The Woman in Question, Part 2

The room had started to fracture into its smaller orbits, post-hug, but Laura couldn’t shake the sense that someone was focused on her. Not physically, not the way Riley’s gaze burned through skin, but the kind of awareness that crept up the back of your neck, ancient and animal. She glanced toward the far corner, to a slice of wall between two ferns, and there was Myra: straight-backed, chin up, not so much watching as waiting. The cane was propped against her thigh, one hand splayed over the curve of her own fox tail, the other wrapped around her wrist as if holding herself together. Even blind, Myra knew she’d been seen. Her head turned a degree, sightless green eyes, ringed with brown, trained with unsettling precision on the spot where Laura stood.

Maybe it was the stillness. Maybe it was the way everyone else in the room seemed to move around Myra like she was a load-bearing pillar. Whatever it was, Laura could not pretend she didn’t feel the gravity well opening up around the woman.

It would have been easy to ignore it. Pretend the past was dead and buried, go make small talk with Dawn, hide behind a mug of tea until the ceremony began. But Laura was done pretending. If the world wanted to put her on display, she could at least pick her own firing squad.

She cut across the tile, not fast, not reckless, but deliberate. She stopped a pace away—close enough for privacy, not so close as to risk accidental touch. Myra’s mouth twitched, but she held her ground.

“Myra. You’re the one who made me go to the bridge,” Laura said, skipping pleasantries. The words came out clipped, a little hoarse. “I thought I went because of Chloe, or Andy, but really, it was you.”

Myra nodded once. “I know,” she said, voice a rasp, barely audible. “I’ve known since I arrived here.”

Laura waited. She wanted Myra to squirm, to beg for forgiveness, to offer something that made the whole thing less jagged. But Myra just stood there, upright as a flagpole, waiting for sentence.

“Why?” Laura said. It came out colder than she intended.

Myra worked her jaw, as if the answer might materialize on her tongue. “I didn’t want you to die,” she said finally. “But I didn’t want to lose, either. You were angry at me, and I was hurting, and and I couldn’t stand it, so I lied to you. I told you Andy and Chloe were together because I wanted you to hurt. I thought it would make you mad, not kill you.”

Laura felt the old anger surge, but she pressed it down, made herself look at the woman Myra had become. “You called me a freak. You said no one would ever love me if they knew what I was.”

Myra flinched, but didn’t back away. “I said it,” she admitted. “I thought maybe if I made you mad enough at me, I’d win for once.” Her hands twisted around the cane, knuckles pale. “I was thirteen. That doesn’t make it better. I just—” She trailed off, like she’d run out of words.

Laura’s hands balled into fists. She wanted to scream, to slap, to do something that would make Myra react. But the woman stood with her chin up and her jaw locked, refusing even the mercy of looking away.

“Did you ever tell anyone?” Laura asked. “What you did?”

Myra shook her head. “Not until I came here. I didn’t even know how my lies hurt you, not until Andy found out.” She grimaced. “I thought he’d hate me. He didn’t.”

Laura wanted to laugh, bitterly. “He always forgives people.”

“It’s not just forgiveness,” Myra said. “He just refuses to waste energy hating anyone.” She tilted her head, as if listening for something in the air. “You’re not going to ask me to leave, are you?”

It took Laura a second to process that. “Why would you stay?” she asked. “After everything?”

Myra’s mouth worked, as if the answer were physically painful. “Because Andy asked me to,” she said finally. “Because he said I am no longer that girl. Because I believe I could be better, if I wanted. Because I want to try.”

Laura felt something flicker in her chest—resentment, pity, the urge to grant absolution just to be rid of the conversation. She didn’t move, didn’t let herself react. “And if I asked you to go?”

Myra exhaled, shoulders dropping fractionally. “I’d go,” she said, “but I’d come back. Eventually. I don’t know how to stop wanting to be here.”

Laura stared at her, really looked. The blindness hadn’t changed Myra’s posture—she was still in control—but there was a crack running through the middle of her. The old haughtiness was gone, replaced by something softer, but also something harder to kill. "What do you want?" She asked, harsher than she wanted.

