[Long description: A long, long comic strip. In the first panel, the two Sibyls rest on a mattress together, naked, presumably crashed out after sex, but you didn’t hear that from me. The ex-Sibyl’s monstrous arms are coming apart in chords of loosely-wound tissue, and this is apparently what relaxing looks like for her. She wraps her arms around the Sibyl like a living blanket, but bonks her nose against the Sibyl’s arm as the woman adjusts the pillow under her head.

The Sibyl tries to settle in. She looks distracted with other worries, unlike her partner.

“Was it this hard for you? Being left behind?” The Sibyl asks.

The ex-Sibyl opens one eye and perks up.

“Oh, sure,” She says, shuffling in closer. “Breaking code was nothing. But… The way the Company looked at me when I started showing symptoms… I felt like…”

The ex-Sibyl trails off as she tries to summon the memory. It is hidden in a dark corner of her brain—one where she’s curled up on the floor, choking on her own blood and looking fearfully back as one of her brothers in arms finds her.

The memory overtakes the comic as the ex-Sibyl recounts it. She says, “All the things that were wrong with me on the inside were on the outside, suddenly, and everyone could see them.”

The memory of herself is shown with her face to the floor, in a puddle of her own blood. She’s pinned there by the muzzle of a bolter. This is from before the infection overtook her, so she doesn’t have the usual marks of it, like her pale irises, black sclera, or claws. Apparently, shaving her head and styling her undercut was a decision she made after the fact, too.

BLAM BLAM.

The gun fires. The comic frame splits open with a flash of red.

The memory of the ex-Sibyl is shown with her head bowed, revealing the gunshot wound weeping in the back of her skull. At first, her body is still and lifeless…

…Until she stirs. She lifts her heavy head up, marginally.

The ex-Sibyl continues narrating. “And boy… I was wrong in a way nobody knew how to fix.”

The memory of the ex-Sibyl lists back, off-kilter, as she rises from the dead. Heavy shadows obscure her face, but she smiles from ear-to-ear. Only a pinprick pupil surrounded by the disc of her iris is visible in the dark. She looks absolutely deranged.

“That’s when they put me in the fission core!” The ex-Sibyl announces, pulling the frame back into the present.

The woman next to her is silent as she clutches the pillow close to her body, partly covering her face. She looks distracted, again. The ex-Sibyl notices this, and falls silent herself.

“How do you feel?” She asks.

The Sibyl responds immediately. “Like shit.”

She grimaces. The ex-Sibyl just laughs at her. This catches the Sibyl by surprise—and doubly so when her old enemy starts tracing her claws over her cheek again.

The ex-Sibyl rolls over, resting her chin on one hand and toying with the Sibyl with the other.

“The shame is setting in, I take it?” She asks, smiling.

Before the Sibyl can reply, the ex-Sibyl pulls her in for a quick kiss. This doesn’t surprise her so much, but she does blush.

“It’ll pass,” The ex-Sibyl says, as she breaks the kiss and pulls away. She taps the Sibyl’s lips playfully.

The Sibyl groans. Through the guilt and shame, she manages to do some perspective-taking: “Ouuhhh how did you navigate all this by yourself…”]