Author: Lurina

105: Everyone Dies (𒌋𒐂) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Inner Sanctum Exterior | 4:10 PM | Third Day

By this point, even someone with brain damage could draw a rough conclusion about what had probably happened to cause this, and what that meant.

I looked down at the other four while I passed them - on closer the inspection, the blood seemed to be mostly coming from Seth's arm, the fall having opened up one of his wounds from the events in the underground. He'll be okay, it doesn't look too serious, I thought to myself. (Maybe this level of absurd flippancy towards others was just what I was like, beneath my pretenses and intellect.)

I approached the entrance to the second floor. There wasn't much more to see up close - it didn't look as though Anna had been carrying very much. Other than her scepter and her carving tools, it was just her clothing and what looked like a expensive portable logic engine. I didn't think to check it out closely.

I stared down at the fluid with a vacant expression in my eyes for a few moments, my mouth hanging open slightly, then wandered back into the hallway, with zero regard for the self-evident danger. The area was once again well-lit, the interior of the fish tanks emanating the same stark, somewhat eerie streams of light as they had the prior day, though in comparison to how things had been for the last few hours it felt practically inviting. With even the distant 'wind' of the air circulators cut off, the silence was almost absolute.

I saw the golem that had been firing on us collapsed on the ground close by. I stepped over to inspect it; there were no signs of serious damage, so presumably it had only stopped once Anna had interfaced with the logic bridge. I was about to turn back when I noticed that, for some reason, the ground was wet.

A puddle of water was expanding - not incredibly quickly, but reasonably fast - over the stone flooring.

I followed where it seemed to be coming from, heading back the way we'd originally come, taking care not to slip. It seemed to be coming from a doorway I'd never passed through before, facing inward as opposed to the outward orientation of the bedrooms. Now that I was getting close, I could make out a subtle sound of running water.

I felt a sense of strange inevitability, and reached out to open it.

More water sloshed through as I drew back the door. I'd already guessed by this point that this was probably the bath house Neferuaten had mentioned in passing during our tour, but like everything in the sanctuary, it was a lot more decadent than I'd anticipated. The walls were adorned with complex tiled artwork - some of which seemed to have lighting woven in, though I couldn't tell if it was bioluminescent or created by the Power - and the space was just obscenely massive in general. The 'baths' were closer to shallow swimming pools than anything.

The room was a little darker than outside, with blue-tinted mood lighting, but I could still easily make out everything within. The smaller of the baths, the one closer to the door, seemed to be overflowing. Glancing at it more closely, it seemed someone had turned on the mechanism to fill it with water, which seemed to move quite quickly.

And, looking closer, I spotted what I already suspected, so much as I was capable of suspecting anything.

More clothing: Two outfits. One was a thick, leather overcoat, long enough that it could conceal the whole body of an adult man... Along with a beak-shaped mask that seemed somehow familiar.

The other was a set of light-colored, conservative looking robes, designed to cover all skin on the body,

I pulled back the cloth. A large, slug-like creature laid beneath. It looked as though it had drowned in the water.

I squinted, not fully understanding, and my eyes were drawn to something else: An old-fashioned bronze projector which had been set up at the back of the room. The lens beamed a square image on to the wall. It displayed only two lines of text, the font bold and almost menacing, like the headline of a newssheet, a commandment in a holy book.

They read, quite simply:

THIS IS JUSTICE

AND THIS IS KINDNESS

After that... Well, I don't want to say that things calmed down, but there wasn't any more action for a while, at least.

I slowly regained my wits and stumbled back to the stairwell, where some of the others had started to recover, waking in a more coherent state than I had. I apparently looked like such a mess that people were shocked as soon as I emerged from the hallway, having been worried that I hadn't made it at all. I'd been bleeding from the head; the fall had been more severe than I'd thought. There was blood all over my face.

We recovered, such as we could. With the Power, no one remaining was in any serious physical danger - Seth's arm was easy to patch up again, nor were we threatened by any of the golems. For the few minutes we stayed, Linos kept watch and disintegrated any that came even somewhat close.

Apparently, the Serpopards pumped people with a paralyzing venom that could become fatal if left untreated for very long, but even that wasn't much of an obstacle to a team of professional (well, nearly-professional) healers, and Theo was soon back on his feet, if not exactly fully recovered. Linos noted he'd probably have some difficulty moving for the remainder of the night, but it wasn't enough to render him incapable of walking.