Myra didn’t hesitate. “To feel accepted,” she said. “To not be a monster anymore. Maybe to be loved, if that’s not too much to ask.” She grimaced. “I know it is.”

Laura almost laughed. “You think Andy’s going to fall for you?”

A flush crept up Myra’s neck, but she held her ground. “I don’t expect him to. I just—I want to try. I want to be the person he thinks I can be.”

Laura’s fists unclenched, but she didn’t soften. “You have no idea what you did to me.”

Myra nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. Even though I know it changes nothing.”

They stood in silence. The world moved around them, voices rising and falling, but in the little pocket of air between them, nothing shifted. Laura felt her anger twist within her. She couldn’t look at Myra anymore.

She could have ended it there, but something stubborn kept her rooted. “If you hurt him,” she said, the threat obvious, “I’ll come for you.”

Myra’s lips twitched, the first sign of real emotion. “You already did,” she said.

Laura almost smiled. Almost. Instead, she turned on her heel and walked away, back into the swirl of laughter and voices, leaving Myra standing alone, chin up, eyes fixed on nothing.

She didn’t forgive. She didn’t forget. And she didn’t pretend this was over—only that she was done speaking for now.

By the time Laura made it back to the long table, the social current had shifted. She might have been the object of fascination, but she wasn’t the center—at least, not the way she’d been before. The others orbited in and out, sometimes two or three at once, each bringing their own gravity. It was less an interrogation than a rolling scrum, the kind of cross-examination that came not from malice, but from **** curiosity.

Sam presided over the chaos like a benevolent referee, always just loud enough to keep the tempo moving, quick with a deflection any time a question veered too close to the edge. She made a joke about The HH’s lack of phones (nobody laughed), followed it up with a story about Andy’s “tragically bad” karaoke, and then, sensing the opening, began circulating everyone’s “most embarrassing moment” as a conversation starter. When the answers came—Dawn admitted to peeing herself at a spelling bee, Norah confessed to calling a boss ‘mom’ in her first week—Sam let the laughter build, then gently pulled the attention back to Laura, who somehow became the judge, the audience, and the next confession all at once.

Norah watched everything from her spot at the edge of the table, legs crossed, hands folded, an archivist taking notes. She rarely spoke, but when she did, her words cut straight to the marrow.

“You don’t have to answer anything,” Norah said at one point, looking Laura dead in the eye. “If you want to be a black box, that’s your right.”

It was meant as an olive branch, but it felt like a dare. Laura nodded, choosing not to respond, and was rewarded with the faintest hint of a smile from the woman.

Marissa drifted in and out, never sitting, always near enough to step in when things got tense. She had the manner of someone who’d spent years defusing arguments, her voice gentle even when her eyes said she was cataloguing every emotional spike at the table.

When Dawn, in her earnestness, started to ask what being dead “felt like,” Marissa intercepted, placing a warm hand on Laura’s shoulder and steering the conversation sideways: “It’s probably not that different from being the only sober one at a bachelorette party,” she said, earning a round of knowing groans from the table.

Dawn, cheeks pink and ears drooping, retreated to the kitchen, only to return seconds later with a mug of tea for Laura, another for herself, and a cinnamon scone that she set down with a hopeful, “They’re best warm.” The offer hung there, sweet and fragile, and for a second Laura wanted to hug the girl just to keep her from disappearing in the wash of personalities.

Liesa lingered in Sam’s shadow, an observer by instinct. She didn’t speak until the table had thinned and only a few women remained. When she did, it was so soft Laura barely caught it: “I was not sure you would be so real,” Liesa said. “But you are.” She offered a half-smile, then ducked away, as if embarrassed by her own candor.

Near the far end of the table, Chloe had retreated to the safety of Emily’s side. It took a minute for Laura to piece together the dynamic there: Emily’s hair fell in glossy, artful sheets, perfectly obscuring any hint of nudity. She sat with one leg tucked under her, and though she was quiet, her eyes tracked every movement, every voice. There was a nervous energy to her, but also a defiant steadiness—like a street cat that had learned, after a thousand close calls, to watch and wait.

