Going to first try to get in while avoiding nurses! If she runs into one then her plan is to flatly tell her that she's allowed to be here.

No one notices as she just walks in to grab the kids.

Awesome! Cool. Anyway, she figures getting Tereza out should be easy. We'll do her first, assuming there's no one with her.

"Hey, kid. You remember two guys who came in here and asked you about your dreams and stuff? Promised to get you out?"

"Yes."

"And then they DIDN'T."

"Well, they are now. Put these on and I'm gonna walk out with you, okay?"

"...they don't just LET you leave the hospital," Tereza says suspiciously.

"Of course not, that's why you have to put the clothes on and stop looking like a patient. We walk out of here all confident that we're supposed to be leaving, and then by the time anybody notices that one of the patients is missing, we're long gone."

"If you're worried about it we can give you a haircut, too. Much less recognizable that way."

"Anyway, we don't have all the time in the world. Need to have you put the clothes on and get the other one into a new outfit, too."

(Anita remembers that the hospital has Nectar and it would be SUPER easy to grab if she wanted to be amazingly competent again.)

....maaaaaybe she will get some nectar. Just in case. While Tereza is putting on clothes.

Meanwhile--

For the first little while it's quiet at the coffeeshop. Mordred drinks his tea and scans a newspaper and tries not to tie himself up in knots worrying about what might or might not be happening in the house.

And then about half an hour after he starts enjoying his tea, Montgomery Donovan enters with half a dozen guards.

Her face is red and puffy like she's been crying.

....oh no.

She doesn't pay much attention to Mordred. She orders a cup of tea and a pastry.

She stares into the cup.

Mordred takes a split second to weigh 'if I impulsively decide to talk to another cultist Zoe might actually murder me' against 'this might be my only chance.'

And then he says the only thing it makes any sense to say, which is, "....hi. I'm sorry, but are you okay?"

She gestures for her guards to stand down.

"I'm fine."

Goddammit nobody wants to talk about their issues with a random stranger in a coffeeshop but he doesn't have any other tack to take--

"Are... you sure?"

"...no."

"I'm Montgomery."

"I'm Jesse. Do you... I don't know, want to talk about it? Want a distraction?"

"..............I guess."

She considers it.

"You come here often?"

"I don't."

"American accent," she observes.

"I'm from New York," he agrees. "I don't, um, have context? Or anything? You just really didn't seem okay."

...

Very quietly: "I'm not."

She stares into her tea, as if considering something.

"Why are you in town?"

"Malta's warm."

This is so much easier when he doesn't have to pretend to have an innocuous academic reason to be doing things.

"Vacation?"