Emotionally, though, things broke down even further once I'd been able to explain what had seemingly happened.

Anna's loss didn't hit anyone hard, and despite the horror of what had happened to Fang - their instant, gruesome death at a moment so bad it had to have been planned (if there was another shooter outside, why were we still alive? As if that was anywhere close to the biggest question at this point) that left a pit in my stomach, no one had been particularly close to them. They'd been distant from our class; a fun, if intimidating, acquaintance.

But Ophelia... Though aloof, she'd been a friend to a lot of people, especially Ptolema and Seth. The former had broken out into tears, while the latter had practically screamed in anger - at himself, at the culprit, at what seemed like the building itself. I wasn't taking it so great myself. We'd gone most of the night without losing any classmates. Now we'd lost two at once, and Anna and Zeno too.

Ophelia had always been kind to me, same as she was with everyone. But strangely, it was Fang's death that felt more piercing. When I thought about how I'd never hear their enthusiastic lectures again, their smug sense of understanding, their weird and out-of-context compliments... It was a chilling loss, almost as painful as Bardiya.

Worse, though, it now felt like everyone left who might've had a chance to get us through this was gone. Anna and Fang had been the last two people I'd truly considered competent on a level well beyond myself. Linos was an adult of course, but, well... On top of everything, this recent development seemed to have left him utterly harrowed. He responded vaguely when spoken to, but seemed internally panicked, his gaze trembling as he kept staring vacantly into space.

As for the others, Ran kept whatever she was feeling to herself, while Kam, too, had gone eerily silent. There was a strange look in her eyes.

We couldn't remain on the staircase for long - the most important thing was to contact Sekhmet. Even if we'd missed our transposition window, it'd been instructed to configure more as a fail-safe - a precaution I was now feeling extremely glad of. However, if we were going to run out of oxygen and become dependent on a supply of eris to survive, waiting at the transposition chamber itself might not be an option. To this end, we sought out the same logic bridge Anna had used in her final moments.

It turned out to be one of the ones up against the wall which had been blaring when I'd first woken up. Kam took the lead, though Linos and I attuned to it too.

"Sekhmet," she said, now in a tone of tense calm.

Understand that the logic engine designated Sekhmet is presently unavailable due to undergoing debugging, an unexpected impulse, presumably belonging to Eshmun, communicated instead. Understand that this process will take approximately 38 minutes to complete.

"I see," Kam said, narrowing her eyes slightly. "Has something triggered this?"

Understand that logic engine designated Sekhmet experiences errors when exposed to unexpected stimuli that must be addressed. Understand that this is a regular occurrence. A pause. Understand that it is unexpected you are still here, as it was understood you were already to depart the sanctuary.

I met Kam's eyes for a moment, and we shared a brief inquisitive look. That seemed like a peculiar degree of curiosity.

"Linos," Kam said, turning to him for a moment. "Can we confirm this is Eshmun we're speaking to, and not someone interfering from its terminal?"

"Oh, uh, yes. There's a method." He cleared his throat. "Eshmun, please give impulse verification."

There was a strange feeling in my mind. Tingly, vaguely unpleasant.

"And your identification code, please."

Understand that it is B21K-HVV48N5TQ.

"I think that's right," Linos said, scratching his head. "Well-- At least the impulse was. I only sort of remember these codes"

Kamrusepa looked at me and shrugged slightly. I guess maybe he'd been a little more advanced than we'd had the impression of.

She turned her attention back to the bridge, crossing her arms. "You are aware of our intentions, Eshmun?"

Understand that parts of our memory are shared with the logic engine Sekhmet, it explained. Understand that the arrival of and conversation with council member Amtu-Heddu-Anna was also observed.

Probably best if it didn't know what had happened. There was no telling if they'd still be compliant if they knew we were down to just one actual authority figure.

"I see," she said. "I'm surprised you weren't able to track the fact that we hadn't already left."

Understand that disturbances to the Amniakic-Hymakic trans-bioenclosure infrastructure has resulted in a state of limited data retrieval from the gateways. Understand that it cannot be determined when they were last used.

A side-effect of our work outside, no doubt. That meant it was impossible to know if Lilith and Mehit had escaped.

"But you can still tell us when the next scheduled departure is," Linos asked, almost desperate.