Laura tried to look away, but found herself caught by Emily’s gaze. For a moment, neither blinked. Laura expected to see fear, or even pity, but what she got was something closer to challenge. Emily raised her chin, meeting the stare head-on, and only after several seconds did she look away, blushing but not cowed. The exchange made Laura oddly proud.

Emi was never more than a step away, a subtle anchor in the turbulence. Whenever conversation flagged, Emi would find a way to break the silence, sometimes with a memory (“Remember when we tried to make cookies and you dropped half the batter on the dog?”), sometimes with a new question (“Have you seen the ocean here? It’s so blue it almost hurts.”). Emi’s presence calmed the room, smoothing the social friction with a kind of deliberate effortlessness.

Even so, the questions came. Some sharp, some earnest, all of them underscored by the need to make sense of Laura.

“What do you want to do, now that you’re here?” Dawn asked, tone guileless.

“Do you have any memories of the last sixteen years, or is it just blank?” Marissa, clinical but not unkind.

“Does it feel like you missed something, or do you just skip to the next chapter?” Norah, of course.

Sam kept the worst at bay, but even she couldn’t prevent the occasional misfire. Laura answered what she could, deflected what she didn’t want to touch. The more she spoke, the more she felt the room shift: the others stopped seeing her as a threat, or a ghost, or a myth, and started to see her as a person—a woman trying, like the rest of them, to survive a reality that made no damn sense.

Riley had retreated to the perimeter again, arms folded, one boot braced against the wall, but her gaze tracked Laura with the intensity of a sniper. Every so often, when someone else spoke too loudly, or when the laughter cut a little sharp, Laura would see Riley’s eyes narrow, as if ready to intervene. It was protection, but not ownership. It felt almost… respectful.

Chloe watched, too, but her posture had changed. She was no longer hunched, no longer shrinking into Emily’s shadow. Instead, she seemed lighter, almost as if the earlier exchange had scraped away the old guilt and left her with something raw but alive. She caught Laura’s eye once, and the look they shared was complicated.

The sound of the door was nothing, just a pressure change and a click, but every person in the room felt it. Erin and Claire slipped through, the latter almost behind the former, and for a heartbeat the entire table went still, the way an orchestra pauses when the conductor raises the baton.

Erin’s mint-green skin looked almost sickly under the dining room lights, and her expression was so tight Laura thought it might snap. Claire’s body language was the opposite—shoulders drawn in, tail curled neatly around her ankle, eyes fixed on a spot just past the window. The effect was a neat inversion: one daring the world to challenge her, the other so determined not to make waves she might as well have been furniture.

Sam, sensing the mood, called over, “You find him?”—the him so obvious it needed no antecedent.

Erin shook her head, her voice flat. “Mildred said he was with Arabella.” She looked at the assembled faces, jaw flexing. “Apparently it’s official business. Not optional.”

Sam gave a low whistle. "Damn. Maybe he's getting his next mission briefing."

Laura's hand lifted, index finger extending toward the eastern side of the building, without even looking. "He's that way. Not far, maybe about fifty yards or so." She blinked, seeming to realize what she'd done only after several women stared at her with varying degrees of surprise and unease.

"You can... sense him?" Erin's voice had gone flat.

Laura shrugged, bashfully. "Sorry. I've always known where he is. Even before... everything. When we were kids, I could tell when he was sad, or hurt. He could do the same with me."

Claire's face went carefully blank. She drifted to the far side of the room and stood by the window, one hand reaching for her notebook before falling limply to her side. Erin's mint-green skin darkened a shade, her jaw visibly tightening.

For a moment nobody knew what to do. It was Emi who broke the freeze—she leaned in, squeezed Laura’s hand, and didn’t let go until Laura looked over. The gesture was so familiar, so uncalculated, it cut through the awkwardness and reset the air in the room.

