“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.

“Fuck!”  Sierra turned to kick the side of Bryce’s bed. “Is that supposed to be an excuse?  No way he gets off that easy!  He joined them, you said!  He wasn’t brainwashed when he fucking decided to go with him!”

And there we go. We’ve got her convinced, and the anger is turned in the proper direction. Now it’s a matter of toning it down.

She kicked the bed again, hard enough that it shifted an inch or two away from her.

Is John Cleese still in the room? I can’t imagine he’d approve of this.

I could see the Doctor start forward in response to the assault on his furniture and patient, but Minor, Jaw and Fish moved first.

Yeah, he didn’t like that one bit.

“Guys, stop,” I ordered.

They did.  It was kind of strange, to have people listening to me.

Nice.

Sierra turned and saw the soldiers, and I could see emotions flicker across her face.

Which ones? Fear, realization that she just became a threat, that kind of thing?

“He’s not getting off easy,” I said, “He lost most of his hand.  I’m not a doctor, but he might lose the rest, depending on how the circulation is.”

Oof, yeah. I think that’s enough punishment for his bad choices.

Lisa spoke from behind her, “His parents were in the hospital, his home and school was gone, and he was a scared, confused kid that was offered a community and the power to change things.  It’s like what cults do.  They prey on people who are at their most vulnerable, people who are lost, with no attachments, who are hungry and weak.  It’s easy to underestimate how readily they can get to someone.”

True.

I mean, I know I call him a douche and all, but that doesn’t make him not a victim of manipulation here. I absolutely do think he’s not that great, especially for doing this and not telling Sierra (this is why I have described Sierra as a victim of Bryce – he hurt her by letting her think he’d been captured), and doing it for shitty reasons, but he is a kid who was roped into this by manipulative adults. He’s naïve enough that he wasn’t aware that the Merchants hurt Sierra, even.

He’s a kid who used to be privileged and reacted to that being taken away in a bad way. That’s pretty much what it amounts to. I don’t think he’s blameless, but it’s understandable.