Understand that such is possible due to this having been determined during prior connectivity. A brief pause. Understand that the following times have been confirmed for transposition: 6:03, Androkeian Gateway. 7:25, Gynaikeian Gateway. 9:19--

"Three past six?" Kam quirked her brow. "Nothing sooner?"

Understand that there is no sooner transposition possible, it said. Understand that the intersection of the planes with pre-designated transposition points allows for arrival and departure roughly once every hour and fifty minutes--

She hissed in frustration, breaking the connection.

"That's it, then," Ezekiel said, picking up enough even from one side of the conversation. "We're fucked."

"We are most certainly not fucked," Kamrusepa chided him. Seth, who was being supported a little by Ptolema on account of the sheer exertion of his body having to be healed again, groaned softly. "It's not good. But we have the Power, and the eris pools seem to be functioning as well. There's no reason we can't create our oxygen and heat... And gravity, at the tail end... And whether the storm."

"That's assuming they stick to the things they've announced," he said. "Does the way they've behaved thus far give you the impression that will happen, woman?"

Kam rolled her eyes, apparently not considering him worthy of response.

"To be fair, those messages haven't mislead us about the way they've used the defenses of the sanctuary so far," Ran pointed out. "Other things have happened, sure. But even though they could blow us up, we're still here."

"They're probably just toying with us," Ezekiel said, shaking his head. "Gods, how did it come to--

"Su," Kam said, turning to me. "You said you found the outfit the culprit has been wearing at the scene, didn't you?"

I nodded stiffly. "Y-Yes."

She turned her head. "Let's go take a look at it. I want to see the scene with our own eyes."

"Even if, uh... No ones attacked us yet, we should probably put up some sort of barrier," Theo suggested.

"Good thinking," Linos said, nodding. "I'll do it, since the rest of you used your eris in the battle with Hamilcar."

"Mm," Kam said, eying him for a moment. "Very well."

I led them - redundantly, since it wasn't like we didn't all know this area perfectly well by now - around the corner to the bathhouse. I'd turned off the tap, but the damp was still omnipresent. The other girls, save Ptolema, raised their skirts to stop them from getting wet, but I was still too brain dead to care.

Our group really did feel small and fragile now-- Down to just eight people. Even with the barrier, it didn't feel completely safe.

I hadn't noticed it the first time, but on a second visit, it was clear there was some slight discoloration to the fluid, the same as the... Presumed remains of Anna. It gave the whole thing a deeply macabre quality.

We entered the chamber. The reaction was subdued; everyone looked around for a moment, then quickly directed their gazes to the floor, whereupon their expressions soured.

Well, everyone except Ptolema, who was looking at the words projected on the wall. "The slides... Someone must have changed them out."

Ezekiel frowned at her, irritated. "What?"

"We were, uh, in here earlier... When we were all split up." She explained. "Right before we found you on the stairs. It was showing this weird story about a pig--"

"Let's not try to get everyone's story straight just yet," Kam said, leaning down to inspect the clothes and Ophelia's strange liver creature from the presentation, still lying there, apparently dead. "This is the same as you saw it when you came in, Su?"

"Yes," I said.

Ezekiel snorted. "We're just going to take her at her word?"

Kam glared at him sharply. "Su was with us the entire time, Ysaran. There's no way she could bear responsibility for this." She looked back down. "And regardless, again, we're not comparing accounts right now. We're gathering information." She picked up the beak-shaped mask. As soon as I got a good look at it again with a clear head, something twinged in my brain.

"Wait a minute," I said. "Isn't that Durvasa's mask? The one we saw laid on the body upstairs?"

"You hadn't realized that sooner?" she asked me, turning it over in her hands.

"Well, I was a little out of it..."

"Hm." She paused for a moment, then turned to regard Theo. "Does this match the appearance of what you say ambushed you on the way to the exit, Theo? The smaller version of the 'creature'?"

He peered at it. "I think so-- No, I'm almost certain." He bit his lip. "The shape is... Very similar, now that I look at it. I just couldn't tell in the light."

"It looks like what we saw earlier in the night too," Seth said, frowning hesitantly. "When we were on the way back after we found Mehit. Right, Su? Ran?"

We nodded in assent, though in truth I wasn't completely certain. I hadn't exactly stopped to smell the roses when we'd seen it.