Laura tried to read the new dynamic. Erin looked like she wanted to fight someone, or at least punch a wall, but didn’t know which wall would fight back. Claire looked like she might disappear if anyone spoke her name too loudly. The rest of the women watched, waiting for a signal—maybe from Laura, maybe from the universe.

She thought back to Andy, to the way he’d described his life after the bridge. How, after she died, he’d spent years drifting, letting other people fill in the holes left behind. He’d said that he’d never stopped loving her, but that he’d learned to love the others, too, in ways that weren’t second-best or consolation prizes, but real and whole and separate from the old story.

Sitting there, with Emi’s hand tight around hers and a tableful of women poised on the edge of something, Laura understood, for the first time, the reality of it. The jealousy was real, but so was the knowledge that she’d been gone, and that Andy had needed someone to build a life with, even if it wasn’t the one he’d planned. She could hate it, or she could live with it. But she couldn’t change it.

She turned to Emi, and let the hand-squeeze become an anchor. “I’m okay,” she said, and meant it.

Across the room, Sam caught the exchange, and nodded once, as if to mark the conclusion of a round.

It was inevitable, the confrontation. The room had arranged itself for it without any of the participants having to move. Erin stood rigid at the end of the table, feet planted, arms crossed, eyes on Laura. Claire, just behind her, looked down, as if staring through the floor. Even the background chatter faded, the other women drifting to the edges of the room in anticipation of impact.

Laura took a breath, let it out slow, stomped down the emotions that tried to rear their heads inside her, and met Erin’s gaze head-on. She didn’t try to out-stare her; that was pointless. Instead, she let the anger drain from her face and replaced it with something closer to curiosity, or maybe just resignation.

“I don’t blame you,” Laura said, finally. “For wanting to protect him. For being angry I’m here.”

Erin blinked, caught off guard. The corners of her mouth twitched, like she wanted to argue, but the words stuck. Her posture shifted, just enough to notice—a fraction less combative, a degree more uncertain.

“I’m not angry you’re here,” Erin said, her voice low and tight. “I’m just… I don’t know how to do this. Andy never told me what it would be like. I thought if you came back, he’d have to choose.”

“He doesn’t have to,” Laura said. She hesitated, then added, more carefully: “At least… I’m not asking him to. I don’t know what I’m asking for yet.”

There was a pause. In it, Claire shuffled closer, the movement silent but deliberate, and pulled her notebook from her sleeve. She wrote something in a fast, slanted script, then turned it so Laura could read:

I know you see us as a threat. It’s okay. You’re afraid you’ll lose him to us. But we don’t want to take him from you. We just want to be part of the story, too.

Laura stared at the words, something cold and hot at the same time running through her. She looked up at Claire, who held the notebook too steadily, as if the act of holding it were easier than gauging whether the words had landed correctly. For the first time, Laura saw the fear behind the composure—not theatrical, not dramatic, but precise and quietly overwhelming.

Laura didn’t answer right away. Instead, she closed her eyes, thought about the river, the last thing she’d ever felt. She’d carried that wound back with her, carried it every second since, and now she could see its outline echoed in them, even if the details didn’t match.

She opened her eyes and said, “I get why you’d think that. But you need to understand—when I look at you, I don’t see a threat. I see the life Andy built after me. And that hurts.”

Claire wrote again, quick, and held it up: I don’t hate you, either. I don’t know what I’m allowed to want yet. But I don’t want us to stop talking.

The words hit harder than anything else in the room had.

Laura felt them settle, heavy but not sharp. She nodded once. “That… I can do.”

There was a movement—Erin shifting her weight from one foot to the other, rolling her shoulders. Not quite a retreat, but a lowering of shields. Her voice was different now, quieter but edged. “Look, you have every right to hate me. If it was reversed, I’d probably hate you, too. I spent six years trying to get over Andy, and then when I saw him again, I realized I never had.” She cast a sideways glance at Claire, who didn’t flinch. “I spent nearly a round of this game thinking she”—Erin jerked her chin at Claire—“was the only real competition. We argued about it, until Sam told us to cut the shit or else she’d lock us in the sauna until we worked it out. I don’t think we ever did, really.”

