Annaka Sanderson is tall, thin, obviously an enclaver even if you somehow miss the New York power-sharer on her wrist; her senior clothes are in breathable, well-fitted long-sleeved fabric practically sparkling with protective enchantments, her athletic shoes and backpacking backpack both look brand-new, so she must have brought extras, and when her eyes sweep across a room they're mostly looking for people, not mals; the kids jogging alongside her are looking out for the mals. 

She sweeps this room and then narrows in on a freshman from Chicago. People scramble out of her way as she heads over to them; other people don't, and she doesn't step on them but she does step on their homework.

"Eliza Godfrey, right?" she says, and it would be 'pleasantly' except there's a little too much briskness to it. "You're not in trouble and no one's dead, but we need to talk to you about something - is this a good time?"

"Now's fine." This is a New York upperclassman, she'd say it was fine no matter how not fine it was. 

Yeah, it was mostly just a courtesy. Annaka walks at the same pace out of the library and into a classroom. "We've checked it, it's safe," she says over her shoulder. Her entourage doesn't follow them in. "I'm sure you're very busy with class. We are - concerned about a maleficer in your year, and we're trying to make sure we have an accurate record of the interaction between him and New York that happened on orientation day. Do you mind sitting down and telling me how you remember it?" This is no more of a genuine question than the last one.

"Of course." She sits. "Uh, I was helping Julia with a run to the senior dorms to pick up some hand-me-downs, and this smelly guy with garbage clothes and freaky vibes came up to us wanting to come along, and Julia tried to tell him to fuck off but he didn't seem to take the hint, and he said he could spot mals and I asked if that was his affinity and he said yes, and Julia said if he came along and didn't get his stink on anything then she would make sure he got clean clothes later, and then he came along and waited outside and then one of the seniors was like, 'Julia, you can't let maleficers hang around you,' and then went out and told him to fuck off harder than Julia had earlier? And he was gone when we came out again. ...I didn't, like, take notes on what happened, I didn't realize it would be important later and I was pretty distracted by--you know, what just happened. I can't swear I'm remembering everything right." 

"Yeah, of course. We're asking everybody and we're expecting some variance in the accounts but things that are in all of them probably happened, you know? Did you see him do any magic?"

"I think he did in fact successfully spot a couple mals? Aside from that, no."

"When Julia agreed he could follow your group, did that seem - natural to you, like she changed her mind, or like something else changed her mind?"

"It seemed like she decided it would be less of a hassle to let him come along than to get rid of him? She told the senior later that she didn't wanna be a bitch and he said if the situation ever came up again, she should be a bitch. It seemed less like changing her mind and more like, 'ugh, whatever,' you know?"

She's writing all this down. "All right. Thank you. I'm sure you have lots of homework, I'll walk you back to the library. We're - keeping this investigation private, at this time."

"Okay. Uh, my friend Justinian, he's the other Chicago survivor I know of, he was there too, if you wanna ask him what happened. He's less gregarious than me so I think he didn't actually talk to the guy and I did."

"Surname? Can you point him out to me in the library?"

"Justinian Fermi. Yeah, sure."

In that case Annaka would like to talk to Justinian Fermi, too, please. 

Justinian is pretty findable; he was in the stacks when they found Eliza and is now standing around where she was sitting at the time. He spots them before Eliza has done more than wave in his general direction and walks over carefully. 

"Is everything alright?" he asks, concerned. 

"You're not in trouble and no one's dead that I know of but I'd like to talk to you, if you have a moment," Annaka says. New Yorkers talk fast and she talks fast for a New Yorker. 

"--Okay," he says, exchanging glances with Eliza. His shoulders relax. "However I can be of service."

Same classroom, same speech. "Do you remember when you first saw the kid?"

"I was part of Julia's supply run to the senior dormitories, along with Eliza. He looked like he was looking for Orion Lake--he introduced himself by saying he had spotted one for him to kill earlier."

"Did he introduce himself unprompted, or only once he'd been challenged on following you - it's okay if you don't remember -"

"Only once he'd been challenged--it was Eliza who asked who he was, actually--but he was challenged pretty promptly so I don't know if that means anything?"

"Did Orion recognize him?"

"I don't remember? I think Orion wasn't paying much attention to any of us, he seemed pretty intent on hunting mals. He did run off kill a couple the guy pointed out, he couldn't find any that were going to directly threaten us but there were, like, a couple."

"Did Orion invite him to join the group?"

