To Mercury, it's the opposite: She's said plainly what she's done, and she knows what she is.

But she doesn't shrink from it. It doesn't overwhelm her and leave her paralyzed like it would have a few years ago, or if she'd been stopped sooner.

It's something far more buried than even this pit could accommodate, something deeper and best left unexplored, something rationalized away a thousand times to keep her on her path forward.

"And so?" she challenges Howard. Admitting it, words, all that means so much less. "What will you do?"