Erin uncrossed her arms, flexing her hands open and closed. “But after a while, I realized it didn’t matter. I want Andy, no matter how many people I have to share him with. I want him even if it means living with the ghost of you. That’s just how it is.”

She met Laura’s gaze, chin up. There was no apology in her posture, only the brutal honesty that had always defined her. “So if you’re looking for a reason to pick a fight, I’m not backing down.”

Laura felt the words like a slap, but also like a challenge. Part of her wanted to rage, to throw the unfairness of it all in Erin’s face, but another part—quieter, older—recognized the truth. She’d been gone. Andy had needed someone to love, and the world had kept turning, whether she liked it or not.

She held Erin’s gaze, then let it slide briefly to Claire, before returning it without flinching. “I’m not here to scare you off,” Laura said. “And I’m not here to pretend I don’t matter, either.”

The room stilled around her.

“I know what Andy feels for me,” she went on, voice firm, stating a fact. “That was never in question. And I know what my absence did to him. That doesn’t disappear just because I’m alive again.”

She looked between them. “But I also know he didn’t know I was coming back. He made choices in the dark. And whatever you gave him when I was gone—” Her jaw tightened. “—he needed it. Even if it hurts to admit that.” A beat. “So no, I’m not looking for a fight. I’m figuring out what this is now — with me alive, and present, and where I belong. But Andy and I are not going to be apart.”

A rustle from the corner. Norah, the silent judge, gave a single slow nod. From across the room, Marissa offered a soft, encouraging smile. Sam, leaning against the kitchen counter, didn’t smile at all—but she didn’t intervene, either.

Claire wrote again, slower this time, as if the act of writing were itself an act of gentling the emotion:

We don’t have to agree. Not yet, at least. We just have to keep talking before we start assuming.

Laura read it carefully, jaw tightening. “Yes. That.”

They stood in that new silence—not peaceful, not hostile. Deliberate.

Erin broke it first. “So what happens now?”

Laura exhaled, measured. “Now?” She lifted her chin slightly. “Now I stop pretending this is something I can solve in one conversation. But I’m not going anywhere.”

Claire gave a small, awkward shrug, notebook pressed to her chest.

There was an odd steadiness in that.

The tension didn’t disappear, but it changed—no longer a blade, but a taut line. Pulled tight. Capable of cutting if mishandled, but holding for now.

The rest of the women slowly drifted back, the room exhaling as if allowed to breathe again. Dawn brought Laura another cup of tea, this time with extra sugar. Marissa offered a second scone. Chloe nodded once in passing, cautious but respectful.

From the corner, Riley watched, unreadable, but when Laura caught her eye, she nodded once.

Laura sat, hands wrapped around the mug, and let herself exist in the moment—not safe, not settled, but at least rooted.

She glanced at Erin, now speaking quietly with Sam, and at Claire, who was scribbling in her notebook but kept glancing up every few seconds, as if confirming that the line she’d opened was still live.

Laura sipped her tea and let the fragile, unfinished thing between them hold—because she intended to see it through.

The rest of the morning passed in a series of cautious negotiations. The conversation flowed in fits and starts, each new topic a test of the boundaries, a probe for old bruises. Sometimes it was easy—when Emily told a story about being caught naked by a delivery man, or when Riley did a dead-on impression of Andy’s “customer service voice.” Sometimes it wasn’t—when the topic drifted to the outside world, to families left behind, to what might be waiting for them if they ever left this place.

Laura watched it all, a participant and an observer. She wasn’t the center anymore, but she was something else: an anchor, maybe, or a lodestone. The others treated her with a strange mix of caution and deference, as if unsure whether she might shatter or explode at any moment.

She preferred it to pity.

When the knock came—a sharp, official sound—it was Sam who answered, swinging the door open with a flourish.

Arabella stood on the other side, resplendent as always, her white dress so pristine it hurt to look at. She smiled, not her Host smile but something softer, more like the warmth of a cat finding a sunbeam.

