So hey, remember Risa? She’s now damseled. She’s getting questioning as dumb as Lev’s:

“How often do you receive new arrivals?”
“About as often as you beat your wife.”
The interrogators are infuriated by her lack of cooperation, but she has no intention of telling them anything useful.

NO SHIT. They have nothing to offer her.

She says that this is all a test to see if she’s honest or lying, but claims that bullshit answers were totally unforeseen in this metric, because when I think of interviewing angry juvenile delinquents, I sure wouldn’t expect she makes a mockery of each interrogation. Kids who already have chips on their shoulders might mock people they hate???

They try feeding her NOT QUITE THAT MUCH FOOD next, and after weeks of this, she gets shot by a tranquilizer bullet and is now in a new cell.

This new cell is not at all designed for a paraplegic, and her captors have offered no help since she arrived.

In other words, the previous one was.

Now her guard has a rent-a-cop uniform, a description that shows up often in fiction but I’m never clear how kids are familiar with every possible version of those to be able to so effortlessly ID it.

These new jailers ask no questions, and that concerns her the same way that Connor is always concerned by the fact that the Graveyard has never been taken out. Are they so unimportant in the grand scheme of things that the Juvenile Authority won’t even torture her to get the information they want? Have they been deluding themselves into thinking they’re making a difference?

Finally, someone who has baseline competency at interrogation!

She thinks about how sad Connor was, and explains that it’s good really because She did it for him just as much as she did it for the injured boy, because as painful as it is to admit, Risa knows she had become just a distraction to Connor.

Thank god this came up, because otherwise people might mistake the chapter where Risa is captured and imprisoned after sacrificing herself as being about Risa, and we all know that really, it’s all about Connor.

Finally, Roberta comes in.

“Good morning, Risa. It’s a pleasure to finally meet the girl behind the hullabaloo. “
Risa immediately decides that anyone who uses the word “hullabaloo” cannot be her friend.

Just to be clear that yep, Roberta is evil by virtue of being and the rest is just an inevitable result of this. Good people know that women who say things certain ways are automatically the enemy forever.

Also, only brought up now, is the fact that there’s a giant wall mirror on one side, but the fact she’s in a cell designed for constant surveillance and knows it is irrelevant to her speculation that she’s being completely ignored because she doesn’t see anyone.

Roberta claims this is all about just letting her settle in, and that she wants to help Risa.

Our purpose, among other things, is to do good in this world. We seek to advance the causes of both science and freedom as well as to provide a sense of spiritual enlightenment.”

See, any time science has anything to do with spiritual stuff, it’s a sign they’re making baby Jesus cry.

Anyway, Roberta has decided that they’re going to give Risa a completely clean slate, including a fresh spine. Risa insists that for some reason, while murdering kids is entirely okay, the right to refuse organs is the most sacred right in America, which Roberta appears to confirm, saying that they’ll only do it after Risa agrees.

Roberta returns a few days later.

“It’s very noble to stand on principle and refuse an unwound spine,” Roberta says. “It does, however, represent a wrongful mind-set that is neither productive nor adaptive. It’s backward, actually, and it makes you part of the problem.”

Does this mean anything beside dogwhistles about how science is evil? I’m honestly not sure.

Anyway, this time she has Cam, and Risa reacts with entirely predictable abject horror. Honestly, it’s sort of cute how Roberta just doesn’t get that people find him creepy. She keeps acting like if she just shows them her precious science baby they’ll see how totally awesome he is.

Risa insists increasingly firmly that she wants “it” gone, and finishes by threatening to rip him back into his components if he doesn’t GTFO.

She tries not to catch his gaze, but she can’t stop herself. The thing has begun to cry tears from someone else’s stolen tear ducts, and it just makes her angry.

Now, the thing here is – Cam’s not that fucking innocent, his creepyass possessiveness is in fact why Risa is there. His feelings aren’t her problem and holy shit you just tried to meet your future girlfriend in the cell you made for her.

“Dagger plunged deep,” he says.

Shut the fuck up, Cam.

Risa at least sticks to her guns, which for some reason are to tell Roberta that any decent person would murder this thing immediately. But she doesn’t know what Cam’s really done, so it’s back to just “science = creepy”. While what Cam represents is obviously pretty terrible, I’m not sure how ninety-nine kids being killed for parts is helped by killing the hundredth one they made.

Roberta is absolutely blindsided by all this because precious science baby, though she keeps calm until Cam leaves, then says that Risa is SO MEAN OMG and she’s going to apologize SO MUCH later, then brings out the consent form and Risa, being the only one in the original cast who has anything good about her, is smart enough to point out that this is honestly pretty damn weird:

She knows she won’t sign it, but the fact that they want her to intrigues her. Why is it so important to them that her broken body be repaired? There’s only one answer to that: For some reason Risa is much more important than she ever dreamed she was. Important to both sides.

Of course the answer is important people wanting to fuck you makes you important by proxy, which is the most girls can hope for, but still. At least she’s able to recognize something’s up.