"No, I don't think so...I think he also didn't tell him to go away either, maybe that undermined Julia a little bit? I'm not sure."

"So Eliza asked who he was, Julia told him to go away, Orion chased a mal, no one else said anything? And then how did he end up following the group after all?"

"It was after Orion killed a mal he pointed out that Julia said if he didn't touch anything or go in the room that he could come along, I think. Uh, I don't remember them saying anything but Zeke and his girlfriend were also there?"

"Did it seem to you like Julia changed her mind abruptly or for no reason, or did it seem pretty natural given how the interaction was going -"

"It seemed pretty natural? But I only met Julia recently, I'm probably not the best one to tell."

"Did you notice a vibe, from the kid?"

"He smelled awful," he says immediately. "And he looked like he'd stolen his clothes off a drunk hobo. He had some creepy vibes, but I wasn't sure how much of that was really there and how much of it was ingrained racism and classism."

Blinkblinkblink. 

She transcribes that faithfully. "Did you notice him paying attention to anyone other than Orion in particular?"

"No, he was mostly looking away from the group, presumably for mals."

"Did you see him use any magic?"

"Not that I remember."

"Thanks so much. I'm sure you're busy. I'll walk you back to the library. We're not making this public at this time, but if you hear anything else about Masozi, or have any more interactions with him, you can write down a summary for us and I might talk with you more."

"Okay. Should I assume everyone from New York knows about this--I wouldn't want to bother anyone with a summary they have no reason to think means anything--"

"They know to pass stuff about Masozi on to us."

"Okay, thanks. I won't talk about it in public or to anyone who wasn't there. --Or to Masozi, obviously."

"Thank you." And she walks him back, waves him off, vanishes again.

"I think I said 'we're going to someone's private room, and he didn't invite you, just me and the people I can vouch for'. And he kind of shrugged. And then - no, I guess he must've said something, because I said 'we have lookouts' - yeah, so, he said, 'you need lookouts' and I said 'we have lookouts' - it was absurd, there were ten of us, and he was claiming he knew what Orion was capable of - what would happen, if someone succeeded at maleficing Orion - you know what I mean, with his mana capacity -"

         "No one outside New York knows about that," Annaka says in a very clipped voice. "- does anyone outside New York know about that."

" - no! We got a lecture from the Domina before we came in, that it's a secret, that it's the kind of thing only the seniors would know, ordinarily, except of course we were all there for -" gesture - "you didn't answer my question."

          "And you're doing a terrible job of answering mine."

"- that's why you guys are so freaked out, isn't it. Because Orion - he can handle himself, you know -"

         "He has no special immunity to poison or mind control."

"And if a maleficer took him the maleficer might just immediately explode from having way more malia than a person can handle or might - what - spontaneously turn into a horrifying mal?

         "Julie -"

"Don't Julie me! I've known Orion since we were babies and I don't want him to get maleficed into Evil Orion who eats the whole school at all."

        "Julie," says Annaka, "the reason I am on this, instead of preparing for graduation and leaving it to the juniors, is because I have a kid sister getting followed on supply runs and in a Monday morning shop run with what might be a harmless weirdo or might be a maleficer who'll go right back to it when he's next cornered or might be a sophisticated actor who - I talked to Johannesburg. He showed up, asked, but they told him they didn't have any spare slots. And then a mal attacked, deadlier than they usually get in the middle of a mundane city, and killed one. He heroically rescued some of the younger kids from it. Got the spot."

"Oh," says Julia.

"Hi," Annaka says, barely friendly at all, very tiredly. "We're trying to learn more about Masozi, I'll tell you more later but we want to ask the questions before biasing them. When did you meet him?"

"Masozi is the - African kid who got a jump on not showering very often before coming?" asks Bella, fidgeting with her pen. "Uh, I went on a supply run on the first day with a Sacramento kid, Raleigh, and their Canadian bag-holder, Shannon, and Raleigh had picked up Masozi and also some girl with a hat for some reason, and said Masozi's affinity was finding mals so it might be safer to bring him along. Bobbie, the one who showed up naked, tagged along too."

"What was your impression of Masozi?"

"Uh, he seemed... ...I want to say wrong-genre-savvy? He did in fact find mals, there were sleeping baby quattria in a bin, I peeked at them after he pointed them out. Anyway he approached me with some fairly incompetent flattery and then asked me what was so bad about maleficing and I - if you want a more exact rendition I'd need to go back to my room for the notebook with that in it, is memory sufficient for your purposes?"

