[FYI to new readers, I always put the A/N at the end]

Reynie

It took them a few moments to register the fact that S.Q. Pedalian was, in fact, quite alive, and rather more discombobulated than usual, but Cleo – over-eager to prove herself, in Reynie's opinion – quickly took charge.

"Let's go," she said somewhat forcefully, herding them out of the van. Reynie found himself jostled next to Kate, who for some reason stared resolutely at the ground, twisting her fingers together and biting her lip.

"Are you alright?" he asked in concern.

"What? Oh – yeah – fine," she said quickly. There was a beat of silence, save for the crunch of their shoes on gravel, and then she asked, "What?"

"What?" Reynie shook his head, realizing too late that he'd been, well, staring at her. Not that he hadn't caught himself at this before, but normally this was from afar. "Nothing." They made eye contact for a split second, then both hurriedly looked away.

Kate, whose cheeks were turning slightly pink, sped up to the head of their straggly line and asked Cleo a question to which she shook her head. Constance came up next to him.

"I tried to read her, you know," she said seriously.

"Who?"

"That girl. Cleo, or whatever. I tried to get in, but… she was, I don't know, unreadable."

"What do you mean?"

Constance frowned. "It wasn't like I couldn't get in because I wasn't trying hard enough. It was just like… I got there, and there was a wall."

"Did she know you were trying to read her?"

"Well, I assume she did. It was a bit obvious – I mean, I attempted to hide it, but it's really hard to pretend not to be staring at someone when they're looking back at you."

"Isn't that the truth," muttered Reynie, thinking back to his interaction with Kate a moment before.

"And I'm sure she knows of my 'talent', or whatever," continued Constance, bobbing up and down as she walked, "since Mackenzie told her about it, but she didn't try to look away. It was like she was inviting me in, except then… there was nothing."

"What do you mean?" He felt redundant, but didn't know what else to say.

Constance uttered a sound of frustration. "I don't know how to explain it." She paused. Reynie waited patiently. "Remember when Curtain was using the Whisperer on us, and we kept trying to think of other things? At least, I did. I told myself to think of cabbages, and boring things: anything but the answer to the questions he was asking."

Reynie nodded. "But that wasn't how it was with Cleo?"

Constance shook her head, bemused. "Not at all. She looked at me, and gave me that sad smile she keeps giving Sticky and everybody, like she knew there was something there that I couldn't break through. She let me try. It was almost like she wanted me to succeed, but didn't expect me to, and wasn't disappointed when I couldn't." She took a deep breath, having released all this information at once. It was strangely exhausting, whenever words tumbled out of her mouth in a stream of miraculously coherent words. Mr. Benedict always told her that she would get used to it, but that sometimes her brain simply couldn't keep up with its own abilities.

Reynie's head was spinning. It was still unnerving to him when Constance spoke so eloquently; although he was no stranger to her precociousness, she did, after all, have the appearance of a disgruntled seven-year-old.

Much more pressing, however, was the content of what she'd just divulged to him. His contact with Cleo had been minimal at best, and what little he knew of her character was only thanks to Sticky's late-night monologues and verbal musings, which Reynie half-heartedly listened to while waiting for sleep to set in.

So Cleo had a wall up. It was a strange statement indeed. Of course, he thought, I suppose that everybody has a "wall" of sorts in their mind. That's what protects them from pain. That's what protected Constance from the truth about the first two years of her life. That's proof enough.

It made sense. Obviously, his curiosity was piqued, but he decided that the best course of action right now was probably not to dwell too much on it, at least until they were out of immediate danger.

Speaking of which, they were now turning onto a paved road with no one in sight. Cleo came to an abrupt halt.

"Do you know where we're going?" asked Sticky.

"Where are we?" said S.Q., blinking and rubbing his eyes as if he'd only just woken up.

"Yeah, not to state the obvious, but I don't recognize where we are," Kate added.

"Hold on," muttered Cleo, wracking her brains. She paced for ten seconds, then stood squarely in front of them. "Okay, this didn't occur to me until now." She faltered, then explained, "Mackenzie's been leaking information to me since we became friends. I guess she thought she was just making conversation with a future partner-in-crime, but I think we can use that to our advantage. This place" – she gestured to the vicinity, though all that was visible was a flat, smooth road that went on a bit before dipping into a hill – "is some sort of headquarters. If we sneak in, we might be able to get information on the people you're looking for."

