(silence hung thickly in the air long past the tick of midnight. Cold seeped in through the cracks in the floorboards, like spectral hands reaching for flesh to close their vengeful fingers around. The house stood abandoned at the forgotten edges of the district of Mantle, a decrepit pile of wood and stone far from the opulence of Atlas proper.

In the cold and the silence, Emerald shuddered, her back against the wall, knees drawn to her chest. There was a dirty, frayed cot in the corner of the room, and in the murky half-light it looked almost inviting, but she could not bring herself to lie in it. She could not close her eyes. If she closed them, she would feel her heart thrumming, yelling at her that something was terribly wrong here – something terribly wrong was happening – and she needed to get up and get away.

Emerald didn't move an inch.

Just as she thought exhaustion might claim her, the screech of a door opening cut through the air. A moment later came the soft footfalls, followed by a faint drip-drip-drip on the floorboards. Emerald scrambled to her feet.

Cinder stopped in front of her, golden eyes shimmering in the dark. Those miniature infernos that so often held Emerald hostage, like they could burn her alive if she made the wrong move. But not always. Emerald lived for not always.

Emerald had never seen Cinder like that before, ashen faced and looking past her as if she weren't truly present. The drip-drip-drip persisted, and Emerald noticed with a jump that it came from Cinder's hands. Blood trickled down between raw knuckles, splashing around her feet like crimson raindrops.

Cinder's knives had been out when Emerald left her. Give me a moment alone with the good sergeant, she had told Emerald, and Emerald had been quick to leave and close the door for her, but not before she caught a final glimpse of their captive bound in the chair, bruised and barely clinging to consciousness.

"He's dead," Cinder said.

Her eyes wandered the room, unfocused, her lips parted as if there was something missing from that statement that she couldn't quite place. There was a tremble of vulnerability in her voice, and it scared Emerald as much as it excited her.

"What did he do to you?"

The distant look on Cinder's face vanished in an instant, her eyes pinning Emerald to the wall.

"Sorry," Emerald stammered. "It's not my business, I shouldn't have asked. I didn't mean to imply-"

Cinder cut her off. "That it was personal? Oh, Emerald, it was." She went silent for a moment, her chin quivering, before she schooled her face into the sharp, composed expression Emerald was far more familiar with. "Tonight was about making a point. And I'm not done yet. Far from it."

She looked around the room, and Emerald was relieved to be forgotten, if only for a second.

"Where's Mercury?"

"He said he needed some fresh air." As Cinder frowned, Emerald quickly added, "From the window, I guess. He's just in the other room. He's not that much of a dumbass."

"That remains to be seen," Cinder stated. She raised a hand to brush the hair from her eyes, but stopped halfway, holding it a distance as if only then realizing how bloody her fingers were. "Go fetch him. You two will take the body and dump it outside. And do brace yourself before you enter the room – I imagine you'll enjoy neither the smell nor the sight."

Between the order and that last statement, it took Emerald a good few seconds before she found her voice again. "Is there somewhere we should – somewhere in particular you want us to dump him – it?"

Her stomach felt like a bag of stones dropped into a river. She had never dumped a body before. The analogy felt fitting.

"You can drop him from a bridge into the middle of traffic, for all I care," Cinder said. "I don't much care if you are seen, either, so long as you don't draw any attention back my way. I'm quite tired after tonight's entertainment and I would rather not be bothered with untimely visits."

She turned her hand, scrutinizing her knuckles with a mild grimace. Her eyes were sharp, though, smoldering like embers before an explosion.

"My only stipulation is that you leave the dagger in his chest. Understood?"

Emerald nodded, and she didn't need to ask why as she watched the tip of Cinder's lips curl with a subtle viciousness. Cinder wanted them to find the body. The police, the Atlas army, Beacon. They would find the body and the evidence and the whole world would know it had been her who had killed the sergeant, and she didn't care one bit.