“Ladies,” Arabella said, “the time has come.”

The words fell with finality. All at once, the room stood, chairs scraping back in unison, and the Contestants began to gather their things. Dawn smoothed her ears, Liesa retied her braid, Riley shrugged on a jacket with a practiced twist. Claire closed her notebook and tucked it under her arm, shooting Laura a last, searching look before falling in behind the others.

Erin was the last to move. She lingered at the window for a second, staring out at the ocean, before turning to Laura. “You coming?” she asked.

Laura nodded. “Yeah. I think I am.”

Erin didn’t smile, but her face had lost some of its sharpness. She jerked her chin toward the door, then led the way out.

The hallway was brighter than before, the sunlight harsh and surgical as it bounced off the tile. The women filed down the corridor, silent except for the soft padding of bare feet and the occasional squeak of a rubber sole. Arabella walked ahead, her stride slow enough to let them follow, but not so slow as to invite conversation.

As they passed the lounge, Myra was waiting, cane in hand. She stood as they approached, her fox tail curled protectively around her legs.

Laura paused as she drew alongside. Myra tilted her head, ears up, as if expecting a message.

“I don’t hate you,” Laura said, soft enough that only Myra would hear.

Myra’s lips quirked, the barest ghost of a smile. “Thank you,” she said.

They walked on together, and for the first time, the air between them felt breathable.

At the end of the hallway, the door to the outside stood open, the breeze rolling in warm and heavy with salt. Beyond it, the gazebo gleamed in the light, stark against the blue of the sky.

Arabella waited at the threshold, letting each woman pass, her eyes bright and unreadable.

When Laura reached her, she stopped, unsure what was expected.

Arabella leaned in, her voice barely more than a whisper. “You did well, Laura.”

Laura blinked, caught off guard by the praise. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

Arabella smiled. “The best things never do.”

She straightened, raised her voice so the whole group could hear. “Contestants. Let’s not keep our Master waiting.”

The walkway was dappled in blinding sun and cold shadow, each footfall raising the scent of old seawater and trampled grass. The women walked single-file at first, then bunched together as the path narrowed, none wanting to be first but none content to drift behind. At the head, Arabella walked with a subtle tension in her shoulders—not the Host’s parade-float confidence, but the wary gait of someone leading a flock across thin ice.

Behind her, the Contestants fell into loose pairs: Liesa and Sam whispering in tight formation, Dawn and Marissa moving with measured caution, Norah and Riley in their own silent orbit, and finally Laura, bracketed by Erin and Claire. Emi, Chloe, Emily, and Myra trailed at the rear, forming a protective knot that seemed to absorb the stragglers, keeping them from being picked off by whatever might wait ahead.

They crossed the courtyard and emerged onto the wide flagstones that rimmed the beach. The gazebo loomed before them, white as a wedding cake, columns glaring in the daylight. The Throne—Andy’s seat—stood at the far end, a shape in shadow. For a moment, Laura wondered if Andy would be there waiting, but the chair was empty, only the outline of him burned into her memory.

Arabella stopped at the base of the steps, then turned, her face bright but hard as frost. “Contestants,” she said, voice ringing out. “The time has come to reveal the results of the challenge. Please make yourselves comfortable. The Master will arrive presently.”

Nobody argued. Dawn was the first up the steps, moving with the practiced speed of someone who always lost the game of musical chairs. The others followed, filling in the ring of stools that rimmed the platform. Sam stood at the rail for a moment, scanning the horizon, then turned and caught Laura’s gaze.

Laura braced, expecting a pep talk, or maybe a warning. What she got was Sam’s hand closing around her wrist, warm and steady. The grip was firm but not possessive—a transfer of energy, not ownership.

“Come with me a sec?” Sam murmured, already steering her away from the others.

They stepped into the shade beneath the eaves, out of earshot. For a few heartbeats, neither spoke. The surf behind them was louder here, the hush between waves as present as the water itself.

Sam let go of Laura’s wrist and leaned back against the pillar, arms folded. She took a deep breath, as if preparing to dive under. “You did good in there,” she said, nodding back toward the main building.

