Del:

Del left the compound in a foul mood. It had been weeks since he had heard anything about the girl and Riordan was growing impatient. Del was just leaving a meeting with the compound director. Riordan had blasted Del about his failure for almost a quarter of an hour, conveniently overlooking the fact that Del wasn’t even present during most of the last extraction attempt, nor was he in charge of the mission.

Del had taken the berating on the chin, standing stoically behind the chair Riordan had offered him. This only seemed to infuriate the Director who got the impression that Del was not taking the assignment seriously. After all, Myra’s extraction had gone practically textbook perfect and Del had yet to replicate such success after months of trying. Del refrained from pointing out that Myra’s charge was only fourteen and didn’t suffer from a defective personality and a compulsive tendency towards spite.

Del was still seething when he marched smartly out the compound doors. Worse than the director’s ire was his own sense of failure. Wrapped up in his own contemplations, he almost walked past the girl perched on the park wall across the street. Nyssa hadn't seen him yet, she was occupied with throwing nuts in the air and catching them in her mouth.

Del stared for a moment, unsure if it really was Nyssa sitting outside the building with the highest concentration of Caul in England. But there was no mistaking the frizzy mass of red-purple hair spilling over her shoulders in tangled twists and loops. She was wearing a sack of a dress with a holey men’s jumper pulled on over the top. It hung off her small frame, slipping off her shoulders. She’d poked her thumbs through the holes in the sleeve. Her socks came up over her knees, leaving a slim strip of skin peeking out from underneath the dress.

She didn’t react when Del approached. He didn’t say anything, just watched for a few minutes more as she threw nuts, most missing her mouth.

“What are you doing here?” he eventually asked. She hadn’t expected him to talk and the distraction caused her to tip too far backward, attempting to catch a nut. Del grabbed her ankle as she flailed, stopping her from toppling off the wall. The nut bounced off her eye and she squeaked. She rubbed her eye, fixing a glare on him with the uninjured green orb.

“I’ve come to surrender,” she said as if it were obvious. She held out her wrists as if to offer them to be cuffed. Del raised an eyebrow.

“What?” Nyssa asked, crunching into a handful of cashews.

“For months you have been actively avoiding all things Caul,” Del pointed out, “and now you are surrendering.”

“That was because I didn’t want to join your club,” she said, slipping off the wall and wobbling at she hit the ground. “But now I’ve seen the error of my ways. Sign me up for your little psychic gang.” Del crossed his arms and grunted, skeptical.

Nyssa sighed. It was no fun when Del was all serious-like. She retrieved a backpack from the wall and fished out a rolled up bit of thick paper, the kind that artists use. She offered one end to him. Weird vibes were seeping out the pores of the parchment. For a moment, Del hesitated, searching for something in Nyssa’s eyes. She was deeply serious and sincerely terrified. He took the paper, unrolling it with his long fingers.