She swallowed the scream that wanted to come out. The skin under his fingers was hissing with the heat, her makeup blackening and hissing into the burns.

Maybe he was telling the truth? Was Sam Tyler really so bad? Prefect always seemed ready for anything, he always bounced back no matter what he said over the network, despite his friendship with the Marquis -

- but she always seemed okay, too. And Kirk was 'so bad'.

"I wrote it," she said, barely able to hear herself over the rattling breath in her lungs and the roaring in her ears. "Go tell Jimmy on me."