" - if you have a notebook with detailed notes that'd be really valuable, actually. Elsewhere we're trying to triangulate with lots of accounts, but - notes would be better."

"I guess I'll tell them to deal me out of the next few card games, shall I." When she's handled that she leads Annaka to her room for her notebook. "Okay, so he asked me what was so bad about maleficing, as though he'd never heard it was at all objectionable in the least before that day, and I asked him if he was thinking about quitting. He said maybe, it depends whether bugs count, but that it shouldn't since getting it from bugs doesn't hurt and bugs don't have feelings. I told him bugs weren't a big deal but that if he'd done smarter animals before it might be he'd already done enough damage that he'd have to go stricter to let it heal. He was confused about how it could possibly be damaging, compared it to a broken arm. I told him there were mundane mental illnesses, he appeared to have never heard of the concept, I explained that brains can break same as arms and then don't work as well. I made an analogy to sunburn, short exposures don't burn people at all and long exposures might make them sensitive to short additional exposures, but I don't actually know a lot about how to cheat conservatively after a history of maleficing, you know -" She waves at her pile of terrarium supplies. "Those are going to be for agglos, for the record."

Annaka enters that into the record. "He said getting it from bugs doesn't hurt in - contrast with his experience of getting it from mammals?"

"He said he learned to pull from rats without hurting himself," she says, scanning ahead in the notes.

- nod. "Sorry, go on and I can clarify when you've finished."

"He was specifically curious about whether maleficing could damage empathy, as opposed to just being stupider. I told him, you know, basic scary campfire story maleficer facts, they go off the deep end and start shlorping malia just so they can get through the fight with the next target. Bobbie compared it to drugs, Masozi said he thought drugs were supposed to feel good, I said that was not essential to the mechanism of addiction and asked if he had trouble building mana normally - I've heard that's a problem with habitual maleficing. He didn't think so and speculated that it's safer here, fewer mals and more people fighting them, but said he wouldn't have made it to Johannesburg without, as aforementioned, learning to pull from rats without hurting himself."

It's safer here on the first day, Annaka does not say because then it'd be in the transcript for her parents to (hopefully)  feel awkward about later, that she didn't know how to do an interview without biasing the subject. "Did he say anything else about Johannesburg?"

"- not that I remember or wrote down. I told him I wasn't mourning the rats and this would be a good time to go strict for a while since the mals were low. I hadn't known there was technique to maleficing but in retrospect it wasn't surprising. He said he would be more comfortable with that if other people were being more careful, that he didn't want anyone to die just because they hadn't learned how yet - we were looking around, the run didn't have any of the Chicago mundies on it. I said most of us weren't going to make it out and strangers did not expect him to pull malia to check for them. Suggested he sign on as a lookout for an enclave that could give him a power-sharer for it. He said 'maybe', fortunately whether my enclave would do it wasn't at issue, there aren't enough of us to bother with power-sharers in here at once." - she has his room number, or what she said was his room number, but isn't going to volunteer that unless it seems like they're being reasonably fair about this.

She takes this all down, too. "Did you end up with the impression he meant to stop maleficing?"

"He seemed noncommital on that point."

"Did you see him use magic at any point?"

"Presumably he did so to find the baby quattrias, and probably at other points to confirm absence of other mals, but it was not otherwise obvious he was doing it."

"Did anything about interacting with him - feel weird, did you ever feel like you changed your mind about him for not a good reason, or does anything about what you said or did feel uncharacteristic in retrospect -"

"The incompetent flattery was incompetent flattery? Nothing about my reactions seemed odd then or now. I agreed to go on a run including him because my affinity is metamagic and I expected to stand a decent chance against a maleficer. And my retrospect is pretty good, I detected that the eidetic memory potion I took Friday morning was not working right by lunch while I was still on it."

"All right, thank you. Would you like a summary of what we're looking into and why?"

"Yes please."

"The afternoon of orientation, a bunch of our freshmen went down to the senior dorms to look over the stuff our graduating class left behind. Masozi followed them, and said he wanted to follow Orion specifically. They told him it was a private run, he said 'I'll be a lookout', they turned him down, he did not leave, pointed out a mal to Orion, eventually they decided to let him tag along, I think mostly because they weren't sure what else they could do to make him stop following them, short of attacking him. He followed them to the senior dorm. Frank heard about this and stepped outside, at which point the kid says "mals up there!", points, and a couple of jaculi lunge at Frank from the ceiling. Frank thinks the timing was uncanny and thinks the kid was using magic but it can't have been an attempt on Frank's life, they were jaculi. Anyway, Frank picks up on the maleficing vibe and tells Masozi that New York doesn't abide maleficing and he should leave. Masozi says he was just protecting our freshmen, who aren't cautious enough, Frank takes that as a threat and tells him to seriously get lost right now, he walks off. 

