She doesn’t pull away, she lets him take the hand and accepts the comforting squeeze for what it is, though there’s a look of mild surprise in her eyes and her ears tilt to match.

“...I didn’t start out so noble,” she admits, with a little shrug. “Dropped outta school, did hacking for money, got caught... but when the Doc found me, or, y’know, when he got through to us how important what we could do is... well, it’s a chance to do something.”

She likes to think her parents would be proud of her work with g:L, if not the circumstances that led her there. She’s helped people, people like her Mam, and as out of her depth as she feels sometimes, that’s good.

She remembers saving people in the towns near De Soto base, when the flooding hit; carrying kids to safety, in her giant Holon hands. She made a difference there, she wasn’t powerless.

The memoryscape around them shifts, not to that flooded town, but to a kitchen somewhere in Glasgow, where the wind is rattling the windows, heavy rain beating against the glass.

Cammie jumps. “What the—”