.”

“Six percent chance we survive the next five hours.”

Which is pretty interesting, because it suggests that this situation would last for at least one hour before Crawler killed them.

Coil stopped, then sighed.  “Thank you, pet, for clarifying that.”

Yeeah, that was pretty important.

She nodded.

“Awesome,” Trickster responded, his voice thick with sarcasm.  With a more serious tone and expression, he said, “Let’s not give him access to Noelle.  Agreed?”

It does sound like that turns out badly, yeah.

“Agreed,” Coil conceded.  “Any further ideas?”

Time’s running out.  She looked at the numbers for herself, even though she felt the initial throbbing pains at the base of her skull that foretold the encroaching headaches.  53.8 percent chance I die in the next thirty minutes.

Bad numbers: the chapter.