"You are not biologically ours," he continues.

"...huh?"

"We found you. In that impossible place, looking so new... There wasn't anyone else around, we'd been lost for a whole year, but we found you there, like you'd just—appeared."

Huh. Even for here that's pretty weird. She zones back in and looks to see how Penny's taking it.

She's blinking a lot and staring at him and not saying anything.

"And your mother, she... she got infected. I couldn't—there wasn't anything I could do..."

Aw.

Penny stands up and walks to Gregory and hugs him. "You're my dad, even if I'm some weird thing related to the goddess of chaos somehow."

...okay. Zoning back out, now, she'll take a shot at figuring this round of weirdness out later.

He hugs her back. "Alright," he says, after she's pulled away, "we should figure out a plan of attack. With—" Pause. He looks at Denice. "What's your name?"

"Rescue."

He raises his eyebrows, but then continues: "With Rescue's help we can actually hear what they're saying and figure it out. You said you'd look into that Doctor Montgomery?"

"I was planning on it, but that's before I knew about you; if you have something better for me to do I can."

She considers, and then adds, "I can listen to a few places at the same time if they're close enough together," and uses the map app to show the roughly five mile radius around them that she can hear conversations in.

"Hmm... I think if you could find if there's a connection between what this Montgomery person is doing and the people following us that would be good, but you should prioritize him if you can't."

Nod, type type type. "Okay. Do you know anything else about them?"

"They were formed some decades ago. Mostly insane people who thought being a Picasso was a swell idea. The Echo cultists had existed for longer, but until the one bust where they were doing some weird ritual to a kid no one was sure this Cult of Bedlam even existed. They got caught, and the Cult disappeared after that. Then recently there were some rumors, some people going cubist without having been to the Sideways before, just spontaneously. And these guys following us, and now what you saw, there."

"Okay."

She takes a moment to think back through everything. "How did you know about the DoS not showing up?"

"A guess. At about the same time the Cult started following us, my daughter and I were apprehended by the department for violation of a red-black zone which had been yellow-black when we left it. The timing seemed very suspicious."

"Do I need to know what red-black and yellow-black mean?"

"Oh, entrances to the Sideways have classifications. Yellow-black just means it's an entrance, you shouldn't go in but if you do it's on you. Red-black means risk of cubism, it's illegal to enter, you're endangering yourself, other people, and the buildings by violating it."

"Okay. I'll be careful of them."

"Is there anything else I should know?"

"Nothing comes to mind, but you keep in touch with Penny, right? She can tell you about anything important."

"Yeah. Okay."

"We should go back."

Nod.

Suits?