Laura snorted. “Did I? Didn’t feel like it.”

Sam’s mouth twitched. “That’s how you know it matters. If it was easy, it’d be bullshit.” She rocked on her heels, thinking. “Look, what you just did with Erin and Claire? That takes guts. Most people, they just go with jealousy. It’s like, ninety-nine percent of the time, the only move anyone ever makes.” She shrugged, casual. “But you looked it in the eye. Admitted it. Tried to do better, even while you were still pissed. That’s the difference between being a kid and being an adult, far as I can tell.”

Laura didn’t know what to say to that. She glanced at her hands, then at the white-bleached wood beneath her feet. “I don’t know that it’ll hold. It doesn’t feel grown-up. It just feels… hard.”

Sam nodded. “Exactly. That’s the trick nobody tells you. It never stops feeling hard. The only thing that changes is you get better at not letting it wreck you.”

She paused, brow creasing. “The road ahead? It’s going to suck, sometimes. You’re going to want to punch Andy, or cry, or burn this whole place down, a hundred times before you figure out what you want. You might even want to run away.” She tipped her head, smiling with one side of her mouth. “Hell, I still think about it every other day. But if you keep showing up—even when it sucks—you’ll figure out how to make this work. For you, for Andy, for the rest of us.”

There was a lump in Laura’s throat, sudden and unwelcome. “I promised Andy I’d try,” she said, voice almost breaking. “And I promised Emi that I’d be better. For him.”

Sam’s face softened, all the old bravado melting off. “That’s how it always starts,” she said, almost a whisper. “You do it for him. Or for someone else. But pretty soon, you look around, and you’re doing it for yourself. That’s when it gets real.”

Laura bit her lip. “What if I’m not ready for it to get real?”

Sam laughed, warm and without pity. “Nobody is. Not even Andy, if we’re being honest. He’s just better at faking it.” She reached out, squeezed Laura’s shoulder, and let her hand linger for a second. “But you’re doing better than you think. Even when it feels like you’re barely keeping your head above water.”

The words hung between them, heavy with more meaning than the moment seemed able to hold.

Sam pushed off the pillar and straightened, giving Laura one last once-over. “You ready?”

Laura nodded, though she wasn’t sure it was true.

Sam grinned, sharp and sure. “Let’s go, then. The drama waits for no one.”

They walked back together, falling in with the others. The sun was higher now, the heat turning the gazebo into an oven, but nobody seemed to mind. Around the ring, the women sat in their own private silences, each one preparing for the verdict in her own way.

Laura took her place between Emi and Riley, the former giving her a shy, six-armed hug, the latter offering nothing but a respectful nod.

Claire was already there, notebook open, pen poised but not moving. Erin sat a few seats down, arms braced on her knees, the set of her jaw less brittle than before. She caught Laura’s eye and didn’t look away.

Andy hesitated, emerging from the sunroom after the women had left the building. He had needed some time to digest Arabella's conversation. Lately, he felt more and more that there were layers to her conversations he was only just beginning to sense, as if she were trying to teach or tell him something she could never phrase directly.

He wondered if it was because of the rules, or the Producers, or simply because she didn't think he was ready.

But some of her advice, he'd follow. He walked up to the Commissary, turned the screen on, and considered. He thought of Mark's letter, the advice to use his Gifts much more than he had done so far. Console, Coauthor, and all the others. Andy mistrusted unearned power, especially this degree of power. It would be too easy to go down a slippery slope, and before he knew it, find himself changing the women to suit his desires. That, he suspected, was the road Abi-Eshu had taken. He could, perhaps, help in minor ways. But he had to admit, the temptation of changing things he knew could be issues (Laura's jealousy, for example) was strong.

Two things held him back. Consent was one of them. The other was more nebulous. Did he have the right to deny any of the women the opportunity to work on herself and improve herself? The struggle, the satisfaction, and the earning of that change? Would he have wanted someone to change him in fundamental ways, even for the flaws he possessed? It felt like cheating.

