[crow]

Lyra read over the brief again. There wasn't much else to do. They'd been on the road for hours, and she had more or less exhausted her attention span for anything else. Mobile games, recreational reading, movies... Nothing held her attention. Jericho was there, a perennial presence at the edge of her consciousness, but it wasn't like she could talk to him with everyone else there.

And her mind kept going back to the unassuming manila folder and its contents.

[crow]

Seven students, all in comas. Not all at once, but over the course of five or six months, they'd been drawn in by ones and twos. All in the same geographical location, area, and all the new victims had at least tangential connections to existing patients at the time that they succumbed.

The President was convinced that it was related to Mals, and Lyra believed it, but the real question was how. Or more specifically, what was happening to them.

[crow]

Lyra had been dealing with Mals in an amateur capacity, with only her gut feeling and what her contracted spirits could tell her, for a while now. Luke and Bastien and the President had been at it for even longer than that. But none of them had seen a case quite like this before, and any theories they had were conjectures at best. That was why they were going; at this point it seemed most likely that there would be things they could only figure out once they were on site.

[crow]

But they knew so little, and it made her... Well, anxious wasn't the right word, but... Restless, somehow. She skimmed the contents of the folder, but it was just as sparse on details as it had been the last time she read it.

"Give up. You aren't going to find anything new in there."

Lyra looked up, smiling reflexively at Bran, laughing a little as a trace of irritation flashed over his face. She'd heard him approach, but she'd thought it was Bastien until he spoke.

[crow]

That was pretty bad. They weren't anything alike, and under normal circumstances, it would have been easy to pick them out by the sounds of their footsteps. Bran wasn't short, but Bastien had at least half a head on him all the same, not to mention a heavier build.

"Oh, you know me. Love to review my facts," said Lyra, but her heart wasn't in it. She put the folder down, then collapsed on top of it, folding her arms on the table.

[crow]

Bran studied her for a moment. Lyra smiled, presenting the perfect picture of innocence, though beneath it she was studying him too. Her little cousin that she had only gotten back in touch with a few months back... She remembered him a little from when their foster situations overlapped, and they'd stayed in touch in a vague sort of way for a while, but the memories felt incongruous when she held them up against the real thing, so many years later.

[crow]

Kids changed as they grew up. Of course they did. Lyra didn't look the same as she did back then either. But the sharpness of his tongue, the studied grace in the way he walked... She saw a look in his eyes sometimes, when it was just the two of them, that just made her sad.

And then, when they were around people, she saw the way he smiled, like a cat hiding its claws.

She wondered if she looked like that too sometimes.

[crow]

"You don't like hospitals, do you," he said. It wasn't a question, even though he'd phrased it as one.

Lyra's eyes widened in an expression of surprise that was only half feigned. "Whoa," she said. "As expected of a police detective. You're sharp, huh?"

"A lucky guess," he said, in the same mild and modest tone he used with outsiders. Calling her out on her own blandishments. She deserved it, she supposed, but it was still pretty uncomfortable to have someone who could read her the way she read them.

[crow]

Lyra smiled, but this time it was more subdued. "What gave me away?" she said, but before he could answer, she shook her head. "No, don't tell me. I'm not sure I actually want to know."

Bran said nothing, merely taking the seat opposite her at the booth. The President had gotten them a ridiculous luxury bus that apparently couldn't make up its mind as to whether it wanted to be a trailer or not, as a compromise--- or maybe an apology, for not being able to manage a plane.

[crow]

Which was ridiculous, since none of them would have demanded that kind of luxury; most of them weren't even used to it. But there it was. Rich people sure did things differently.

Lyra looked out the window at the passing scenery. "I don't really remember it well, but they hospitalized us all after the crash," she said. It was all a blur now, more a series of feelings and impressions than a real episodic memory, but even then it made for an uncomfortable recollection.

[Wild Pet Found]

[crow]

But it wasn't just the act of remembering that sat oddly with her. Even saying this much aloud, even to Bran, who knew at least some of the details, felt wrong, somehow. She knew it wasn't; she listened to people all the time when they talked about their problems. But deflecting about her own thoughts had become a habit, and now she felt out of sorts, being on the other end of it.

Bran stayed silent, patiently waiting, but Lyra could only shrug. This was as far as she could bring herself to go.

[crow]

Her father, her mother, even her brother, everything was hazy, as though they had never been real to begin with. And Lyra had spent so long thinking that it was psychosis she was dealing with, not... not supernatural entities, that the idea that she might be able to trust her own perceptions again felt like a lie.

And in the meantime, she supposed she had started disbelieving everything in retrospect. Another bad habit to break. She was accumulating a real laundry list, wasn't she?

[crow]

"I would tell you not to push yourself, but..." Bran inclined his head.

Lyra smiled. "We need me on the field," she finished for him. She knew full well that she had to hold it together, and in her own way she appreciated the fact that he didn't try to pretend otherwise. It was, she thought, a very Bran thing to do. He really wasn't one to sugar coat anything, once you got past the TV ready persona he'd constructed.

[crow]

"I'll be fine," she said. And she would be; she really did think so. At least, it couldn't be worse than how she had been the year before Bastien and Luke found her, anyway.

"Good," said Bran, as though he didn't expect anything else. But she knew better. He wouldn't have pointed it out if he hadn't been at least a little bit concerned.

The rest of the ride passed uneventfully. They stopped at a gas station, and everyone piled out for snacks and coffees.

[crow]

Lyra got herself a fruit juice, then grimaced immediately after taking a sip. Too sweet. She ran her tongue over her teeth, wishing for the comforting bitterness of a good black coffee, but caffeine was just about the last thing she needed right now.

It wouldn't have been a good coffee anyway. Not from a machine in a gas station in the middle of nowhere.

"Everyone ready to go?"

Bastien walked up beside her just as Luke called out to their party in the parking lot.