Chapter 338: Ryan Always the Topic

Rachel and I made our way up the last stretch of stairs toward the top floor, the building quieter the higher we climbed, like the noise of everything below just couldn’t be bothered to follow us this far.

"Nobody’s found them, right?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

"No one," Rachel said, shaking her head. "We’ve been making sure of it. People know better than to wander too high up by now. We put it out there, quietly that Lucy was being kept on the upper floors. Told people it’d be better if they didn’t come up here unless they wanted to run into someone from Callighan’s group alone." She paused. "It worked. Nobody’s been curious enough to push it."

"So they know what we’re doing with Lucy." It wasn’t really a question. I already knew the answer. "I’m guessing the reaction wasn’t exactly warm?"

She sighed. That kind of sigh that already tells you everything before the words come.

"Let me guess," I said. "Brad’s group led the charge."

"It was like he’d been sitting there waiting for something, anything he could use," Rachel replied, her tone somewhere between tired and mildly impressed at how predictable he was. "The second word got around he jumped on it. But we managed to hold it together. Got enough people settled down and convinced that it was fine." She glanced at me. "Honestly though, that was almost entirely Margaret. You know how people are with her, half this place would walk through fire if she told them it was a good idea, and the other half know better than to argue with someone that trusted."

"Right, that’s Margaret," I said, smiling faintly despite myself.

Then the smile faded.

"But if they reacted that strongly over Lucy, someone who’s just a person, just a woman from the other side, what happens when they find out we’ve got an actual alien sitting up here above their heads?"

Rachel was quiet for a beat.

"Let’s hope that doesn’t happen anytime soon," she said carefully.

Yeah. Let’s not even think about it.

We reached Kunta’s door and I turned the handle quietly, easing it open, then stopped halfway through as voices drifted out from inside.

"What? Seriously?" That was Kunta, and I could already picture the expression on her face without needing to see it, cross-legged somewhere on that oversized bed, eyebrows up, completely absorbed in whatever she’d just been told.

"Yeah." Rebecca’s voice, dry, coming from somewhere near the edge of the bed. "We knew Ryan before all of this. And trust me, he was nothing like he is now. He was, God, how do I put this withdrawn. Couldn’t really hold eye contact with Rachel for more than two seconds without his ears going red. He’d stutter sometimes. Around me too, honestly."

"So what changed?" Kunta asked, leaning in.

"The Symbiote, probably. Or maybe he just took advantage of the fact that nobody out here knew who he used to be and decided to reinvent himself entirely. Who knows."

"Rebecca!" Daisy’s voice cut in sharply, somewhere from deeper on the bed. "That’s mean!"

"I’m not being mean, I’m being accurate. I’ve known him longer than you have, Daisy."

"Everyone changes though. Because of everything that happened—"

"He changed too much," she said. "I don’t even remember him being that tall before, for one thing."

"Really?" Daisy’s voice immediately shifted into something more curious, lighter. "What else? What about his face, his eyes?"

There was a brief silence following Daisy’s question.

"His face is mostly the same," Rebecca said, her tone a little more measured now. "Jaw looks sharper maybe. And his eyes were always..." She trailed off, like the words had gotten away from her mid-sentence. "They were always that... beautiful gray..."

I pushed the door the rest of the way open.

Rebecca’s gaze snapped up at exactly the wrong moment and locked straight onto mine. Every muscle in her body went rigid. She sat there for a half second completely frozen, staring at me standing in the doorway, and then the color hit her face all at once, deep, mortified red climbing from her neck up.

Rachel let out a quiet sigh beside me.

"Y... you!" Rebecca scrambled off the bed, on her feet before she’d even finished the thought. "You heard us?!"

"Heard everything," I said.

The red got worse. She looked like she wanted the floor to open up.

I stepped inside properly and let my eyes move across the three of them, Kunta still settled comfortably on the bed, Daisy looking somewhere between guilty and amused, Rebecca standing there trying to pull herself together.

"Since when did you three get this close?" I asked, caught off guard by how easy they all looked together.

"Is that a problem?" Kunta asked, not missing a beat, one eyebrow arched like she was daring me to say yes.

