"Do you still want to be its friend?"

She struck the silence hard, but it was still standing. So she swung once more, and said:

"That was just a taste, my dear. You weren't there four years ago. You didn't get to see."

She stared at something not there for a long, quiet moment. Then she went on.

"The whole place was smoking, black like there was a fire. But the suppression system did not activate because there was no fire. Flesh sloughed off my researchers' bodies as they stripped their coats and clothes, in vain. Their eyes were bursting out of their skulls. These...malformed things were gnawing on them like children's teething toys. I can still hear their bones snapping, them begging for help. For death. I shot some of them in the head. I can see in your eyes that you probably haven't killed anything on purpose."

The Assistant shot her a look with just her eyeballs.

"...And if you did, it probably haunts you." She told her.

"I took some pictures. Do you want to see them?"

The Assistant looked on, stone-faced, at the passing advertisements on the muted screen.

The Doctor stood up, and stormed over to her. Before The Assistant had decided to react, she was seized up by her slinged arm and brought to Kusanagi's level, her toe-tips barely on the floor. She howled in pain, gritting her teeth.

"Stop it! You're hurting me!"

Her grip was strong and icy, and she wore such a graven look on her face, that The Assistant feared she was about to die.

"Look! *this* is what you are coddling! This is what you're protecting!"

Picture after picture, Verna uncomfortably half-choked in Kusanagi's grip, could not turn her head away from the photos on the phone screen.

"This was just the aftermath. You weren't there!"

She tossed her back into her seat and leaned in very close to her. For all her terror, she was quite beautiful up this close. In the way that a predatory animal was graceful. Her breath was hot and cool, her forehead lightly perspiring. She peered into Verna's very being.

"You have to prevent that from happening again, or we will be killed. THAT is your duty, THAT is your directive. Do your job, and stop concerning yourself with the Subject personally."

Just in time, the lift came to a halt, and the gate latch released. Kusanagi looked over her shoulder as the gates parted. She returned to Verna with a believable smile.

"We will talk more later. Enjoy your weekend."

Verna skirted the outer edges of the lift platform, carrying her things haphazardly in her arms. She couldn't look away from Kusanagi as she exited. She tried to play it cool, but the men boarding gave her strange looks. For all she cared, they could find out for themselves why she appeared so shaken. She rushed past the front desk with a half-hearted goodbye to Martin, and went out the door.

Kusanagi sat, eyes forward, watching the doors close. She said nothing to the men. Laborers, uninvolved directly. She knew she was not a paragon of empathy, and she also knew that they did not deserve what was inevitably going to befall them. Her teeth ground behind closed, painted lips of magenta. The pen snapped in her hand.

They ceased their chatter, and the rest of the ride was quiet.