"I see," Kam said, her tone slightly different. "Well, that's one mystery solved, I suppose. Only a baker's dozen left to go." She reached over grimly, pulling the artificial liver closer. "Why is this here?"

Linos frowned. "Well, it belonged to Ophelia, so one assumes..."

"That's not what I mean," Kam said. She squinted. "I mean, why would she have this on her? Shouldn't it still be in her chambers?"

No one had an answer, though a few others gave her anxious looks. We all stared at it, and her clothes, as the water very slowly ebbed away through the overflow drains.

"Gods," Seth eventually said, shaking head. "Ophelia... I can't believe that she's--"

"Don't," Kam spoke, cold and firm.

His voice was cracking. "If we'd just, I don't know, looked back, seen what was going on--"

"Don't." Kam repeated. She inhaled sharply. "Save it for when we're out of here."

The room fell silent again, the only sound the sloshing of the water. I noticed that Ran, rather than looking where everyone else was, instead seemed fixated on something on the design of the wall. There were some images, but they were abstract and seemed to mostly depict waves and fields, so I couldn't tell what she found interesting.

Something else occurred to me instead. Though all of Ophelia's clothes seemed to be present, her scepter wasn't. Kam seemed to have noticed, too, as she was still examining the ground with an inquisitive expression. (It seemed as though she was the only real one left with a heart for serious investigation.)

I stepped forward a little, my eyes probing around for where it could be. Eventually, I managed to spot it at the bottom of the pool in front of us, up against the wall and distorted a bit by the water.

"It looks like her scepter sunk down there..." I said, pointing.

Kam raised her head, peering. "Indeed. Can you get it out?"

I analyzed the task hesitantly. "Uh, I don't really want to get wet."

She looked at me flatly. "With the Power, Su."

"Oh, right," I said, blinking. Already out of the habit.

I raised my scepter and spoke the Object-Manipulating Arcana, then raised the metal object out of the water before dumping it in front of our group, whereupon it clattered noisily on the tiles.

Kam picked it up, inspecting it carefully.

Ptolema was scratching her head. "So, like, what happened here seems pretty obvious, right? We know everyone in the Sanctuary, and the only two who had seed overlap was Ophelia and, uh, that guy-- Balthazar." She turned to Linos with a frown, apparently already doubting this basic premise. "That's right, isn't it?"

Linos nodded. "Yes. ...well, so much as I have the authority to say that, since you've already seen us slip up on that front." He glanced to the side. "But I would have thought we would have noticed when we were all at dinner yesterday were it not the case."

"Okay," Ptolema continued, nodding. "So... This must have been Balthazar, right? He dressed up as the monster, messed around with us until we all ended up upstairs, shot Fang--"

"The shot came from outside, fool girl," Ezekiel interjected.

"You sure?" Seth countered. "I mean, the glass shattered and I saw the blast, but it was so dark--"

"--and then grabbed her when we were all running for it, after the golem showed up." She held a hand to her mouth. "He must've wanted to touch her and take all of us with him while we were still close by, but screwed up... Maybe since she was wearing such thick clothing, she managed to wrestle him off for a bit in a way he didn't expect."

"She was tougher than she looked," Seth said distantly.

"I think see where you're going with this, miss Rheeds," Linos said. "After we started to escape, he must have got desperate and thrown them both into the pool."

"Yeah, exactly," she said, nodding. "So... After that, her scepter would to the bottom, but their clothes would all rise to the top. Right?"

"Doesn't seem like a bad theory," Linos said. "Though if it's true, I suppose we ought to count ourselves... Well, almost fortunate, as cold as it seems to say." He cleared his throat. "After all, if the event had happened even half a minute sooner, we would surely have been wiped out to the last."

"I knew there was something off about that guy," Seth said, frowning deeply. "Never should have left him off alone where he could do whatever he wanted."

I wanted to agree, and validate the anxiety I'd been feeling about Balthazar for the entire trip... But somehow, this didn't feel right. And lingering brain fog aside, I felt pretty sure it wasn't just because it was Ptolema suggesting it.

"Why would the tap be running, if that's what happened...?" I asked her.

She considered. "Maybe they just knocked it during the struggle? It kinda sticks out."

It did stick out, in fairness, built into the floor adjacent to the bath rather than in the bath itself. Bumping your foot into it incidentally would probably be enough to set it off.