She was making a point, alright. It was terrifying, and it sickened Emerald to the bone, but she felt electrified by it. By Cinder's purpose. Since the moment they had met – since the moment Cinder had lifted her up by the hand, made her into something more than the gutter rat she had been for half her life – she had not been led astray. She trusted Cinder more than she trusted herself.

And yet, she hesitated.

"Something the matter, Emerald?"

Sometimes she was sure Cinder could read her thoughts before Emerald had even had them. She asked, in a small voice, "What about after?"

"What about after?" Cinder scoffed. "When you're done with your task, you'll return to me. We'll leave this frozen hell of a country – you and I, and Mercury I suppose – and then, we will be free to do whatever we please, wherever we please. Who could stop us?"

The words sparked memories. "No one."

"That's right. But even knowing that, you're still scared."

Cinder stepped closer. Emerald turned her face away, but suddenly Cinder's hand was touching her face, lifting her chin to draw her to look her in the eyes. Emerald felt the blood plastering her skin, Cinder's thumb tracing tender circles around her cheek, and shuddered.

"That's fine. What was my promise to you, Emerald?"

"That as long as I stick with you, I'll never go hungry," Emerald whispered. "And-"

"-that I will always keep you safe."

Cinder's eyes burned like a roaring inferno.

Cinder's eyes were warm like the home she'd never had)

she woke to the sight of the drab gray ceiling tiles of her sterile, hamster cage of a cell. Half her blanket had slipped down the side of her bed during the night, and Emerald was at once too hot and too cold. She glared at the ceiling, bracing herself for what came next.

The wake-up alarm caught her off guard anyway, rattling her to the core and making her teeth buzz. 'Wake-up alarm' her ass. She should hope that after three years of this same torture every morning, she would have grown used to it. But no. She still hated it. Hated this place.

Hated everything.

With a groan, Emerald pushed herself into a sitting position and rubbed the sleep off her eyes. Shitty night. She'd dreamed of something, or maybe it had been a nightmare – she couldn't have said what it had been about if someone put a gun to her head and told her to start talking.

In the past that wouldn't have been such a threat, but alas. This is where she was today.

She pulled at her suppressor collar and rubbed her neck under it. To top everything off, she had slept in a weird position, and now that was going to be sore for the rest of the day. The rest of the week, with her luck.

There was a familiar knock on the door, before it slid open just a second later. It wasn't nearly enough time for her to get decent, which she was sure was no accident from the pigs that ran the place. It had never been a problem for her – sleeping in the nude hadn't exactly been in the cards the way she had grown up, but that didn't mean she wasn't affronted by the indignity of it all.

"Lunch time," her escort for the morning said, lazily tapping his baton on the doorway.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Emerald grumbled, putting on her shoes and slipping off the bed.

She didn't bother to see who the guard was. For the first few months in this hellhole, she had tried to learn all she could about her wardens, in part as an effort to find any angles to ingratiate herself with them, but mostly because she wanted to remember them when the time came for her to exact her revenge. Nowadays, she couldn't be bothered anymore. Their faces all blended together anyway, and it took too much energy to pretend she was anything less than disgusted by them.

Emerald walked over with her hands low, stopping just short of the doorway. The guard took his baton and waved it over her neck, and Emerald flinched as she felt her collar tighten around it. Her Aura, already a pitiful thing a second before, diminished to such a point that she could barely feel it anymore.

She could still sense the contours of the guard's mind if she really focused, but anything more and she would be sorry for it. Emerald had learned the hard way not to push her boundaries that way.

"Go on, then." The guard poked her in the back with the baton as Emerald crossed the doorway. "I don't have all day."

"I'm walking," Emerald hissed. "Honestly."

He poked her again, and Emerald nearly pushed into his mind anyway. Turn his pants brown with an image of his grandma exploding into grisly pieces. A giant Grimm emerging under his feet and swallowing him whole. Something like that. It would almost be worth the splitting migraine.

Emerald swallowed her anger and kept walking.

The guard let her be when they reached the mess hall. As big as it was, the room felt as claustrophobic as the first day Emerald had set foot in it, with the way the tables were set up in the center, where all the inmates could all be watched by the guards in the perimeter.