During homeroom, Masozi leaves his room and shows up in one of our freshman's homeroom, to ask if he had Monday morning shop. - New York freshmen are taking Monday morning shop. Orion Lake can handle it. Our freshman hadn't heard that the plan was a go yet, but told Masozi it's on his schedule, at which point Masozi apparently signed up for it.

All of which is consistent with any of 'he's really clueless' or 'he's trying to get Orion's attention specifically' or 'he's following our freshmen for some reason' and also with 'he maleficed when he didn't know better but is going to stop now' or 'he wants a New York powersharer very very badly' or 'he wants to know what happens if you try to pull malia off the most powerful wizard of our generation'. So, you know, I sit down with Johannesburg to ask some questions. And apparently he was a last-minute addition after a very unlucky mal attack killed a soon-to-be-inductee right in front of him and he acquitted himself very admirably, saving several younger kids." 

Annaka's gesture of exhausted confusion is very compellingly faked, if it's fake. "I don't have time to be the adults that everyone decided this school did not need, I want to be in the gym, but if he's stalking our freshmen, or if he's after Orion in particular, or if he has a mal-control affinity, which is Frank's theory, then we've got a problem. And one we evidently did not solve by saying "New York doesn't abide maleficers, go away". New Orleans will get an update on all of this if we decide any action seems warranted."

"Yikes. That's got to be very stressful. Uh, what's your next steps, here, just talking to more people?"

"Everyone who's had a substantial interaction with him, if we can. We're also trying to investigate the two freshman deaths so far, just to confirm they're unrelated. And we - might be getting some information on the mal-control theory any minute, we're chasing down a rumor that he coaxes mal grubs to him using magic.

And then we talk to Shanghai, because he's been very close with them and taking classes in Mandarin despite the fact he'd claimed to Johannesburg he did not speak a word of it and had only recently encountered English, and because until we know whatever the fuck happened in Chicago we and Shanghai are both trying very hard not to startle each other. 

And then -" Shrug. "If action seems warranted we'll reach out to all the US enclaves, you can do a lot of damage by going about this kind of thing unilaterally even if you end up being right. I'm not saying everyone will have a veto but we won't surprise you."

"I wouldn't expect me - or more to the point Suze - to have a veto but it's nice to know that it's not going to spiral suddenly out of control without warning."

"Thanks for your time, let me know if you think of or hear about anything else that might be relevant." And she stands up, taking her transcript.

"Thanks for taking point on this so responsibly."

"I have a kid sister in your year, I'm all worked up about you lot surviving." And out she goes.

"Is the question, do I think he mind controlled me, no, I don't think that, he's a freshman, maybe he tricked a lot of people but he didn't trick the school about whether he's fourteen. I let him come along because, like, what else was I going to do, order Vernon and Lysander to punch him in the face? I didn't know them well enough to be sure if they'd do it! And then that'd be a whole thing and you'd be on my case about 'Julia, why did you cause a fistfight on the first day' - what would you have done, if you were a freshman and someone were following you around and wouldn't stop -"

          "...probably tell him that it looks bad, and is going to have a lot of people wondering why he wants to be around people who don't want him around."

"He'd stopped listening to anything I was saying, he was very pointedly ignoring me and talking over me at Orion -"

        "Huh. You didn't mention that -"

"Well, it's not like pointed ignoring is a thing he did, so I didn't think of it - it was like, you know that lecture from Dad, it was like he'd decided I was a seagull who was pooping on his palace."

        "Julia, this is going to end up in a formal record somewhere."

"Maybe in a year but right now, you're the person who is going to use it to decide what to do, so I'm talking to you, not to the Domina, and that was what it was like, like I was trying to explain to him that he wasn't invited and meanwhile he'd decided I might as well not have been talking at all."

         "In a mind-control way or -"

"Not in a mind-control way!! Leave it off with the mind control questions!! - do you have any reason to think he can do mind-control?"

         "Well, we think he can mind-control mal grubs."

"I'm not a mal grub!!"

"This is about Masozi, I'm guessing? I don't think he's hurt anyone yet, we weren't planning to respond yet but we don't have New York's resources."

"Yep. We don't think he's hurt anyone here. We're fifty-fifty on whether he murdered someone to get in. Where'd you first run across him?"

