Harpy stopped speaking for a full minute, and you wondered whether she was just going to drop Walker and be done with it. But instead, she scooped him up and reoriented him until her talons were gripping him by the torso.

“Thanks. Much better.” he sighed.

“What are you, exactly?” you asked, leaning over Harpy’s shoulder to look at him. “Are you a zombie like Simon?”

Deadhead barked out a laugh.

“Are you kidding me? That guy's a fucking idiot. He barely had a brain anymore.”

“Something else in common.” Harpy added.

“What are you, a parrot? That's my joke.” he declared, jabbing a thumb at his chest as he stared up at her.

“I'm stealing it.” Harpy said with a toothy grin.

“Right. Bandit Queen. How could I forget?”

“Brain. Damaged.” Harpy reminded him.

“It's probably more than that, honestly.” he admitted, rubbing the side of his helmet. “Remind me to bill you later.”

“Seriously, though…” you cut in. “Your body can take some serious punishment. Is that like your superpower, or something?”

“It's not a superpower. It's human experimentation.” he corrected you, a clear note of bitterness creeping into his voice. “Harlan motherfuckin’ Ryker. That's the asshole that did this to me. He's the reason I look like a killer smurf. And he's gonna pay for it someday...”

“Why would he do that to you?” you asked.

“Who knows? And who cares?” he said with a shrug. Somehow, you knew that he wasn't being entirely honest about his lack of interest. “Whatever reason he has for turning me into this, it won't be good enough to save him.”

“Make him hurt.” Harpy muttered. “Make him pay.”

You both looked at her.

“Why? He screw you over too?” he asked.

Harpy shook her head.

[re]d“No. But he should pay. He deserves it. If you’re speaking the truth.”

Deadhead nodded.

“Oh, he deserves it alright. So long as I can still move, Ryker's cause of death'll be anything but natural.”

You've never heard of this guy that Walker hates so much, but you could empathize with being angry about having something done to you without your knowledge.

You spent the rest of your trip in silence, and Walker miraculously didn't get himself dropped from hundreds of feet above the ground. That was, until Harpy eventually realized what Deadhead had meant by referring to her as "Tyson", and she ended up dropping him on top of a particularly spiky fence.

For all the trouble it caused him, though, Walker didn't seem to regret having said it very much. On the way down, you were pretty sure you could hear him laughing about how the joke could be interpreted in more than one way. He was still laughing, even whilst being impaled on the spiky fence.

—------

(Cont.)