Talking to the government employee seems likely to be bad for her health, she's not going to do that. She sits and watches Marcy paint and listens carefully to the Picasso and the Sideways entrance.

The Sideways entrance pretty much disappeared after the Picasso was no longer on the impossible floor.

"You're not going to have to climb out the window, are you?" Hollister asks. "I'd rather not have to explain to your sister how you fell twenty stories to your death..."

"Reverse glass painting. Legit method. They used to do it in churches, even," Marcy says, shaking up a can. "You do the outlines first, all the tiny little details, then the fills. Inside out, no room for error so it's trickier, but doable. I won't be bothering with crazy shaded fills, it'll take too long; some smooth grey will get it done."

"Got this all worked out, huh?"

"I always come prepared," she says, sounding smug.

"I'm surprised. I mean, I thought graffiti types just sorta scribble away and then run for it from the cops..."

She reaches for Hollister's ladder and unfolds it, propping it against the window.

"These 'scribbles' are my words, man. I take care with them," she explains, then calls to Denice. "You keepin' an... ear... out for the Picasso?"

"Yeah."

"Cool. Keep that up."

And she climbs the ladder and starts spraying. Quick wrist motions, slow lazy arcs, filling in, quickly completing her piece—

Hollister eventually relaxes on a chair, noting that there's not much he can do. He finds a magazine and starts reading it.

Everything settles down—the Picasso snores // waits // reads // completes a crossword with words from another dimension // complains out loud about the broken cameras, but no one went through the main door, did they? He would've seen them.

'Relaxed' would not be an entirely accurate assessment of Denice's state, but she's good at faking it. She maps this floor of the building in her head - she doesn't really know how much cover it takes to stop a bullet, but she can at least work out routes with the most, just in case - in between frequent checks on the Picasso.

She continues working, and the Picasso remains quiet.

But what's also quiet are Bedlam's shadows. Denice doesn't notice the child of madness until she has formed wholly near the Picasso, when Marcy is about eighty percent done.

// hello // hello hello // good evening good sir // hi.

"...hello // evening // it's late why is a girl your age here so late?" the Picasso asks.

"Shit. Go. NOW," she hisses. She's on her feet and moving, not at speed yet but she is not screwing around with this.

That startles Hollister enough that he falls off his chair. "What? What happened?—Marcy, let's go!"

"I'm almost done—five more minutes, it can't get here in five, can it?"

She speeds up all the same, while she talks, so close, so close—

// there's someone // someones // people upstairs, the shadow singsongs.

"Nonsense // was watching the cameras // da—darn those hooligans! // how did they get there?" the guard says, standing up.

// past you // bad cameras // never caught them // did you fall asleep? she admonishes.

"I didn't // did // shoot // shoot them // where?" He sounds half-guilty half-angry half-annoyed plus some other halves.

// second // two hundredth // twelfth // twentieth floor, she says. // elevators are blocked // should take stairs // go fast

He nods and turns around—or rather, flickers, and he's looking at the stairs, and he's striding there. No faster than a regular human would be, and over twenty stories might just give Marcy enough time...

"Can. Will. NOW." She's at the door, bouncing nervously on the balls of her feet and looking down, horrified, as if the floor was made of glass and there was an eldritch horror below their feet.

Bedlam giggles in dissonance with herself and melts back away into the shadows, and the Picasso starts climbing up the stairs.

"I knew it!" a girl's voice comes from the fifteenth floor, as she walks into it through a wall.

...a girl who sounds very familiar. A girl whose voice sounds a lot like Bedlam's, even though she is, as far as Denice can tell, perfectly ordinary and human.

"—Penny what are you talking about?" asks a man who came straight out of an action movie, coming from the same wall.

"Wanna bet this is the Defined Tower?" And before waiting for an answer she skips over to the closest window.

Oblivious to that, Marcy hurries even more. "Two more minutes! I'm almost done!"

The fuck.

She turns to Hollister. "Picasso, stairway, there," she points to where she's been looking. "Not forget, Bedlam. More people, there," the new duo, "fifteenth, I go tell." She dances back and forth on her feet for a moment, juggling logistics, and then realizes she hasn't mentioned - "Picasso gun."

"What—Bedlam? That crazy cultist thing—?"