Reynie was taken aback, as were the others. "Are you sure?" he asked warily. "This doesn't look very promising, and if the Ten Men catch up with us…"

"Yeah," agreed Sticky, "it could easily be a trap!" He began perspiring at the mere thought of it, and ran a hand over his brow.

S.Q. nodded fervently. "I thought the whole point of this was to get away from those men."

Cleo shrugged helplessly. "Look, it's our best bet. Because I don't know where to go from here."

"Constance?" asked Reynie. "What do you think?"

"Do you have, like, a feeling?" chimed in Sticky.

"Yeah, I'm hungry," grumbled Constance. "And this looks stupid."

"You seriously have nothing more to say on the matter?" said Sticky somewhat snappishly. He was still easily aggravated by the little girl. "Wow, that's just so enlightening, I –"

Glaring at him, Constance rolled her eyes and said, "Well, I can tell you that Cleo's telling the truth. She's right."

"What do you mean?" asked Reynie quickly, for the third time and feeling rather foolish.

Cleo gave a thin smile. "I'm telling the truth. This is the place. If we go, we probably risk a lot, but if we don't, we're probably giving up. It's your choice."

Kate rubbed her hands together, grinning. "So we're talking breaking into top secret bad guy headquarters, maybe roughing up a few Ten Men while we're at it, hacking into computers and getting ahold of data in an illegal manner, all to find our friends?"

"And risking our lives in the process," Reynie reminded her, those bizarre new protective instincts kicking in, even though he knew that the last person to need protection was Kate Wetherall. It was confusing, but he was sure of one thing: if Kate got hurt, he'd throw himself in front of a bus if it meant he had a chance of saving her.

Which was somewhat humiliating, because why in the world would she ever want that?

Kate, thankfully unaware of these thoughts, beamed at him. "Exactly," she said. "I'm in."

A/N:

Yes, I know my author's notes are probably just as long as the chapter, and I'm sorry if that's misleading, but I'm a person who constantly likes to have discussions, and I like talking to you guys about what I'm writing. But if this is annoying to you, feel free to X out now. :)

I hope you liked this chapter! Shoot me a review and tell me what you think/what you want to see next! I really do try to incorporate all of you faithful fans' ideas into my fic.

I tried to take what somebody requested – that I delve a bit into Cleo's character – into account, but since I'd promised that this chapter would be Reynie POV, I had to slip it into his conversation with Constance instead of getting inside her head.

And I have a question! I know this isn't story-related, but I was talking to one of my awesome reviewers about this. We were saying that basically it would be great if MBS was made into a movie, like HP, but then it might ruin the spirit of our smaller fandom, since it would broaden the spectrum to include fans of the movies. Anyway, we got into the subject of casting, and I definitely have a casting list of who I'd like to play the various characters, so I was thinking, if any of you were curious about that, I could share it somehow, and then you guys could tell me who you'd choose. Of course, I don't want to break any rules, so don't yell at me for this. Just trying to make this more interactive. :) Let me know in the review section.

Thank you so much for all of the reviews I've been getting! Honestly, it means a lot, even and especially the ones I get yelling POST POST POST. It makes me feel so happy inside.

I figured since most of you are Guest reviewers, I'd try to respond to your reviews here, at least some of them. So. *scrolls through reviews*

VeeAmAy: Yay! A solid review. This made me smile. I did wrestle a bit while trying to figure out how I wanted Reynie's character to be, but decided ultimately that he would have changed at least a little bit, and probably most out of the MBS, because while he is far from average, I've always felt that he would be most "normal" if he was placed in a high school scene – the least socially awkward of the four, if that makes sense. I appreciate your comment, though, and I also think that I intended to portray the girls "liking" him as in, OMG FRESH MEAT GIMME, and they don't care much. He's not unattractive, and I come from a small high school in a small town, so most girls go crazy over new guys until the novelty wears off. This makes the fact that Sophie legitimately likes him remarkable and reflects on her character.

Anonymous: First of all, thank you very much. Constance is around 7 years old, this being about 4 years after the first/second book, in which she was 2/3, Reynie was 11, Kate was 12, etc. As for the rating, I'm actually not sure – since it was a Kaynie fic to begin with I think it made it T as a precaution. Not that anything I write will be at all smutty or anything, but if you have a problem with romance/kissing scenes I wouldn't want someone to get upset or anything. Just being paranoid.

And I'd like to just give a quick thank you to StarbustAwesomeness and FictionStar24, because you guys are awesome and never fail to post reviews shortly after I update. 3