"Supply run, first day. Was a little offputting at first - uh, he was wearing rags and smelled like shit, I don't think I noticed any maleficer vibes - but he was doing perimeter checks. Later in the workshop he started asking someone why it was bad pull Malia, I don't remember who, I think I added a couple of comments to the effect that it's like drugs. Tried to keep more of an eye on him after that. There was also a clothing artificer there, Sophie, I think? I was talking to her about buying some clothes, I didn't come in with any, she mentioned that she was making clothes for Masozi and I warned her off. I don't know how seriously she took it - wait, shit, I don't think I've seen her around at all in the last few days, fuck I should've been paying more attention!"

" - Sophie? Do you know her - last name, her room, where she's from, anything -"

"I don't think I got a surname, we walked back to our rooms together - one-ninety something I think? I've got it written down, I was planning to go talk to her again once I had more to trade..."

Annaka opens the door. "Ask New Orleans, check on a Sophie," she snaps at someone, and then sits back down. "Probably too late if it's bad at all," she says, as she does. "- ugh - that'd be - four freshmen dead already, we had better recheck the one that was supposedly a suicide - what else did you notice on Masozi. Particularly interested in uses of magic and in any interest he had in New York."

"I don't think I've seen him casting any spells, I think he's got something to notice mals but I don't know what it actually is. Claims his affinity is mals, claimed he could take anything he expected to come at us on the supply run. He's... close to one of the Chicago mundanes, Rebecca? But I haven't noticed him doing anything with anyone from New York. Heard about something at orientation but you've probably got firsthand reports of that and don't need my hearsay."

"Yeah. How'd he end up on the supply run, was he recruiting for it?"

"I don't know, I saw it once people had already started gathering - the New Orleans girl, I don't remember her name, might know? She was there when I showed up, so was he."

"You said you were thinking about doing something yourself, what prompted that, just the conversation about malia?"

"That, plus the mal affinity, plus - he was maybe cozying up to Rebecca who's one of the obvious soft targets for a maleficer looking to branch out into people. I think he might've been trying to talk her into Monday morning shop, which is pretty suspicious. He's a maleficer, admitted to it, which is enough reason to think about whether he needs to be put down."

"We started out trying to figure that out and then branched out into trying to figure out the bizarre mal incident which took out the kid who had his spot in Johannesburg and now apparently top-line priority is Sophie. We're pretty sure he's lying about his affinity and it's mal control. I'm sorry to cut this short, but I want to go check on the Sophie situation - let me know if you think of anything else that might be relevant?"

"Yes ma'am. Good hunting."

She actually snaps a salute before she walks out.

- that's one to keep an eye on. But Annaka's very busy right now. 

Elsewhere someone's tracking down Bella in the library.

Studying her book of spells from the Spanish Inquisition! "- hi?"

"Hi! Supply run had a Sophie? Have you seen her since."

"- no, but I have her room number."

"Please."

"May I join you?"

He looks mildly annoyed but mostly just stressed. "Sure."

She gets up and leads the way to Sophie's room. "I do not have her room letter, we'll need to check both."

"Can you tell me, so some combat people can meet us there, just in case."

"196."

He twists some dials on his power-sharer, and proceeds at not quite a run.

Bella's magic shoes let her practically skate along after him.

And they try 196A, and then, if that's locked, 196B.

196A is locked. 196B is locked.

196A, if they listen closely, contains the sound of a person crying.

"Well, fuck," the kid says to Bella. 

And, loudly, "CAN EVERYONE IN EARSHOT COME OVER HERE PLEASE, I WANT WITNESSES."

Someone pokes his head out of 180B. "- what is it?"

(Most people are at the library, at this time, but Sean got tired of Poppy trying to introduce him to everybody who came to sit at Manchester's feet, it's just exhausting.)

"No one's seen this kid in three days, she was last seen in the company of a maleficer, I'm going to ask her to open her door and if that doesn't work I'm going to blast it - New York'll pay repairs - but I want her to know that there's not one kid waiting on the other side who might just want her stuff, there's everyone in earshot and we're not hiding anything. CAN YOU PLEASE OPEN THE DOOR," he yells through it. 

There's a wet cough. "I - I can't - I'm sorry - who -"

Further coughing.

"I'm Asher, New York, I'm a junior, we're worried about you, I won't take your stuff, there's a bunch of people here who would know if I went back on that -" there's actually only three, Bella and Sean and a confused kid blinking out of a room down the hall, but two of them are enclavers, so that counts for double. "Why can't you open your door."

