A few minutes passed before I heard footsteps coming back down the hall, Rebecca’s quick stride, and behind her the quieter, more measured sounds of Sydney and Rachel following in.

"Did you call Ivy?" I asked, looking at Rebecca as they came in.

She stopped. "What?"

"Ivy. She’s part of us," I said.

Rebecca shifted her weight and crossed her arms. "I mean, yeah, I know that. But she’s not exactly heavily involved in the day-to-day stuff, is she? And since Mei got taken she’s been..." She paused, searching for the word. "Even more distant than usual. Weird, honestly."

"Rebecca," Rachel said.

"What?" Rebecca looked at her sister with the expression of someone who was not going to apologize for a factual observation. "I’m just saying what’s true." She turned back to me, already moving. "Anyway, it’s done now. I’ll get out of your way."

"No." I said it before she’d taken a full step. "You’re staying."

She stopped. Turned back around with a look that sat somewhere between suspicious and caught off guard. "I thought the whole point was that I’d just be useless and in the way?"

"I said I didn’t want you putting yourself in dangerous situations without thinking," I said, keeping my voice serious. "That’s not the same as kicking you out of the group. I don’t have any say over that anyway, you’re Rachel’s sister and you’re one of us. That’s just how it is."

The room wasn’t loud. It wasn’t like Rebecca made any big production of what came next. She just went quiet for a momen and then she gave a small, noncommittal shrug and walked back to her armchair, dropping into it and pulling her knees up like she’d never been about to leave.

"I just saw her blush," Sydney said.

"I saw it too," Christopher confirmed helpfully, not even trying to keep the satisfaction out of his voice.

Rebecca turned a glare on both of them that could’ve stripped the paint off a wall. Neither of them looked particularly threatened by it.

"Anyway." Sydney exhaled through her nose and looked at me, and her expression cycled through something between exasperation and reluctant amusement. "Ryan. I don’t know whether to be impressed or concerned at this point. You’re bringing home a new woman literally every other day."

"Shut up, Sydney," Christopher said flatly, cutting her off.

"Thank you, Christopher," I said though the moron had exactly told the same remark earlier.

I moved Penny forward slightly so she was visible to everyone, standing beside Lucy’s chair who was giving a very wary gaze toward Penny.

"Her name is Penny," I said. "She came after me when I was out with Cindy and Daisy, we’d gone to find glasses for Daisy. She attacked us."

Rachel’s head came up immediately. "Are you okay? Is everyone—"

"We’re fine," I said quickly. "All three of us. I sent Cindy and Daisy back to the Boardwalk before things got physical and dealt with Penny on my own." I paused. "She has Symbiote power in her. I think it’s from Gaspar. Like he forced a part of his Symbiote into her somehow."

Rachel’s expression shifted. She glanced at Penny, then back at me, and when she asked the next question her voice was careful.

"Like... us?"

I knew what she was asking. I turned it over for a second before answering.

Because no, not like them. Not the same process, not the same result. The way Dullahan moved through a person, the way it had taken root in Sydney and Rachel and the others, that had been something else. Something that felt almost intentional in its design, like it was built to bond rather than dominate. Clean, even. No one had lost themselves. Penny had been a marionette. Moving without choosing to move, operating on Gaspar’s frequency while whatever made her h’er’ sat somewhere in the back watching and unable to do anything about it.

That wasn’t hosting. That was something darker.

"I don’t think it was the same way," I said, picking my words carefully. "It feels like he forced a piece of his Symbiote into her against her will. And the result is different from you guys...where I... gave it to you without fully realizing what I was doing at the time, like inadvertently..."

I’d had to hedge that last part. Rebecca was right there.

"Inadvertently huh?" Sydney said, and I could hear the quotation marks around the word from across the room. The smirk on her face wasn’t even slightly subtle.

"Give me a break," I said under my breath.

"Nobody believes that, for what it’s worth." Rebecca’s voice came out even and unimpressed from the armchair. "And you should really stop saying it like you think it makes us feel better or something. Because we aren’t stupid. I am not stupid."

I looked at her.

She held my gaze with a cool, and stern expression that was somehow more cutting than outright anger would have been. "You gave it to people you trust. That’s it. That’s the whole story. You don’t have to dress it up in an accident every time, it’s kind of insulting."

"Rebecca." Rachel sighed.

"I’m not a kid, big sister, and I’m not stupid," Rebecca said with a sharp gaze. "Stop doing that."

"She’s right, actually," Sydney said, and now her voice had dropped the amusement and picked up something more direct. She looked at Rachel. "You keep treating her like she’s going to shatter if someone speaks to her plainly, and it’s not doing her any favors." Then she turned to me. "And Ryan, she already knows. Look at her. Just tell her you trust her and give her the damn thing. End the conversation."

Rachel shot Sydney a glare. I matched it, probably with the same energy.

Christopher turned his head just enough to hide what was happening to his face, his shoulders moving slightly.

Sydney put both hands up. "I’m just saying what the room is thinking." She glanced at Rebecca. "Be straight about it. You’re old enough to just ask for what you want, aren’t you?"