In here, they figured Emerald didn't need personal supervision. She would make them realize their mistake one day.

The place seemed busier today. More people than usual. Emerald didn't give it much thought as she walked over to the serving table, accepting a plateful of soggy rice and mashed potatoes from the grumpy cook in charge. The food wasn't glamorous by any means, but it was plenty, and it was nutritious. It was the one thing in this place that she appreciated.

As she turned, Emerald's tray hit someone's broad chest and she nearly dropped it. She glared up at the man in front of her, some asshole with a bald head who she had never seen before, before she remembered herself and masked the revulsion behind a coy smile.

"Oh!" she said sweetly. "Excuse me, mister, so sorry about that. I'm so clumsy! Let me get out of your way."

He stared her down. "I know you."

"Do you? Hey, you look familiar too." She made a show of looking him up and down. "Wow, so many muscles!" Bile rose up her throat.

He scowled at her, and she recognized the look in his eyes from a hundred other people before him. Yeah. She wasn't going to stick around.

"Okay," she said, dropping the voice. "I don't know what you want with me, and I don't care. I'm gonna sit over there and eat this hazardous material."

She made to walk past him, but he grabbed her by the arm. Emerald stopped in her tracks. She could feel the stares of everyone in the room falling on them, conversations turning into whispers as tension filled the air.

"You're Cinder Fall's lackey," he said.

"Congratulations, you figured out my most precious secret," Emerald said coldly. "Now kindly take your hand off me before I show you some other secrets she taught me."

"You helped her." His fingers dug into her arm. "She turned the world into a hellhole with her Grimm, and you helped her."

Emerald rolled her eyes. "Let me guess. You lost your wife or your husband or your brother or whoever in Vale that day. I've heard it all before. You're not special."

"I lost my nephew. He wasn't even old enough to read."

For a moment, Emerald felt as if he had punched her in the stomach. She clenched her tray hard and glared at the man.

"And why are you here, then? I mean, we're not in the park. This is a Beacon maximum security facility." She tilted her head. "Did you go on a revenge spree against the world? Or maybe nothing matters anymore, and you've been doing all the heinous shit that you were holding back before. Good on you for making your family proud!"

His nostrils flared.

"I could find out, you know." Emerald smiled. "You'd be surprised how loose people's lips get when they're terrified out of their minds."

She watched him flinch, caught the tremble in his eyes as he asked himself if he had bit off more than he could chew. Emerald didn't break eye contact with him for an instant, even as her stomach rolled and revolted. He wasn't letting go.

This wasn't going to end the way she wanted, but she was not going to take the first punch.

"Woah, there!" Someone clapped behind her, making her jump. "Is that a good old inmate stand-off I spy? Who's taking bets?"

Emerald turned her head to glare at Mercury. He kept approaching without a care, his feet clanging on the floor even through his shoes. That usual shit-eating grin on his face was so annoying that Emerald almost forgot to be angry with the other idiot in front of her.

"No, seriously, though," Mercury said, stopping nearby. "You two are drawing the wrong kind of attention. Don't think this is the impression you wanna make on your first day, new guy."

He nodded at the guards standing around the room, watching like hawks – or vultures, more like. Emerald knew from experience they wouldn't step in until things got catastrophically bad.

"Yeah, new guy," Emerald said, putting on her sweet voice again, but never dropping her glare. "You wouldn't want to make a scene, right? Wouldn't end well for you."

Mercury tapped his fingers on his waist. "Emerald, play nice."

"I'll play nice when this asshole takes his hand off me."

The neanderthal hesitated for a moment longer, before he finally released her arm and stepped back. He still looked at her like he wanted to rip her guts out. Emerald scoffed at him. Good luck with that.

"Good. There we go. Now we can all part ways with no hard feelings," Mercury said. "Unless you have something you wanna say to me as well, new guy. Because if so, go right ahead." He smiled. "I'm not joking. We never get new people around these parts. Shit, I'll talk to you all day."

