Denice is still breathing heavily and not especially responsive. Maybe she's just listening, maybe she's in shock, it's hard to tell.

They are in fact in a basement—an abandoned one, very close to a muffled space beyond which her range drops quite rapidly. She's not in the same place she was living before, though. Somewhere else entirely, completely unfamiliar buildings and streets and subway stations.

Sadde waits for Denice to recover.

Her breathing slows, and after a minute or two she quietly proclaims "safe", then blinks and looks around the room.

The room has a boiler that has a few more twists than it should—probably a casualty of past cubism—and stairs leading up into the rest of the empty building.

"Did you go through Orientation?"

This gets her an extremely dubious look and a headshake.

"...do you... want to go through Orientation? They're supposed to teach you stuff about the city and find you a job and give you an ID..."

She shakes her head, alarmed, and then looks away.

"No? ...okay, I guess. It'll be a bit hard to find a job without an ID—unless you don't want to find a job? If you have a superpower maybe you don't need one."

"I..."

Yeah, she's definitely getting more stressed rather than less.

"Not safe. For me."

"It's okay, you don't need to go through Orientation," Sadde tries to reassure her. "I can help you and tell you about the City." Pause. "If you want. If you don't then I won't."

'Reassuring' would be a bit of a stretch, but that at least doesn't seem to make anything worse. She takes a deep breath and thinks about it.

"I don't... people, job, things. Don't talk, not okay. Don't want..." another long pause; it's not very clear whether she's going to continue talking.

"That makes sense. And here people would be—" Pause. "Um. They might be—afraid, that you'd go Picasso. Even though that's not how it works!" she hastily adds. "But everyone thinks it is."

Nod.

"Not safe, people." Fact of life, that.

"Yeah. But... if you don't have a job or anything, how do you get, like. Stuff? Food?"

Shrug. "Trash, stealing." She makes a face; apparently she doesn't like this much, she's just resigned to it.

"...that's not a very good way to live," she observes.

"Better, than..."

She shrugs, and the tension starts to return to her shoulders.

"...I could maybe help."

Again, 'reassuring' would be a stretch; she seems more wary, if anything. But she doesn't argue or object, just shrugs.

"Like. I don't—have a place either. But that's because of—" She pauses, and frowns. "Anyway. I could get a job? And then help you?"

"Not gonna..."

"Don't trust you."

She nods. "That's fair, okay."

"Okay."

"I... 'm good at safe. Just. Need to do it. You complain, I'll go. You find me, I'll go. Let me safe, we're okay."

"I don't... want you to be unsafe. I mean, yes, I'm a stranger you met a few hours ago in a maze of horrors, but honestly... you look like you need help. You look like you need good food and a place to sleep and I don't wanna promise anything I can't keep but. I wanna help. And if 'help' means just leaving you be I can do that, too."

"...mm."