He looked at the smartwatch. He had not mentioned the wealth of cheat codes he now possessed, or what he could do with them. To be honest, it boggled his mind. Creating objects out of thin air, swapping Paths, summoning attribute screens for each Contestant with sliders to adjust nearly everything about them, giving them specific kinks, learning new skills, having premonitions of the future, changing a Contestant's status like he had done with Katherine... So much power, and he sensed that Console wasn't even fully upgraded yet.

He looked at the screen, and at the options he could pick from. To his surprise, there was a new upgrade for Command, among other things. When he read the description, he froze.

Command (Capstone): The Master's Commands work on nature itself. Should the Master order the sea to stand still, it will do so. Should the Master order the winds to blow, so they shall. None can resist the Master's will.

He felt the ground opening up beneath him. This... this was an order of magnitude more powerful than anything he had seen so far. How could Arabella entrust him with this much power? Thankfully, it was greyed out, suggesting it wasn't something he could pick for himself, at least not yet. Hurriedly, he looked at the other options.

Console+++: The Master receives a series of cheat codes associated with randomly selected Transformations that did not win during audience votes. Furthermore, he can input codes simply by thinking of a code with the intent of activating it.

Connect++: The Master no longer needs to spend 24 hours per round as Andi. The distance between his two bodies, should he split, can be as far as 100 yards. Andi becomes attractive to both men and women, regardless of the viewer's sexual orientation.

Conflate+++: The Master can Conflate more than two Contestants at once, up to five in the same circle with a single Source. Furthermore, the Master can pick one attribute (such as breast size, arousal, stamina, etc.) which is applied to each participant, while Conflated, as the sum of each participant's original attribute (for example, should the Master pick breast size, each participant's breast size will grow to the sum all of original breast sizes of the participants).

Coauthor++: The Master is no longer obliged to use Coauthor once per round. He can also modify up to eight words per round, per Contestant.

Coevality+: The Master's harem is bound against time. Physical suffering by one of the harem members is diffused through the harem, so that it is never significant. The Master has the ability to heal physical injuries suffered by the harem members.

Contribute+: The Master can now upgrade TFs twice per Contestant per round. He can upgrade the same TF twice (but only once the first upgrade has expired).

Andy cursed himself. He had completely forgotten about Contribute, and it could be an actively helpful Gift for the harem. He made a mental note of using it next round. And then there were the Gifts he had not been given:

Control: The Master must have the last word. Once per round, Andy can choose to veto a transformation being assigned to a harem member; the second most-voted transformation will apply instead. Andy will know what the second most-voted transformation is, and if he uses his veto, no other vetoes (either the Host’s or the Contestant’s) can be applied.

Conscript: The Master can delegate. He can choose one Contestant to wield one of his Gifts for up to 24 hours. To all intents and purposes, the Conscript is treated as the Master for purposes of using the Gift, with the following exception: they cannot use the Gift on themselves, and they cannot use it on the Master. The Master can withdraw the Gift at any time; until he does so or 24 hours have passed, the Master has no access to the gift.

Covenant: When the Master makes a promise, reality itself conspires to fulfill it. As long as there is a realistic possibility for what the Master promised to come true, it will, provided it is not to the detriment of the Master.

Cohesion: The Master's harem is his to govern. The Master gains the ability to change the bonds between any two harem members, strengthening them, weakening them, or changing their nature (e.g. from friendship to attraction to love). The affected harem members are not aware of the artificial nature of the change, and the change takes effect over a period of hours or days.

Andy considered his choices. He wondered, not for the first time, what game Arabella was playing with these Gifts. But a part of him, deep inside, felt as if he knew they would be needed, before the end.

Hesitating, Andy first selected the Gift upgrades that removed obligations. He picked Coauthor++ first, removing the obligation to use it once per round. He picked Connect++, removing the obligation to be Andi for 24 hours per round. Then he hesitated. He had one more upgrade. Without second-guessing himself, he picked Coevality+ and closed the terminal.

It was time to find out how his gamble had worked.