Narrator 2: Lark’s original escape plan, involving a fast motorcycle and a hidden spaceship, had basically fallen apart once she accepted how fast the tearror was approaching Midst. But now, she’s done it. She’s figured it out. She’s figured an escape path that no one else thought of, honestly because it’s incredibly dangerous in its own right and comes with its own host of problems, but we won’t talk about that for now.

Narrator 1: It’s actually a really terrible means of escape.

Narrator 2: For anyone ELSE, sure, but not for Lark! Lark’s, you know—

Narrator 3: She’s COOL. She’s a HUNTER.

Narrator 2: She’s GOOD at stuff.

Narrator 3: She’s a sorceress, which we mentioned previously.

Narrator 2: She’ll be okay, as long as nothing comes along to disrupt her brilliantly-concocted plan.

[Hatch creaks open]

Narrator 3: Nobody, like this burly Adsecla.

[Heavy thump.]

Narrator 2: Like this stupid action-hero guy who has just dropped through the hatch and landed all three-point style on the floor of the mail car, and… aw, fuck.

Narrator 3: As he looks up, his hair tosses majestically in the glowy blue light.

Narrator 1: From Lark’s perspective, it’s not very majestic. It’s hateful. We don’t want to see that hair. We don’t want to see this guy.

Narrator 2: What, does this guy use conditioner?

Narrator 3: She needs to put a stop to this right now and she’s got a gun to do it.

Narrator 2: He doesn’t even see her as she steps forward out of the darkness, and she’s got a gun to his head before he knows what’s what. She says her cool line to him. [as Lark:] “Today’s just not your day, is it, kid?”

Narrator 1: The mail car is gliding through cosmic darkness, inky black above, inky black below, the cable stretching downward into the dark, and aboard, Lark and Phineas, their standoff mighty tense.

Narrator 2: Okay, so there’s a lot going through Lark’s mind right now. The last time she saw this Adsecla, he had this crazy kind of light in his eyes and was tearing through the crowd, going after… her? Tzila?

Narrator 1: Probably her. It seems to make sense that they would want her.

Narrator 2: Lark is an incredibly paranoid survivor. She just assumes that everyone is after her until proven otherwise, so.

Narrator 1: The last time Lark saw this guy, he was having some kind of emotional breakdown, though at the time she didn’t really have a lot of bandwidth to be paying attention to him. She was busy trying to fire up her motorcycle and get the hell out of Dodge.

Narrator 2: All she knows is that he was coming after her, and then all of a sudden he fell to his knees and started having what looked like an existential crisis, and that allowed her to escape. And now here he is again. She readjusts her grip on her gun.

Narrator 1: In front of Phineas is a grizzled, dangerous, threatening, ominous, grave, and very battle-hardened looking woman.

Narrator 2: And she looks really intense in this lighting, too.

Narrator 1: The blue, eerie shimmer of his mica armor reflecting dimly in her eyes.

Narrator 2: Every crag and plane of her face harshly illuminated. It figures, he thinks, on the worst day of his life, what’s a little more… just, inconvenience? A few more fatal encounters [Lark:] “What are you doing here?”

Narrator 3: (as Phineas) “Well, what are YOU doing here?”

Narrator 2: (Lark) “Stop following us.”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “But I’m not— Who— Who ARE you?”

Narrator 2: (Lark) “So you’re NOT following us?”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Look, I’ll tell you what I’m doing here, if you point that thing somewhere else.”

Narrator 1: This is great. They’re making progress.

Narrator 2: Communication is all about questions, hurled back and forth at each other, one after another, just demanding answers, giving nothing. Lark lowers the barrel of the gun slightly, still maintaining a firm grasp on it. What he doesn’t know, what she won’t bother mentioning to him, is that there’s no way she is discharging that while they’re hurtling down deeper and deeper into the Fold. This is just a, well, to be honest, a bit of a bluff, a showpiece to try to threaten this sudden interloper into her previously safe escape space.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I’m Adsecla Phineas Thatch.”

Narrator 2: (Lark) “Okay.”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I serve the Trust, in case that wasn’t obvious.”

Narrator 2: (Lark) “Yeah.”