Rebecca uncrossed and recrossed her arms, looking at me with a unbothered yet upset look. "He goes on about protecting me. About keeping me safe. And then doesn’t give me the one thing that would actually make me capable of protecting myself." She let a beat pass. "Bit of a contradiction, honestly."

"Heard that," Sydney said, pointing at me with the grin returning in full force.

"Rebecca, you don’t know what you’re actually asking—" Rachel started, the words coming out quickly and with a flustered edge to them that she was clearly trying to keep under control.

"I know exactly what I’m asking!" Rebecca was on her feet before Rachel had finished the sentence. "And if the answer is no, fine! Say no! Say it to my face! But stop walking around acting like you’re protecting me when really you just don’t think I’m worth it!"

"You really don’t know what you’re talking about, Rebecca," I said, and then stopped myself before I could finish the thought out loud.

Because she really didn’t. And the worst part, the part that was making this whole thing so uncomfortable to stand inside was that if she ever actually found out the truth of it, she would take back every single word she’d just said and probably feel terrible about all of them. The anger would evaporate and something much worse would replace it.

So no. I couldn’t explain it. Not here, not in front of everyone, not to her.

Rebecca read my trailing off as evasion which, technically, it was and something in her expression went from frustrated to fully ignited.

"Hypocrite," she said. "You stand there and say you don’t want me in danger, that’s why you’re holding back, what, this time? Is that the excuse we’re using now?" She jabbed a finger toward Lucy and Penny, who were sitting in their respective spots with the wide-eyed, very still expressions of people who had come into a situation expecting one thing and found themselves in the middle of something else entirely. "I’m already in danger. I’ve been in danger since the aliens showed up and everything fell apart and I’m standing in the same building as whatever she is," she said, the gesture toward Lucy sharp and pointed, "so don’t insult me by pretending that’s your actual reason!"

Lucy and Penny exchanged a glance. The kind that communicated, wordlessly and with considerable eloquence, that neither of them had expected to become backdrop characters in a family argument tonight.

Yeah. I hadn’t called everyone together for this particular drama either!

But Rebecca had reached whatever limit she’d been quietly pressing against for weeks, maybe longer, and it had chosen right now to give way. The thing about Rachel getting abilities, about Sydney getting them, about changes happening around her that she’d had no part in and no say over, she’d swallowed all of that and kept quiet and kept moving, the way Rebecca generally handled things she couldn’t resolve. Right up until she couldn’t anymore. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

I understood it. That didn’t make it easier to go through it.

"If I gave it to you," I said, reaching for something that was at least adjacent to the truth, "you’d be putting a target on yourself. The Starakians, they track Symbiote signatures, you know that. You’d be drawing attention we can’t afford...

That sounded like a stupid excuse yeah.

If there had been any other way to pass it on, something simple, something that didn’t involve crossing that line, I would’ve done it without a second thought. I would have given it to her, to Christopher, to Daisy... even to Alisha. Anyone I trusted. But that wasn’t the reality of it.

The truth was, the moment I shared it like that, it would be gone for good. Dullahan wouldn’t just transfer, it would bind itself to her, completely and irreversibly. There would be no taking it back, no second chances. Kunta had mentioned a method to extract it, but even he hadn’t tried to hide the cost. The odds of surviving something like that were... slim at best. Practically a death sentence. And that wasn’t a risk I was willing to gamble on, not for anyone, no matter how much they meant to me.

Right now, Dullahan wasn’t just power, it was protection. Our best one.

And yeah... part of me wanted to give it to Rebecca. The thought crossed my mind more than once. But I shut it down every time. Because doing that would mean dragging her into something she never asked for, forcing a kind of intimacy she deserved to experience on her own terms, with someone she truly chose.

She wasn’t just anyone. She was Rachel’s sister... and someone I cared about deeply in her own right. I wasn’t about to take something that should be hers to give freely someday, to someone she loves and turn it into a necessity, or worse, a burden.

Some things just shouldn’t be taken, no matter the reason.

"That’s another excuse," she said immediately, cutting through it. "You just keep making new ones. Every time I get close to an actual answer, there’s a new reason. A new way to explain why everyone else gets something and I don’t." She shook her head, her jaw setting. "Don’t act like you care about me while you’re doing that. I can’t stand it. I’d rather you just said nothing."

She turned and walked out.

The sound of her footsteps moved down the hall and the door at the far end opened and closed and then it was just the five of us, six, counting the two women tied to chairs.

Nobody spoke for a solid few seconds.

"So." Sydney’s voice broke it first of course. "Rachel. This is normally where you call her name and go running after her. Just in case you’d forgotten the choreography."

Rachel turned and gave her a look that communicated, with considerable precision, exactly how much she appreciated that comment.

"I’m tired," she said.

"No one’s blaming you for that," Christopher said. He exhaled slowly and pushed himself straighter in his chair, his eyes moving to me. "Can we focus on what actually needs dealing with? We’ve got two women in this room who presumably aren’t here for the show."

"Yeah," I nodded, pulling myself back into the room properly. I looked at both of them, then at the others. "Right. Let’s talk about tomorrow."