"Everything. Everything is... hurting, and - tired -"

She gags, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone trying to retch without anything left to expel. She does not sound in a good way.

The junior sighs. And starts blasting the door. It's loud, and slow, even for a junior with a New York powersharer; usually, blasting someone's door is hard to get away with. The sound summons a couple more kids from nearby rooms.

And then her door crumples to the ground. 

Sophie is lying in bed. She's soaked through with sweat. She's managed to keep herself mostly clear of bile (the advantage of a void wall against your bed), and there's a really magnificently tailored school-uniform-looking outfit (sized for a smallish freshman) lying on the floor.

She looks at the junior, her eyes glazed. "Hello," she manages.

A smallish, tallish freshman, by any chance?

"Hey. Someone get her water. Have you got healing I can give you? In your bags? I won't take anything."

Yes, definitely a tallish freshman - the pants are slightly comical, so slim and so long.

"No. It - my sisters. I wouldn't need it."

"Who're your sisters, I can send someone to find 'em."

She laughs deliriously. "Yorkshire! Town of Chipping. Nice - it's a nice place."

Has someone obeyed the instruction to go get the girl water. 

Also he's going to look through her bag just in case she does have a first aid kit in there, who sends a kid without a first aid kit.

She's got first aid but none of it's magical. She apparently kept her hair braided in her bag? Which is a little weird but okay.

While he's waiting for the water he'll zip the bag up, then. Bandages aren't going to help with - with having had a maleficer drain you almost to death, only because a freshman can't drain you to death properly -

"Who did this?" he asks her quietly.

"What?"

She looks - not just confused but surprised at the question.

"Was it Masozi."

"Masozi? I - it's not nice to say that, that someone's carrying some disease, just because - just because he's, you know - I mean I'm not saying you're being - but he was so dirty, perhaps he - but it wouldn't be his fault, you know..."

" - you think you're just - sick? Caught an induction flu? Not - no one did this? It came on while you were alone?"

She tries to nod, then makes an agonized sound. "Ohhh. I went to sleep and when I woke up I - I felt just rotten - I worked on the suit, because you don't want to welsh on a deal, but - but I was bleary, you know - and I drank water but it kept coming up..."

"The suit's for Masozi? What was the deal?"

She smiles, just a little. "It was really hardly a deal at all, I just - felt so sorry, he's running around in those awful rags, and, and he took me down to get supplies and he stood watch and, and he told me to be dangerous. Really, me!"

"What was the deal exactly, it might have something to do with how you got sick, if you offered him - the chance to take something from you -"

"Just the suit, for supplies. He, he told me there'd be a run -"

Another retching fit.

"A supply run. He'd keep watch. I got cloth and some things, he just - stood there, stood watch. I, I talked with Shannon - she was so nice - told her how silly he was."

A kid comes back with water, and he offers it to her; her hands don't look steady, so he'll hold it to her lips.

Annaka rounds the corner just then. "She thinks it wasn't him," Asher says, "but I still say we track the kid down and at least have some fucking eyes on him from now until we make the call, which should be today -"

"Can't," Annaka says. She sounds utterly furious; she says it in the sort of tone that makes one wonder if it's a spell, actually, for freezing all the air for a mile around. "Lan Xichen just told everyone - but us, he didn't bother telling us - that Shanghai's adopting him."

She sips thankfully. Listens with a dizzy ear to the conversation around her. Thinks oh, Shanghai - he really found a place.

"They - what, they can't - an admitted maleficer -"

"By what mechanism," says Annaka, "is it true that they can't. It's that we might do something about it. That's the mechanism, that's the only mechanism, they can do whatever they want, the week after Chicago - after whatever they did to Chicago - and we can decide, if we lie down, or not." From her expression it's apparent how she's leaning.

She pauses briefly in this to glance down at Sophie. "- it's the first week of classes, the school has a nurse, someone get this kid to the school nurse."

"I promised to fix her door,'" says Asher, who has been caught in that awkward position where keeping a promise involves delivering bad news to your angry superior. 

"Tomorrow," says Annaka. "If she hasn't unpacked just send her bags with her, it'll be easier than guarding the room. Then run up to the library and tell - Eddie from Miami, and Claire from Philadelphia, and the whole of Boston, I'd rather have them all in the room, and Will from London, and Betty and Charles and Alexander and Emelie and Pedro and Larisa - she'll tell you she's busy and tell her I don't fucking care -"