Alexis closed the door behind her as she entered the work room. It had been a couple of hours since she had last been in the room, but now Lennox had gathered a fair number of people, who had looked up at her when she entered.

Lennox was sitting on a chair across the table, facing the doorway, and Nita was a couple of chairs away, apparently freed from her work based on the shine in her eyes and the enthusiasm her posture expressed. This time Boris was accompanying her, eyeing her wearily. Pedro was sitting opposite her, turning his head a little in Alexis's direction. Suzanna, for reasons unexplained, was sitting cross-legged on the table at the far right, Ken and Day leaning on the behind her, side-by-side.

Alexis sensed an increase in the amount of attention she would usually get if she would enter this room. It made her wonder what Lennox had already told the rest of them. In fact, they were so focused on her that it took a while for them to register the fact that she had Azusa in tow. Azusa flinched as the attention redirected to her, but everybody glanced at Lennox instead.

He gave no objection, and just nodded. Therefore nobody else seemed to mind. Alexis took this opportunity to edge around the table and stop next to Lennox. Azusa also stepped forward and sat on a chair next to Pedro. By the time Alexis had bent down to ask Lennox what he had already told them, the attention had turned back to her, and she stopped short of Lennox's ear.

After a few moments, Suzanna spoke up, pointing at her.

"You," she said. "Why are you so nervous?"

Alexis blinked at her, and then straightened up. "Wh-what else am I supposed to do if all of you are just gonna stare at me like that?!"

However, at that moment, everyone cancelled out the intensity of their stares and made it seem as though they were simply acknowledging what she was saying.

"What are you talking about?" Suzanna asked nonchalantly. "Lennox just told us you had some interesting things to tell us, and we were just curious."

Alexis glanced at Lennox, who hadn't directly looked at her ever since she entered the room. He was sitting, with his arms folded and a cool expression on his face. Sensing her, he glanced back, and held out a hand, inviting her to take initiative. Alexis nervously glanced around the room, then shook her head. She was reverting to 15-year-old Alexis.

She cleared her throat, and faced the room at large.

"Um, we would have discussed this with the main base first, but seeing as the communication is down, and it looks like it's going to be down for a couple of weeks or so, it looks like we're going to have to discuss this amongst ourselves. We need to provide the clearest possible report by the time we can communicate again."

At this, Alexis noticed Pedro's forehead crinkle a little, and gave him a questioning look. He shook his head in response and offered a smile for her to continue.

"Uh..." Alexis's eyes flitted back to him once, and took a while to regain her momentum. "So all of you know that yesterday, an individual who claimed his name to be 'Ryder' showed up. He had been spotted numerous times before, but he would kill all, Inhumans and humans, indiscriminately. However, he seemed to have had a reaction to Amara, who came along a few weeks ago. We did try questioning him a little, and what from we heard, it seems as though he had escaped from a base about 2 years ago."

"Oh!" Suzanna perked up. She raised her hand. "We can check for records from other bases, right?"

"Yeah, but not any time soon because, like I said, communication is down. And we hadn't received the total evaluation of the number of humans for a while, and who knows how many bases have been narrowed down."

"We're quite an uninformed base, aren't we?" Nita pursed her lips and leaned back in her chair, arms folded.

"Probably because we're one of the smallest," Boris mused.

"W-we got some basic information from him!" Alexis said pointedly, and attention returned to her. She navigated through the papers she had neatly arranged (thankfully Lennox hadn't messed it up yet). "Um, he's apparently 18-years-old. He was apparently abandoned by his father when he was 5, and some guards found him and took him  in." Alexis paused and swallowed thickly, and Lennox noticed how she avoided a particular detail. He shoot her a look, and she replied with a look of her own.

It's not necessary.

Everybody noticed this exchange between them, and despite Lennox and Alexis being known for having a language of their own when it came to communicating with looks, everyone except Suzanna, Ken and Azusa guessed what it was about. The three didn't bother with it, however.

Ken spoke up. "Alexis, stop beating around the bush and get out with it."

"U-uh, yes," Alexis continued hastily, flipping through the report in her hands. "So... apparently he said that he was related to Amara. As in, her brother. But then, Amara is someone we don't know... anything about. Even she herself is a limited source of information. But he seemed to be someone who had a lot more info. So...when he escaped...I followed him..."

Alexis suddenly sense a movement from where Ken and Day were standing. However, when she looked over at them, she couldn't tell if either of them had moved. She glanced at them once more before continuing.

"A-after that, he told me a few things that were.... interesting." Alexis said carefully. At this point almost everyone had noticeably leaned in a little. She swallowed, and said, "It looks like he and Amara both have a connection to the start of this outbreak. This is because, according to Ryder, this outbreak was their father's fault."

The atmosphere in the room suddenly tensed up. After a stretch of silence, Nita spoke up.

"Does...this mean that Amara is connected with the outbreak?"

"I...I'm not sure," Alexis stuttered, fidgeting a little. "But he said that no matter what anyone told us, none of...this is Amara's fault."

"That doesn't necessarily mean she isn't connected, right?" Nita retorted.

Alexis was about to speak up, but her voice got caught in her throat. Before she could try again, Ken cut across her.