Narrator 1: Pretty obvious.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I’M here on a mission of mercy.”

Narrator 1: Is that a fact?

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Who are YOU? What are— you’re not— No one’s supposed to be here! Saskia said this would be EMPTY.”

Narrator 1: What does Saskia have to do with this?

Narrator 2: (Lark) “You spoke to Saskia before coming here?”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Yeah, she SENT me.”

Narrator 2: (Lark) “I thought you worked for the Trust.”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Who are you? What, what do YOU have to do with Saskia?”

Narrator 2: (Lark) “Nothing. We are here to escape from the gigantic tearror.”

Narrator 1: We? Who?

Narrator 3: She keeps saying “we.”

Narrator 1: And then Phineas sees Tzila. In the dark, behind Lark, the girl. Clinging to Lark’s arm, gazing up at him with a wide-eyed, truly haunted expression. This girl is not having a very good day.

Narrator 3: And whose fault is that? His stomach lurches at the sight of her. Looking into her eyes is more than he can handle right now.

Narrator 2: Maybe it’s a good thing it’s so dark in here. He wouldn’t even have noticed her if he hadn’t started looking around after all that “we” business.

Narrator 1: The only light in the cargo compartment right now emanates from Phineas’s own mica armor, his mace and his shoulder pauldron,

Narrator 3: casting a bluish-white light into the space,

Narrator 1: reflecting in Lark’s and Tzila’s eyes. It is an eerie effect.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Tzila, I was looking for you, I—”

Narrator 2: He is abruptly cut off as Lark suddenly steps bodily between him and the girl, with alarming swiftness. [Lark:] “You don’t talk to her. You talk to me.”

Narrator 1: She’s very scary. Phineas is accustomed to dealing with intense people, but this woman is among the MOST intense.

Narrator 2: But Lark has just learned something very interesting, something which actually puts her a little bit at ease. It was the girl he was interested in earlier, back when he was trying to get to them through the crowd on Midst, not her. Unless he’s lying. He looks like he’s bad at lying.

Narrator 1: He has one of those faces. He’s also a young guy. He’s younger than she thought he was at a glance. He seems new to this? She needs to learn more about this guy.

Narrator 3: But before she can, Phineas musters up what courage he’s got, and tries again. [Phineas:] “Who are you, speaking on Tzila’s behalf? I know HER, who are you?”

Narrator 2: Lark could smile, almost, if she was at all the sort of person who did that spontaneously. If he really doesn’t know who she is, then this whole situation might be 1% less immediately deadly than she thought it was. That’s great. Shrugs a little bit. [Lark:] “I’m a hunter.”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “What do you hunt?”

Narrator 2: (Lark) “Monsters.”

Narrator 1: She looks like somebody who might hunt monsters. She’s got a lot of gnarly scars, that’s for sure.

Narrator 2: In fact, Lark’s monster-hunting prowess is why she’s here right now, in this rattly old cargo container. It’s what made her willing to even consider this as an escape route when no one else on Midst would, even while they desperately fought their way onto every other vessel the islet had to offer. For one thing, this car can only go where the cable goes, which is down, deeper into the Fold, away from ONE tearror perhaps, but possibly towards who knows how many other tearrors lurking in the deep currents. And there’s another reason this mail car was left undisturbed. This is all common knowledge to the people of Midst, but Lark realizes she’s going to have to fill Phineas in on a few things. Otherwise, he’s probably going to get them all killed. [Lark:] “And speaking of monsters,”

Narrator 1: Lark says,

Narrator 2: (Lark) “most of them would usually leave this shipping container alone. It’s not supposed to carry living cargo. It’s not supposed to carry anything that would attract the attention of predators.”

Narrator 1: She brings her face closer to Phineas’s.

Narrator 2: (Lark) “One passenger might be okay. Two passengers might be okay, if they sit still and don’t talk. But now, we have three sweating, breathing, talking people on board this thing. And the more noise we make, the more heat we generate, the harder our hearts beat, the more danger we put ourselves in — especially as this car goes deeper into their territory. Do you get what I’m saying, or do I need to toss you overboard?”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Uh… Yes. I can be quiet. Not a problem.” He has questions, but he doesn’t dare ask them. This lady is a psycho.

