"How long are you two planning on sitting there like that?"

Cindy stood in the middle of the lobby, arms loosely crossed, watching them.

It had been a solid ten minutes. Ten minutes of Christopher sprawled on his bench chair like he’d been placed there by someone who had given up on him, arms draped over the backrest, legs stretched out in front of him.

Sydney beside him was no better, she’d tilted her head back slightly, crisps long finished, staring at the ceiling as if thinking about the world’s problems.

"We just ate, Cindy," Sydney said to the ceiling. "Let us be."

"You’re shameless," Cindy said.

Her gaze slid to Christopher, who seemed to sense it without looking up. He shifted slightly, exhaled through his nose, and finally turned his head toward her.

"What?" She asked.

Sydney answered before he could.

"Ryan basically asked him to charm Lucy into cooperating with us," she said. "He’s been sitting with that ever since. Chewing on it."

"I seriously doubt Ryan phrased it like that," Cindy said, her grimace arriving before the words did.

"He didn’t, not exactly," Christopher replied, pushing himself up slightly in the chair. "What he actually said was, use the fact that I saved her life as leverage. Play on her guilt. Make her feel like she owes us enough to work with us." He let out a short, dry laugh. "So you know. Basically that."

"Yes!" Sydney sat bolt upright, suddenly fully alive again, like someone had flipped a switch. "That’s the Ryan I want to see more of! The hard one!" She pressed a hand to her chest like she was really moved. "I’m so proud."

"I’m not listening to this," Cindy said.

"Look, it’s not the worst idea," Sydney continued, undeterred. "Cindy, you’d agree if you weren’t so busy defending him all the—"

"I said I’m not listening," Cindy repeated, sharper.

"Careful, Cindy, this could be the beginning of Ryan’s dark hero arc and you’re going to want to be on the right side of history when—"

"Sydney."

"Fine, fine." Sydney raised her hands, though the grin stayed put. She turned it toward Christopher instead. "How about the other ongoing arc? Enemies to lovers, Christopher and Lucy? The tension is already there, I can feel it from here, it’s palpable, honestly—"

Christopher was on his feet before she finished the sentence.

"Right." He said it like a door closing. "I’m going up there. I’m talking to her. Right now."

"Oh, I am definitely coming," Sydney said, already standing.

Cindy watched them both head toward the staircase, and then followed.

Somebody had to make sure this didn’t become a disaster. They needed Lucy, not just for Mei, not just for Emily, but for whatever came next with Callighan and Gaspar. This wasn’t the moment for Christopher’s barely-contained irritation or Sydney’s complete inability to read a room.

"If things keep going like this, the whole top floor is going to be fully booked," Sydney remarked as they reached the last landing, glancing down the corridor with an air of mild amusement.

"You’re not wrong," Cindy said, though her smile came out more tired than she intended.

It was becoming a quietly strange situation, the top floor. Kunta had a room up here, that alone was the kind of thing that would make most people do a double take. Then there was Mark, who had practically moved in beside the Nexon Battery at this point, had slept there last night, and showed every sign of doing it again indefinitely. And now Lucy had been given her own room up here as well, separated from the others, which made a certain practical sense and yet still had the feeling of something deeply surreal.

"Someone’s eventually going to wander up here out of curiosity," Christopher said with a dry gaze. "And they are going to walk past an alien and one of Callighan’s top people living in adjacent rooms and they are just going to faint. Straight down."

"Then we make sure that doesn’t happen," Cindy said.

"That means keeping watch up here overnight," Sydney said immediately. "I’m not doing it."

"Obviously, Lady Sydney ins’t doing it," Christopher scoffed.

Their low, bickering voices carried them down the corridor until they rounded the corner and found Rachel already there, standing just outside Lucy’s room, the door half open. Lucy was visible in the gap, arms crossed.

They slowed without needing to discuss it. Close enough to hear, far enough not to interrupt.

"I know," Lucy was saying to Rachel. "I’m not stupid."

"I’m just making sure you understand," Rachel said quietly. "Margaret’s people lost someone. A good man. Because of Gaspar." She let a beat pass. "He is with your group."