The worst part was Emerald knew he was being sincere.

"This isn't over," the new guy said, with all the big macho energy Emerald expected of him, before he stormed off.

"Yo, you forgot to get your food!" Mercury yelled after him. "Oh, well. Newbie's gotta learn." He turned to her. "What's up, Sustrai?"

She rolled her eyes at him and started walking to their usual table. "You're a moron." Regrettably, he followed her.

"That's a weird way to say thank you for coming to my rescue, Mercury, how can I ever repay you," he said, putting on a voice so shrill, Emerald's ear hurt.

"First, I didn't need you to rescue me," Emerald spat back, "and second, I don't sound like that."

"You mean you do, but the guy's gotta have muscles or else you're not interested."

Emerald sighed and plopped onto a bench, immediately taking a spoonful of mashed potatoes and shoving it in her mouth. Mercury, in his forever duty to drive her up a wall, sat across from her and put his feet up on the table. Emerald pushed them away with her elbow.

"When did I become the smooth talker, anyway, and you became the idiot who flies off the handle at the mildest trash-talk?" he asked.

"You're not a smooth talker, Mercury," Emerald said between bites. "Your brain just operates on the same level as all the numbskulls in this place, so you fit in easy."

"Sorry, could you repeat that sentence. My bean brain couldn't keep up with it."

Emerald ignored him. Half the time, that worked to get him to stop talking.

Her eyes wandered to the entrance of the cafeteria, then to the windows, through which she could see the courtyard and the other side of the facility. She was hoping to catch a glimpse of midnight hair and golden eyes, but Cinder wasn't there. She never was.

Emerald was halfway convinced they had moved her to another facility, but surely word would have reached Mercury then, and he in turn would have told her. Cinder couldn't be gone just like that.

She forced herself to look at her food again, moving the rice around with her spoon. "What's the deal with that guy, anyway?"

"No clue." Mercury shrugged. "Literally just got here today, and that's all I know. Why do you care?"

He wasn't even old enough to read.

"You're right," Emerald said, taking another bite. "You just helped me remember I don't care."

With all the audacity in the world, Mercury pulled her tray towards himself, and not stopping at that, he reached over and tried to steal her spoon as well. Emerald slapped his hand away and reclaimed her tray.

"Grab your own food, jerk!"

"I don't wanna get up," Mercury said, rubbing his wrist as if she'd actually hurt him. "You're vicious. I'd work on that if I were you. Attacking people isn't going to get you anywhere."

Oh, that was precious coming from him. "I'm not subscribing to your exemplary behaviorbullshit, Mercury."

"You can call it bullshit all you want, but in thirty years I'm gonna walk out those gates and I'll never look back," Mercury said. "You know what I'm thinking I'll do when I'm free? I'm gonna get a law degree. Or maybe I'll become a shoe shiner. Something in-between."

"I always pictured you as a circus clown," Emerald said. "You'd be the main attraction."

"Very funny. Meanwhile you'll be spending the rest of your days eating shitty food and befriending nice guys like Muscley Baldie over there." He ducked under the wad of rice she flicked at him. "Don't be pissy. If I'm wrong, what's your brilliant plan, then?"

She glared at him. He knew what her plan was.

"Right. We'll see how that works out for you."

Mercury sat up, looking at her with what she refused to believe was pity. What reason did he have to pity her? He was the delusional fool who thought playing the goody two-shoes was going to get him anywhere. As if he didn't have even more blood on his hands than she had.

He could dream all he wanted. Emerald would keep biding her time.

"When you're done with your potatoes," Mercury said after a while, "we've got courtyard time today. Wanna shoot some b-ball?"

Emerald looked up from her plate. "Are you seriously asking me to play basketball with you?"

"Yes, I am. It's called a recreational activity," he said, enunciating the last two words agonizingly slow. "I know just the sound of that makes you shriek like a grandma clutching her pearls, but I figured I'd ask just in case. Crazier things have happened."

Emerald refused to even consider the offer. "I don't do recreation."