Narrator 2: (Lark) “Good. Now ditch the armor and the mace.”

Narrator 3: Phineas feels a bolt of panic. No way, he can’t do that! These are his sacred vestments, his armor, the only things marking him as Prime Adsecla of the Trust. As Jonas’s right-hand man. Lark sees his hesitation, and knows she can’t risk having a fight.

Narrator 2: (Lark) “Just take it off. At least the mica parts. Put them in a box or something. You’re gonna start another tearror if you just stand there like a damn floodlight. Do you have a death wish?”

Narrator 3: While Phineas doesn’t have a death wish, he is certainly not in the best headspace. This has been the worst day of his life for many reasons.

Narrator 2: And if it weren’t for his extensive, disciplined training for years, he probably would be having a much more visible breakdown than he is right now. As it is, this veneer of professionalism is kind of holding him together.

Narrator 3: His armor is holding him together.

Narrator 2: Seeing his hesitation… [Lark:] “Well fine, I could just throw YOU out of the car.”

Narrator 1: And she begins to come toward him, looking very serious about that.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “No, I can, I can take it off.” And Phineas backs up behind a couple of crates and attempts to extricate himself from his mica pauldron,

Narrator 2: not something he’s used to doing without the assistance of a squire… or Jonas.

Narrator 3: But he does it, and he sets the pauldron down inside of a box, mica up,

Narrator 2: careful not to let that exposed mineral touch the sides of anything else,

Narrator 3: and he seals it up.

Narrator 2: Harsh illumination disappears as he places the crate lid back on, and is shortly replaced by the warm, fluctuating, gentle illumination of a fold-safe lantern which, it appears, Lark and the girl had brought with them.

Narrator 1: Dim as well, but comforting in the oppressive, dark, claustrophobic interior of the mail car, which whizzes deeper and deeper still, down, down into the Fold.

Narrator 2: Phineas comes back out of the crates, hands raised placatingly as he demonstrates that he’s done what Lark asked.

Narrator 1: Lark and Tzila appear to be talking quietly. Tzila looks absolutely dazed.

Narrator 2: Traumatized.

Narrator 1: Phineas is clearly not the only one having the worst day ever. Does she know what he did to her father?

Narrator 2: She doesn’t seem to know that Phineas specifically is responsible for what happened. Probably her reaction to him would be very different if she did.

Narrator 1: Phineas’s mind is racing. Should he say something? She doesn’t seem to know.

Narrator 2: What could, what do you say in that situation?

Narrator 3: You change the subject.

Narrator 2: That’s what.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “I’m on my way to… Sequester? We’re on our way to Sequester, is that right?”

Narrator 2: (Lark) “Yeah, that’s where this car goes.”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Saskia sent me to reach out to the Mothers.”

Narrator 2: Lark nods her head in recognition.

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Are you going for the same reason?”

Narrator 2: (Lark) “The Mothers? No. We’re going there because that’s where this mail car goes. We’re going there because it’s not Midst, because it doesn’t have a tearror about to hit it. That’s about it.”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “So… what should I do?”

Narrator 2: (Lark) “Pretend you’re not here. Don’t do anything to get your heart rate up.”

Narrator 1: Phineas’s heart IS beating pretty fast now, and that’s starting to concern him.

Narrator 2: Lark isn’t so good at comforting people. Lark gestures to the opposite side of the car. [Lark:] “Take a seat.”

Narrator 3: (Phineas) “Sure. Okay,”

Narrator 1: Phienas says quietly, hopefully quietly enough for whatever is out there to not take notice.

Narrator 2: And Lark and Tzila take their seat as far away as possible from him on the other side of the mail car, and crack open a fresh can of bread. Yum.

Narrator 1: And, staring at each other from opposite sides of the claustrophobic interior of the car, the Adsecla to the Prime— well, the former, potentially—

Narrator 2: He’s not really sure of his employment status at this moment.

Narrator 1: But in any case, he’s theoretically an Adsecla, and that Adsecla, Phineas Thatch, and that hunter, Lark, and that very frightened girl, Tzila, sit quietly as the cart descends deeper into the cosmic dark.