"I’m glad Rebecca’s finally making friends, really," I said, letting my eyes move between the three of them. "I just would’ve preferred not to be the subject of the whole conversation. To put it gently."

Were they doing this every time I wasn’t around? Just sitting up here picking me apart like some kind of group hobby?

"You’re not that interesting, don’t worry about it," Kunta said, waving a hand dismissively. Sonny tilted his mechanical head beside her as if nodding along in agreement.

That robot dog was something else.

"Funny," I said, "considering I just walked in on a pretty in-depth discussion about me."

"Because you are interesting, Ryan," Rachel said, laughing softly beside me.

"He’s, he’s not! I didn’t even want to talk about him in the first place!" Rebecca cut in immediately, her voice pitching up slightly.

"But you’re the one who brought him up, Rebecca," Daisy pointed out, perfectly calm, which somehow made it worse.

"Hey!" The red was back on Rebecca’s face, deeper this time, spreading all the way to the tips of her ears.

She looked really embarrassed, like a kid who’d been caught by a parent mid-act, hand still in the cookie jar, no plausible excuse left to reach for. There was something almost endearing about it that I had no business finding endearing.

"I’m leaving!" She let out, pushing off the bed and making a beeline for the door.

She got about two steps before she realized I was still standing in the doorway, filling the frame, and had nowhere to go. She pulled up short and looked up at me, not quite meeting my eyes, more like a silent, loaded request for me to move.

I found myself smiling a little at her.

Couldn’t really help it.

No matter how much she talked about me behind my back, I really couldn’t find it in me to be annoyed at this girl. Not really.

Rebecca caught the smile and immediately looked away, the flush on her cheeks doing nothing to settle down.

I stepped aside. She slipped past me and disappeared into the hallway at a pace that was technically not running but wasn’t far off either.

"By the Gods." Kunta watched her go with something between amusement and mock concern. "You made her flee the room. Are you really that unbearable, Symbiote Host?"

The smile on my face twitched slightly.

"I have a name," I said.

"Symbiote Host suits you fine," she said, smirking, reaching down to scratch behind Sonny’s ear like she hadn’t just said something irritating. "Though, if you tell me your Symbiote’s actual name, I’ll use that instead. Deal?"

I was sincerely tempted to just say Dullahan right there on the spot, purely to watch her expression collapse into something between dread and disbelief. The look alone would’ve been worth it.

I held back. Barely.

"You’d rather I didn’t," I said simply.

She snickered. "Probably some obscure nobody name anyway."

"How old are you?"

The smirk dropped off her face instantly, replaced by a sharp glare. "What kind of question is that?!"

"Just wondering," I said.

I let it hang there and moved on before she could figure out whether to be offended or not. "Anyway. Stay up here, help Mark when he needs it. That’s all I’m asking."

Kunta’s expression softened just a fraction, not that she’d ever admit it. "That old man is genuinely one of a kind," she muttered, almost to herself. "I didn’t think a human mind could work like that. He’s irritatingly impressive."

"You look like a random eight year old human girl half the time, so I wouldn’t throw stones," I said.

"SONNY!" She didn’t even finish the sentence. "ATTACK!"

The mechanical dog launched off the bed like it had been waiting its entire existence for that exact command, moving fast enough that for half a second I thought I’d actually have to do something about it, and then it hit a wall of deep crimson and bounced off harmlessly, stopping cold in the air.

Rachel’s doing.

She exhaled slowly through her nose, sighing softly.

"Alright, that’s enough, Kunta."

Kunta grumbled something under her breath, then extended her hand reluctantly. "Come back, Sonny."

The dog turned around and trotted back to her immediately. Calm, obedient, like nothing had happened.

What the heck?

She listened to Rachel. Just like that.

I filed that away quietly and didn’t comment on it.

"Rachel," I said instead, turning toward her. "Your barrier, I thought it broke when Sonny hit it the first time, back when all that happened. How is it stronger?"

Rachel’s expression shifted into something warm and quietly pleased, like she’d been waiting for me to notice.

"You’re not the only one getting stronger, you know," she said simply.

I looked at her for a moment, then let out a soft laugh. Something about hearing that really made me happy.

"I guess not," I said. "That’s actually really good to hear."