"I know. Is it because no one will pick you for their team?" Mercury pouted. "Widdle Emerald got dumped by the other children in the playground?"

Emerald crossed her arms. She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.

"Look, I'll play with you. We don't need anyone else," Mercury said. "One-vee-one me, bro."

"Mercury, I'd rather lick the head warden's toes before I one-vee-one'd you, bro."

"Sounds like the kind of animosity that should be worked out on the court."

Emerald pushed her tray away and stood up.

"You know what? Fine. I'll play you." She smirked. "Just don't start crying when I mop the floor with you."

For the twelfth time, Emerald watched the ball hit the side of the hoop and bounce back at her. For the twelfth time, she yelped and threw herself to the floor, crawling away on her hands and knees.

She stopped when she realized half the courtyard was staring at her, derisive laughs filling the air. Big bad Sustrai was finally showing her true colors and everyone was loving it. Emerald rolled over and lifted herself on her elbows, blushing furiously.

Basketball was dumb.

Mercury stared down at her, holding the ball against his waist. "Holy shit. Are you even trying?" he asked. The way he looked at her, she might as well be an idiot toddler.

Emerald jumped to her feet, fists clenched. "It's not my fault your sport doesn't make any sense!"

"I'll bite. What part of it doesn't make sense, exactly?"

"For starters, why can't I just hold the ball in my hands? Why do I have to keep bouncing it like a hyperactive child with a muscle spasm?" Emerald questioned. "And what the hell even is a three-point line?"

"You're overcomplicating things," Mercury said, as if he expected nothing else. "Look, just shut up and forget all that stuff. All you gotta do is throw the ball inside the net. It's not that hard. Try it again."

He bounced the ball back to her, and Emerald nearly lost her balance catching it. With a dignified huff, she turned to face the board and visualized the shot in her head. She jumped, tossing the ball, and for a moment allowed herself to hope as she watched it soar through the air – only for it to hit the hoop again. At least it bounced away from her this time.

Mercury retrieved the ball and returned, bouncing it idly. "That's the spirit. Fifty more tries and I'm sure you'll get it in."

"Gee thanks, coach," Emerald muttered. "I remember now why I never take you up on these things."

"And here I thought it was because you know you can't resist the sight of me in short shorts."

Emerald didn't dignify that with an answer. He wasn't evenwearing short shorts.

"How is it even possible that you've never played basketball before?" Mercury asked, shaking his head at her. "My angel of a father spent every second of my childhood beating me into a pulp, and I still found the time to throw a ball here and there. What's your excuse?"

"My excuse, Mercury, is that I had better things to do."

"Like what? Digging in the trash for last week's leftovers?"

Emerald fixed him with a glare, and by some fluke of the universe, that seemed to get him to realize that he was being an asshole, as he stopped bouncing the ball.

"Get your ass over here," he said, beckoning her closer.

Emerald eyed him warily. "Why, so I can punch you in the face? Because I'll do it. I don't care about the solitary."

"I'm going to teach you how to shoot like you have a functional brain. You do have one, right?"

Emerald still suspected a trick, but she walked over anyway. He handed her the ball, and showed her how to hold it correctly, with her dominant hand at the bottom and the other at the side. She thought that would be it, but then he went on to explain how to aim her shots, how to bend her knees just right, and how to release the ball "like her arms weren't inflatable like those wacky gas station dudes."

Being tutored in the mechanics of basketball by Mercury Black was maybe the most humiliating experience in Emerald's life, and that was saying a lot. Still, she endured it, if only to wipe that smug look from his face.

When her throw actually landed inside the basket, Emerald nearly cried with joy. Someone clapped sarcastically from the other side of the courtyard, but Emerald couldn't give a shit as she spun and pointed her finger at Mercury's nose.

"Yes! Who's pathetic now, huh?"

"Definitely not the jackass who took five minutes to psych herself up to throw one fucking ball," Mercury replied dryly. "How about we play for real now, and we'll see if you can pull that off again."

"You're on, scrub!"