"Exactly how much can we trust what this Ryder character is telling us?" Ken questioned, not a hint of anything given off in his tone. "How can we be so sure he's telling us the truth, and not just what he wants?" He looked right at her.

"I don't think he lied..." Alexis murmured, diverting her eyes. Suzanna looked between, then swung her legs down from the table.

"For now, let's just continue assuming what he said was true." She leaned back on her palms from support. "So based on what you're saying, Amara has nothing to do with anything and it was all her father's work?"

Alexis thought for a moment. "His exact words were something like 'None of this is Amara's fault, it's her father's'. Yeah."

Nita slammed her hand on the table, turning attention to her. "So what did Amara's dad do?"

"...he didn't say," Alexis replied, looking down.

Nita clicked her tongue irritably, and recline in her chair. "Oy, Lennox. You haven't said anything."

Lennox turned his eyes to her, and then somewhat showed surprise. "Alexis and I already talked as much as we needed to." He turned back to the said person. "Are you done?"

Alexis was about to nod, but Pedro sat up, raising his hand. Alexis turned back to him.

"Yes?"

"So, what I have inferred is, Amara's father started the outbreak?" he inquired.

Alexis processed what he said for a moment, then nodded.

Pedro looked satisfied, and leaned back again. Alexis was going to make her way to a seat, but this time Nita interrupted her.

"Does this mean we have a justification for Amara's captors' actions?"

Alexis looked confused. "Huh?"

"Remember? Apparently, according to Amara, people wearing the same clothes as us did horrible things to her. Based on that snitch of information, we can guess these people were from a base."

"Oh, that's a possibility." Ken seemed to have caught on. Alexis turned to him, and he continued in his monotonous voice. "Maybe they thought Amara did have things to do with whatever her father did, and tried to get out of her?"

Lennox sat, absorbing all of their inferences. His brow was furrowed and he stared intensely at the edge of the table he sat on. Nita spared him a glance, before Suzanna got her attention.

"It could have also been runaways like Ryder," she supplied. When everyone turned to her, she shrugged, as if she said something as trivial as the weather. "I mean, they could. They might have done whatever out of pure spite. You know, maybe because they're cuckoo."

"Hold on, backing up to what Ken said," Lennox said suddenly, taking everyone by surprise. He stood up, still thinking. "About how they might have thought Amara knew stuff and tried to get it out of her. Why'd they bother with Amara, a 13-year-old, when they could have gotten it from the man himself? That seems more efficient than clutching on a loose straw of hope like that, doesn't it?"

Everyone considered this for a moment. Slowly, they nodded.

"Yeah!" Lennox now looked at them properly. "So if they had to turn to a feeble hope like Amara, wouldn't it mean her father wasn't reachable?"

"Ryder...?" Nita piped up.

"He said he was abandoned." Lennox said automatically, and was surprised at how perfectly it seemed to fit. "Remember, he got mad when we criticized his parents? Maybe his dad did that on purpose. Probably so he didn't have to get involved with things. I suppose burning his face was a bit extreme..."

"L-let's put that aside..." Alexis told him.

Lennox had already discarded that thought and continued. "So, anyway, we heard that this whole thing is their dad's fault. So he started this... And if he did... doesn't that mean he was the person to be Converted?" Lennox seemed to have gotten very excited, and he clutched his hair to contain himself. "Wouldn't that make him...the mother of the virus?!"

Everyone seemed to be getting caught up in his flow. It even lured Ken away from leaning on the wall. Day, however, as usual, has to point out unnecessary things.

"You're making a weird contradictory statement, Lennox," he said.

"Forget that!" Lennox shouted. "What if...what if her father is the source of the virus? And...and... that's why he burned Ryder's face!" Lennox looked around at them, but they stared back, incomprehensive.

"Only a crazy dad would do that, right?" Lennox prompted. "Ryder seemingly knew that his dad wouldn't do that if he didn't have to, and only because he wasn't in his right mind? And he wasn't in his right mind, couldn't that mean he was Converted?"

Lennox ran his hand through his hair, pushing back the blonde locks that had fallen onto his forehead. "S-so if he's the source...and we find him and kill him..." He looked around at them again, giddy with excitement. "Wouldn't that – assuming – kill off the entire virus, if their 'parent' or 'source' wasn't alive, or whatever?"

Everybody digested this wave of assumption. Yes, it did have quite a few holes, but it was the best hope they had, wasn't it? They looked at Lennox, eyes bright (sans Ken).

"Woah, isn't it happy and fluffy in here?"

Owen appeared through the crack in the doorway, pushing it open. Amara was at his side.

"What's up?" Owen grinned, but then his eyes, as well as Amara's, focused on something behind Lennox. Owen's eyes registered incomprehension, but Amara's however, dilated.

Confused, everyone looked behind Lennox as well, and their breath seemed to have stopped. How did they not notice the black figure that resembled a teenage Death at all, perched on the window?

Ryder seemed to have realised that their attention was now on him, and he rested his elbows in his knees, balanced comfortably on his toes.

"How naïve, Alexis," he said in his slightly hoarse voice. His eyes found the dilated ones, and he sighed. He crushed almost the entire atmosphere they had built in the room in a single sentence.

"I killed him off a long time ago."