"He's alive," Mel called out, kneeling beside a prone figure in the wreckage. "I guess she is too, her spirit's still here at least. Did you hit him with whatever that weapon was? Or does he somehow get hurt when the monster dies? Did he put his own health into it? Or hers? Is she using her host as a sacrifice, could she be that crazy?"

"She wouldn't," Amber tried to answer, but she didn't know the right words to say, "She's not crazy, she wouldn't hurt people on purpose. She can't be."

"What about all the monsters?" Mel asked. "Look, I'm sorry. I know you want to know her better, but–" he cut off talking as the janitor's eyes flickered open again. The man was lying on his side, with Mel trying to pull him away from all the blood and filth, or make sure he didn't drown in the blood streaming from his mouth. For a moment, Amber looked straight into green eyes with a copper ring around them, and she knew that it was Ammadrine looking back. Not a reincarnation, a new person with a bundle of memories and feelings she couldn't understand. It was Ammadrine there, as perfect and wise as she'd always been.

Then he coughed, and he blinked, and that ring of gold was gone.

"What are you..." he managed to get the words out in between bursts of coughing, "You shouldn't be near me."

"You should be in a hospital," Mel told him sternly, "But how do we know what's going to happen if you can get there?"

"Get away from me," the guy grunted, and tried to get himself off the ground. He could barely move his hand, he certainly wasn't going to stand up. "I can look after myself."

"I think we've already seen that," Mel answered, eyes darting between the stranger and Amber. He didn't have a clue what to do, that much was obvious. And he had no idea what Amber was going to do either. "Is it you or Ammadrine making the monsters?"

"It's not... I just wanted to be rich. My family always said this was the legacy, I was going to conquer the world." It was a slow speech, pausing to wince and cough up more blood, but he seemed to be recovering slowly as he spoke. "I don't need that, though. I don't care about the people. I can corner the markets, make enough money with this magic technology that everybody will have heard of me. Or figure out how to make diamonds, and then I'm rich. Why would I want monsters?"

"It's her then." Mel looked at Amber as he said it, but she couldn't understand his feelings at all. Since she'd joined the Rainbow Knights, it had always been Mel and Violet she could understand the best, the ones who seemed to listen. While he'd been making friends with Mom, Mel had almost been like an uncle, or a trusted babysitter, somebody who was so close he could almost be family. How could he just not listen to her instincts like that?

"No!" she gasped, "Ammadrine wouldn't..."

"You heard her shouting like that. About the armour that would make all the difference. She's going to kidnap the Princess or something. Everything she said, you know those were the words of a lunatic. Please, Amber. I hate this as much as you do, but there's no–"

"There's got to be something else!" she yelled, "There has to be! Amma wouldn't do that, she's like the kindest out of all of us, she fights so hard because she's got to, and nobody ever stopped to ask how she feels. There has to be something we missed, something so this all makes sense. It can't be her!"

"It's not her," their prisoner muttered, "It can't be, not from the legends I've read. I'm like the fifth I found record of who's had this power, and before that all of them were the same, they..." he broke down in another bout of coughing, leaving Amber waiting, actually holding her breath while she hoped for an answer.

"Good place to stop," Mel barked. Or Jack's voice in Mel's mouth. It made Amber shiver when she heard it, it just seemed wrong somehow. Maybe that was how Mom had felt when Alex was in Amber. "I like how you're only injured when it sounds like you're trying to be helpful. But I don't like tricks so much. So, one question, one answer. No rambling saga, no playing up your injuries while you think what to say, just the truth. Is it you or her summoning the monsters?"

"No. I don't think so."

"Wrong answer. We followed the energy trail here. Turns out Mel and Violet between them can do that even without the machines we used to have."

"No, I really think..."

"Then let us talk to Ammadrine," Jack didn't give him more than a second to think, "Let's see if she's coming up with the same pack of lies."

"I can't, she wants to..." This time it wasn't the beating he'd taken that made him stop. He wasn't coughing up blood any more, and the bruises had already started to fade. But the way he looked, it was like he was thinking of something so horrible he couldn't even say it. Like a bad joke, or something he knew they didn't want to hear. Amber had seen people look like that before, when they were talking about her dad.

"I wasn't asking. You're trying to block her, Mel can feel her trying to come out and your own will containing her. So maybe she's ready to tell the truth, maybe the kids are right and Ammadrine isn't the monster we thought. Is it you using her power? Let her tell us."

"But–"

"That wasn't a question. If I can't talk to her right now, then I'll end both of you before she can finish–"

"No!" It was Amber's turn to interrupt. She knew that she'd just heard something really important, something that would give them all the right answers, but she didn't have time to think about it now. She threw herself at Mel, or at Jack, she wasn't sure she was most angry at right then. After hearing that they wanted to kill Ammadrine, just so they could put off sorting out this mess until the next cycle, she couldn't even believe it. Mel reached out a hand to catch her, Jack hesitated with the attack he'd been preparing. For just a moment they couldn't decide which way to move, and the janitor guy took advantage of the confusion. Amber wanted to believe that she saw another flash of understanding in those eyes as he leapt up from the ground, but everything was moving too fast to tell. He was holding something now. A piece of crystal, some kind of doll in one hand. And in the other, dark metal. A gun, maybe.

And just as Mel wasn't sure if he should catch her, or push her aside, and if he should be worrying about Amber or about the prisoner trying to escape, he saw Amber's eyes close. She was a dead weight by the time she fell across him, and the confusion that left them with was enough to buy Ammadrine or her host plenty of time to run off into the shadows.