"Or maybe this is a setup designed to make us lower our guard," Ezekiel said, his expression dark. "To think, 'oh, how convenient, the culprit has removed themselves from the board!'" He kicked a little at the fallen leather robes, revealing a set of small wooden stilts that must've also been part of the illusion - no wonder it hadn't seemed to run very fast. "All we know for certain is that there are clothes here. Everything else is inference, nothing more."

"We know there was a fucking contact paradox," Seth said. "A real one. That's not something you can fake, not even with the Power."

Ezekiel snorted, but offered no particular retort.

"...just because there's a contact paradox doesn't mean it's two people touching," I suggested, trying to piece things together. "It just means that enough living cells from different instances of the same seed have touched."

"Obviously," Ezekiel said, as if he'd already made the point and I was just reiterating it. He shook his head. "No, we're being played. That thing got close to me, and I'm certain the build didn't match that lanky Rhunbard. And what's more, that shot definitely came from outdoors."

Theo frowned. "You got close to it? What happened?"

Wait a minute, I noticed. When did Ezekiel even meet Balthazar? The conversation moved on before I had time to fully consider the question, let alone raise it.

Ezekiel hesitated. "It was when--"

"Again, let's save comparing accounts for when we're somewhere safer," Kam said, rising and turning towards us. "I want to put all this evidence in a bag. Has anyone got a spare? Something that'll keep water out."

"I think I've got a spare leather one," Ran said, finally taking her eyes off whatever was commanding her attention to root around in her things.

Kam nodded, accepting it. "That'll do."

Theo bit his lip. "Should we... Go to look at the room where Fang, ah..."

"I don't think we have a choice," Seth said. "It's the only way to settle this shit about where the shot came from."

"Don't we, though?" Linos asked rhetorically. "Rather... In spite of this final tragedy, I don't think what we planned before all this has fundamentally changed. We're back together, relatively safe, we have access to the Power. I think it might be best if we just made our way back to the abbey and hunkered down next to the eris pool until it's time to depart. Lilith and Mehit escaped, they might have already sent word to the rest of the Order..."

"Mister Melanthos, I'm going to be extremely - and I want to emphasize this, extremely - charitable to you, and assume that most of your suspicious behavior and attempts to conceal the truth from us thus far have been the result of misplaced self-sacrifice and incompetent crisis management skills rather than explicit ill-intent," Kam stated, already walking past him. "But please understand that I am inclined to view any attempts of yours to keep information from us with overt suspicion. I would advise you stop."

He sighed, gesturing for his wheelchair to move forward after her with a flick of his finger. "Miss Tuon-- Miss Murslisdaughter, please. If you'd listened to me earlier, we might've avoided all this!" He clicked his tongue. "I don't know why you're... Ugh."

"What do you mean?" she said, turning back to look at him as she walked. "Is there still more about the situation you know than you're telling us? Perhaps why the monster turned out to be little more than a stage prop?"

"No, Kamrusepa," he said, firmly. "I just mean that if we hadn't lingered in that room, everyone could have escaped."

"Everyone but you," Theo said, looking down at his father with an uneasy expression.

"Well, yes, but..." He sighed. "Never mind. Let's just go."

"I'm not going back in there," Ezekiel said, as we approached the door. "You can do what we want, but I'm not giving that sniper another chance."

"Zeke, if you'd reassign some of your brain cells away from thinking about phrenology or whatever shit is normally on your mind, you might be able to draw some conclusions from the fact that we woke up in front of a giant fucking window," Seth said flatly. "Even if there is a sniper out there, I'm pretty sure they're done with us. And we have a barrier now, anyway."

"I'm not going back in there," Ezekiel insisted bitterly.

"I, uh." Ptolema spoke weakly. "I kinda don't wanna see it either..." She rubbed her eyes. "Man. This is all so much."

Only Kam, Ran, Theo and I ultimately went inside the room. Like the halls, it was now well-lit, and...

Well, let's just say I regretted looking closely.

I'll spare you me re-describing Fang's corpse in all its grisly detail. Suffice it to say, there wasn't a glut of new information to be discerned from returning to 'my' room. Fang had illustrated everything about the faux-monster already, and the body was-- Well, Kam looked, and apparently they weren't carrying anything notable.

