He shakes his head once more. "It is all or nothing. If i cannot succeed... Master Knives's plan will kill us all. It is already in motion."

“And I’m sure you’ve done so much to convince him of the worth and value of human life. With all of your work.”

"He will not listen to me. I tried, I tried and tried and tried, over a century ago. Every one of my words, doubted; my intent, questioned. If the plants can read my heart and show it to him, it has been found wanting.

"Perhaps you will do better. I pray you will. I pray... that all my work has been in vain. That I will be able to die a hated man, a monster, and that there is a better way I was too weak or too cowardly to pursue. Hate me, because I deserve it. Do better than me. Because if you can't, then... I must keep doing this. Master Knives will not allow me to die, until I succeed. Or until he does."

"Yes, I wouldn't want to live as you either, doctor. But I'd just actually try to change instead of wringing my hands about the futility and monstrousness of my existence and bemoaning how my words are no longer being believed. Are we there yet or is this place nothing but damn corridors."

"A couple more corridors."

He doesn't say anything more. There's no point.

There really, really isn't. He's just trying to justify himself to someone, to have someone else that is clever and human agree with him and say, 'Yes, it was awful, but you had to.' That would grant him some measure of comfort, of peace.

She will not be indulging him. He's a monster, who had a thousand ways in a hundred years to try to do better, be better. After all of them, he's still making pathetic excuses and experimenting on children like they're things.

Finally they arrive at: a bedroom. It's simple fare, bed and desk and a bathroom. Then he gestures down the hall. "There is a kitchen that way. We have ingredients if you wish to cook and full meals produced by the plants if you do not. They often make whole batches at a time.

"Now if you'll excuse me."

"You'll get no excuses from me, actually, but yes. You can go. Thank you for your help."

He bows to her then walks away.

And she can go and eat something and use the bathroom and so on. Annoying biological needs that she'd really rather be without.

... Once that's handled, she has a hunch. It's not particularly expensive to test, so she might as well.

"Hey, Zazi?" she says, even though there's no sign of any worm anywhere in particular.

Well here's Zazi walking around the corner and into the kitchen. "Hello! 'You'll get no excuses from me, actually', that was great, we are writing that one down for later."

Well now that she's talking to them, worms are pretty cute, actually???

"Hello. Happy to be of service. Would you be willing to help me find my way back here in the future, my spatial memory is not up to the task of navigating the maze of corridors, and I think if I spent much more time around the doctor I might try to strangle him."

"Do it! We'd love to watch. —but fine, we can show you around." They extend a hand and one little flying bug crawls out of their sleeve up to their palm and then flies over to her to circle around her head.

"Thank you, I appreciate it. I recommend nestling next to the bun, you'd look cutely ornamental up there. ... Though I suppose then Nai might kill it. Hm."

This does mean that she will have a worm running around in her hair, of course, but honestly? She has had to deal with overcoming quite a lot of instinctive flinch reactions from things that are icky or unclean, since she left December, so. Little lifeform hitching a ride on her hair, sure, why not. It's not like she takes her hair down that often anymore, anyway.

There goes the bug, then.

Zazi just shrugs. "We are not individuals. A single bug is not a loss. It does not matter if Mr. Knives kills it."

"All right, you'd know better than I. I admit, I don't really understand, but." She shrugs. "I don't really need to in order to take your word for it. I'll figure it out." Then she grins. "Or I won't! We'll see. Will you help lead me back to the plant room now that I've been fed and watered? I'd absolutely like to get back to work."

"Yes, yes, we'll lead the way." There goes the tiny bug.

"Thank you, Zazi, you're the nicest hivemind I've ever met," she says, because she suspects that Zazi will find this highly entertaining, based on their love of language. To the plant room!!

They do find it very entertaining. The nicest! Also the least nice! Language is so fun.

When she gets to the plant room Knives is already back. He is floating in front of one of the plants, doing the exact same thing Zash did with the sand steamer plant. The "transformation" of his skin is more thorough, he is entirely covered in white with the blue glowing patterns with zero humanlike skin showing, and he is glowing more brightly than Zash did.

He does not react to their arrival.

Aw.

Well, she will not be starting work until he's done, because that is the sort of thing that might get her killed, so. She'll sit down and sip her water and wait.

It doesn't take very long for him to be done with this iteration of it, and he soon floats back to the platform.

And then kills every single bug with a blade, including the one resting on Yvette's head. His blade does not touch Yvette herself, though; even her hair is left unscathed. "You have returned. Are you ready to continue?"

That's kind of terrifying, but it's better for him to have fine control than not that, so uh. Yay for that???

"Yep!" she says, standing.

(.... she kind of wishes he'd wear some clothes. She is having emotions about being sexually attracted to Zash's brother. And also a murderer who hates humanity, but, like, the part that feels weirdest is the brother part.)

If the plants are conveying her thoughts to him, he is not reacting at all. He once again adopts his cross-legged position in mid-air, but this time he is sitting much closer to her, close enough to be able to watch her at the console and her equations.

Fortunately for her complicated libido, she can absolutely tunnel vision onto her work! Yes, there are so very many plants to help, and she can absolutely work up the proper enthusiasm to help them.

It's still VERY ANNOYING that she doesn't have any of her data, though. She's having to re-derive some equations!!!!!! This is clearly a waste of time but she'll tolerate it because the alternative is stopping and NEVER. Even with this handicap, this is the most freedom she's gotten to actually do her damn job since Jeneora. Technically on the sand steamer she was also doing her job, but it really felt more like her job was enabling horrific abuse and therefore completely awful. Plus, it was sort of like trying to do that job while also desperately fighting off a vicious carnivorous beast that was trying to rip her patient to pieces in front of her no matter how much she didn't want it to. Which is really very obstructive to just enjoying her work, actually.

Anyway yes he can have more math and more explanations and she will help more plants and she will be gleeful about this, actually. There are so many easy ways to help!! The harder problems can wait for later after she's got all of her tools back!!! Eeeee she gets to do her job eeeeeeee she's so happy.