Lucy’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

She didn’t try to argue it. She couldn’t, really, not honestly. Gaspar was also one inside their group. And that was before she thought about the people under her own roof at the Golden Nugget, the ones she’d kept in line as best she could. She wasn’t naive about what some of them had done. She’d kept order, yes, but order wasn’t the same as innocence, and she knew that better than most.

She couldn’t claim clean hands.

Not entirely.

"I’m not staying," Lucy said. "I just need my brother back. That’s all I’m here for. Once I have him, we’ll go and we won’t be your problem anymore."

"And how exactly do you plan to get your brother back?"

Christopher asked it from the corridor.

Lucy turned her head toward him.

"That’s my problem," she said.

"Not entirely," Christopher replied, moving a little closer. "Since you’re our hostage right now. Which, just so we’re clear, you are. Do we have to remind you of that every single morning?"

Something shifted in Lucy’s expression, not quite offended, not quite amused. Somewhere in the complicated middle. "You chose not to hand me over," she said. "Even knowing what it cost you. At the very least, I suppose that means you’re the good guys."

"There shouldn’t even be a question about that," Sydney said sharply, stepping forward with a glare that had real heat behind it. "Anyone else in this situation would’ve handed you over without blinking, regardless of what happened to your brother. Anyone. So don’t say it like it’s some minor observation."

Lucy absorbed that without flinching. "So if not to trade me, what do you want? You’re keeping me here for a reason."

"We want you to work with us," Christopher said, his tone shifting into something more direct, less combative. "That’s it. You cooperate, and we can get your brother out of Brigantine and back to you. Both things happen at the same time. Everyone gets what they need."

A silence settled over the doorway.

Lucy didn’t speak, but something behind her eyes moved, a small, involuntary flicker of interest that she didn’t quite manage to suppress in time.

"You’re asking me to betray them," she said carefully.

"They betrayed you first, if I’m remembering correctly," Cindy said from behind, raising a brow. "That’s not exactly ancient history."

"That was Gaspar," Lucy said. "Not Callighan."

"This woman—" Sydney pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose and exhaled sharply through her teeth. "I swear on everything, she has a thing for him. I genuinely believe that."

"Do you remember what happened just the other night or what?" Christopher asked then.

"You saved my life," Lucy said, her gaze moving to Christopher. "I haven’t forgotten that."

"Then let it mean something," Christopher replied, holding her gaze. He wasn’t backing down from it, but he wasn’t pushing too hard either. "We have someone we need back. You have someone you need back. We’re not asking you to burn everything down. We’re asking you to help us get our people out, and we get your brother out at the same time. That’s the whole deal."

Lucy’s eyes stayed on him, still working through it. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"What are you waiting for?" Rachel asked quietly from beside her, her voice gentler than Christopher’s. "You want your brother home. That hasn’t changed."

She really wanted Lucy to cooperate. From a look, Rachel could tell she wasn’t a bad person either, even more why she believed she could help them for the sake of everyone in Atlantic City.

"There are good people in Brigantine," Lucy said with a meaningful look.

Families. People she knew. People who weren’t Callighan, weren’t Gaspar, weren’t any part of the uglier machinery of things. People who had just ended up there, the same way people ended up everywhere these days, because it was the safest wall they could find.

"We don’t go after innocent people," Christopher said seriously. "We go in, we take our people back, we defend ourselves from whoever comes at us. That’s it. Nobody who isn’t a threat gets touched."

Lucy looked at him for a long moment.

Then she stepped back from the doorway and turned into the room.

"Come inside," she said.

Eveyrone sighed in relief hearing that.

Everyone except Sydney.

"Oh!" Sydney’s eyes went wide and delighted. She grabbed Christopher’s shoulder and shoved him forward with both hands. "Did you hear that, Chris? She asked you in! Go! Go! Come in!"

Christopher’s face contorted hearing that.

Mercifully, Cindy appeared at Sydney’s side, took her by the arm, and steered her back a step before she could do any further damage. Christopher straightened his vest, recovered whatever dignity remained, and stepped through the door after Rachel, who had the grace to pretend none of that had happened.

Cindy followed them in, pulling Sydney along behind her, whose grin remained completely, stubbornly intact.