More to the point, it turned out to be very difficult to confirm where the shot had come from. Of course, we were hardly forensic scientists, but the details of the scene seemed contradictory. The first thing we did was look for impact points for the refractor rifle shots on the ceiling and upper far wall and, sure enough, we found them, corresponding to the four blasts we were mostly sure we collectively remembered hearing and seeing. (Ezekiel insisted there was a fifth, but we dismissed him as an anomaly.)

But when we tried to trace those points of impact to where the windows had shattered... They didn't line up. One did - or close enough that we weren't able to tell otherwise - but the rest seemed completely scattershot.

"What the fuck," Ran said, as she levitated to inspect the ceiling again. "It's like the shooter was deliberately firing through the holes they'd already made to try and throw us off."

"Or perhaps creating those holes themselves while firing to give us the impression they were outside," Kam suggested, as she stared through the glass to the building's exterior. "These windows aren't reinforced-- They shatter wholesale. We can't verify what did this to them."

"That's a good point," Ran said, eying them critically.

I frowned. "I don't want to say that Ezekiel's right about something--"

"I can still fucking hear you, you know," he said from out in the hall.

"--but it really seemed like the shot that killed Fang came from outside," I continued. "I mean... I saw the beam. It came straight from the window."

"Your eyes can play tricks on you in darkness like this, Su," Kam said, holding up a finger. "I know it's hard to get into the frame of mind now that we're seeing the room well-lit like this, but think about it. There was no light coming from the outside at all - no distinction to our surroundings whatsoever, save from the little circles of light produced by those dinky little biolamps... Which need I remind you, Seth, Ptolema and Ezekiel has been relieved of at the time." She narrowed her eyes. "We were all focused on Fang, and this is an excessively large bedroom. If someone had, say, shifted away from their lamp and slipped behind the curtain, then kicked at the window just as they made their shot..."

"...they'd create the illusion of it coming from outside. And then after that, it was total chaos, and most of us weren't even looking back to check what was happening," I said, continuing her thought. "So they'd have been able to do whatever they wanted in terms of creating the illusion of suppressive fire. Is that what you're saying?"

She nodded, satisfied. "More or less."

I bit my lip. Her thoughts weren't unreasonable, but... Somehow, my brain was really insisting it'd seen the shot come from out the window, even if I couldn't place why.

But that seemed like a stupid argument to make, so I made a different one. "Fang would've have noticed, wouldn't they? They were facing the whole group."

"Perhaps," she conceded, though didn't seem wholly convinced. "Don't mistake me - I'm not ruling out the possibility of an external shooter. Or perhaps Balthazar had been hidden here since before we arrived, waiting to spring his trap. ...however, I don't believe we should rule out the possibility that someone within our group was party to - if not responsible - for what happened. After all, the conspirator behind Sacnicte and Yantho's death remains unaccounted for."

I furrowed my brow, but nodded grimly.

"I'm pretty sure I had at least three of the others in my line of sight when it happened," Seth chimed in. "If we compare our accounts--"

"Parties who are not part of the investigation do not get to participate in the conversation," Kam stated strictly. "And once again, let's leave that until we're done collecting evidence."

I couldn't see him, but I'm pretty sure I could make out the sound of Seth raising his hands to the air before letting them flop to his sides.

She turned to Ran. "Can you cast the Anomaly-Divining Arcana, please? I should like to confirm that there has been no extra-natural tampering with the scene."

Ran furrowed her brow. "Okay. You wanna take my hand?"

We both did so. The results of the incantation were plain; nothing had been cast in the room for the entire night. For good measure, Ran extended the range to the whole building through the last several hours, but as one would expect, there was nothing since the Power had begun being blocked.

"Right then," Kam said. "Also, while we're at it, do you happen to have your camera on you?"

Ran blinked. "Yeah, I always keep it in my bag."

Kam nodded. "Mm, that's what I thought. If you don't mind, please take a couple of photographs of the scene, in case we should require them for future reference." She cracked her knuckles. There was a funny look in her eyes - like a shark circling its prey. "Right then. I suppose that's everything, so we'd best get moving-- Linos, where is the nearest eris pool?"

"Downstairs, in a service closet near the entrance." He looked at her disapprovingly. "Miss Tuon, I'm not sure it's appropriate for you to be giving people instructions like this."

"Don't worry, sir," she said, without looking at him. "I quite expect I'm already done."