Emerald wasn't great with overconfidence. She did better, but she still missed more than half her shots, though she would have scored more if it weren't for Mercury constantly snatching the ball from her or jumping in the way to block.

It was the damn robo-legs. No wonder he loved this dumb game so much when he had such an unfair advantage. He scored ten times as many points as she did. At least she thought he did - how the points for this game worked remained a mystery to her.

Despite all that, she had to admit that she was enjoying herself. She would never say it out loud, obviously, because Mercury would never let her hear the end of it, but there was a physicality to the sport that was almost exhilarating..

The lack of exercise caught up to her fast. After just ten minutes, she was panting for air, sweat pouring down her neck and under her collar, where it pooled grossly. She stumbled to a halt, leaning on her knees to catch her breath.

"Good game," he said, after he'd dunked the ball one last time with totally unnecessary showmanship. "Well, not really. You got shown up by a cripple. But A for effort!"

Emerald huffed. "A for ass. Yours. I will kick."

"Wow." Mercury whistled. "You sit down for a bit while I go see if I can't get some water to cool down that brain of yours. We wouldn't want to lose such a gift to mankind."

Emerald snapped back at him with a retort so witty and devastating, he had no choice but to concede the last word and walk away.

She allowed herself to fall on her ass, releasing a huge breath and sucking in another one. Exhausted though she was, she couldn't help but smile. She felt silly for it, but maybe Mercury had a point about this being a better use of her time than wallowing all day and night in her cell. She certainly felt less miserable for it, even if it was momentary.

More importantly, this showed how out of shape she'd gotten in the last three years. She had grown complacent, lost sight somewhere along the way that her captivity here was not permanent, it was just a temporary setback. Something to endure. She could hear Cinder in her head, reprimanding her for her lack of foresight, but telling her that it was not too late to make this right.

Emerald would do that. She'd be ready for when the time was right.

Footsteps approached her from behind, and she turned her head to look over her shoulder. A moment too late she remembered to wipe the smile from her lips before Mercury could see it, and in that same instant she only had the time to think is that a fucking chair-

-before it slammed into the side of her head, splintering into a hundred pieces.

Emerald hit the floor, her skull bouncing on the concrete. Pain exploded behind her eyes and something dripped down her face, but adrenaline coursed through her veins, giving her the strength to crawl away before the next strike came. At the same time, she rolled and kicked out with her leg.

Her assailant dropped to one knee, clutching his ankle. Through the blurry veil that was her vision, Emerald saw his face and recognized the guy from the cafeteria. He had a metal bar in his hand – a piece of the shattered chair – but for the moment he wasn't moving. Asshole hadn't expected her to fight back so quick.

Emerald tried to push herself upright, but her legs buckled under her weight. She dropped back to the ground. The courtyard was dead silent, and it wasn't because she had been hit in the head. Angry faces danced at the edges of her vision, watching with perverse anticipation as she got her due.

Her attacker stood up. "Now you pay." He lunged at her, the metal bar coming down to spear through her eye.

Flinching, Emerald drew on her Aura. Her skin thrummed with power. She set her eyes on her enemy.

It was a crude thing, because she hadn't used her Semblance in years, and she was acting on instinct. He saw a dagger appear in the air between them and hover there for an instant, before it flew at his face, piercing the spot between his eyes. He hollered in agony, the metal bar clattering on the floor as he collapsed, clutching his face.

Emerald had no time at all to appreciate his screams before her collar whirred to life. Suddenly her nerves were on fire, her vision going out, the throbbing in her head so vast that it encompassed all of her as she was plunged into a lake of searing white pain, drowning, her mind fraying at the edges-

When Emerald came to, she was being dragged away from the courtyard, two guards holding her up by the arms. They passed by a dozen featureless faces before she recognized Mercury, staring at her aghast, holding a plastic cup.

Fury sparked a bonfire in her scattered psyche. Emerald started to draw on her Semblance again, before a new wave of nausea hit her and she blacked out once more.

Solitary.

The cell they tossed her into was somehow even smaller than her usual, the bed as hard as rock, the door never opening except for a slit through which her meals were delivered. It was too narrow an opening for any light to slip through.

Trapped in the dark, she only had the images in her own mind to sustain her. Combined with the anger she simmered in, this didn't prove a good recipe for her sanity. By the end of the third day – or was it the fourth, or was it the sixth? – she was convinced she had found a way to turn her Semblance onto herself. The pictures dancing in front of her eyes were too colorful to be anything less than real.

She pictured the shithead who had caught her unaware and landed her in this cell. She pictured Mercury, who hadn't moved a muscle to help her. She pictured the ridiculous little heroines who had taken them down in the first place. She pictured every stupid weasel who had stolen from her, hurt her, tormented her over the years.

The next time that door opened, she promised herself she would kill the first person she saw, she didn't care if had to fry her own brain to do it.

When they finally let her go, Emerald was too exhausted to do any such thing. Her head was killing her. She was escorted to the cafeteria in a daze, and then she was sitting in front of a tray of food, her stomach spinning at the sight of it.

"Rough."

She looked up, and the world came a bit more into focus. Mercury sat in front of her, eyeing her she was a coiled snake.

"Two weeks, I'm sure you're wondering," he said. "You should eat."

Emerald's hands rested heavily on the table. She didn't have any more energy to reach for the utensils than she had to be conversational with him.

"Alright then. More for me."

He reached for her tray. Emerald's hand snapped upwards, smacking his away.

"Don't touch my fucking food."

Mercury leaned back, raising his hands above his shoulders. Emerald began to eat. The food felt like gravel in her mouth.

He looked high-strung. Like he had something to say and was struggling on how to get it out. Emerald really wished he wouldn't. At the same time, she didn't think she could stand any more silence after the last several days.

"What about the guy?" she asked between bites.

"Same as you. Got tossed in solitary." Mercury paused. "Though he got out last week."

Emerald felt a piece of chicken get stuck in her throat. She forced it down the rest of the way, bending her plastic fork between her fingers. "He attacked me, and he was out first."

"Well, he doesn't have scary mind powers. Not that that's what's important."

He watched her face and huffed.

"You really don't get it," he said. "Emerald, whether you think it's fair you to get shit for it still, you did go along with Cinder's insane plan to ruin everyone's day for the rest of time."

"So did you!"

"But I don't go around staring at everyone like I want to mount their heads over my fireplace, do I?" Mercury said. "You're a nightmare, Emerald, no wonder people won't leave you alone. I've been trying to get this through your thick skull, but you won't listen."

"And why would I listen to you? You're an actual murderer," Emerald spat. "Daddy's little assassin-for-hire."

Mercury's eyes narrowed, and she took a perverse joy in knowing that she had struck him where it hurt most.

"Whatever. All you do is deflect and delude yourself. I'm done trying to help you."

"Help me?" Emerald scoffed. "Sure. Go away, then, never talk to me again. I'd like that. Except you won't, because for all your talk of being a good little harmless boy, people are still horrified by you. You'll come crawling back to me in no time."

Mercury stood up, and for a moment it really did look like he might leap over the table and attack her. Emerald braced herself to strike first.

"You're not worth it." He stepped back, smiling lopsidedly. "She really did a number on you. It would be sad if it weren't so pathetic."

Emerald's fists curled. "Shut up."

"Cinder's not gonna rescue you. You're stuck here, same as me." Mercury spun around. "Difference is, I'm not in denial about it."

He started walking away. Emerald glared at his back, slowly rising to her feet as well. She started to focus, all too aware of the bite of the collar around her neck. She officially didn't give a shit anymore. A month of solitary it was.

The lights in the cafeteria died without a sound. A second later, they came back on. Emerald staggered forward, leaning on the table as a familiar chill ran down her spine.

Grimm.

She looked up and saw Mercury staring back at her, his eyes wide and jaw slack. Emerald only had the time to give him the biggest shit-eating grin before the alarms started blaring.

A moment later, all hell broke loose.