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Camlann didn’t really have to go looking for Megiddo when the time came. She wasn’t hard to find: zone in on any knight-Nega pairing and she’d be there, in all her ******** psychopathic glory. The Lieutenant wasn’t someone he knew, or someone he had considered redeemable. He sat on the rooftop and watched Megiddo beat the girl to death. As the uniform faded back into the orange and cream of a Meadowview girl, Camlann dropped down two stories to a fire escape. “Do you feel better now, b***h,” he asked, leaning over the edge of the fire escape. “How has your stolen time been treating you?”

She could always count on Camlann to ruin a perfect night. Megiddo didn’t like to linger over her kills - once the broken-skulled officers turned back into civilians, it was always too easy to start wondering if she knew this brat, had competed with her in basketball or brushed elbows at a science fair. Crystal academy uniforms were worse - but those bitches were bright enough to know what they were getting into.

She couldn’t go ******** humanizing them, now could she?

“Go ******** yourself, Camlann,” she said. “She had a starseed in her pocket.”

No, she hadn’t.

Megiddo flipped him the bird. “I’ll leave your precious ******** lieutenant alone. Go play hide-the-salami all you want with him. Not worth my trouble. You’ll turn on each other soon enough. Whatever gay-a** Romeo and Julio bullshit you’ve got going on is untenable.”

Camlann didn’t really understand the deluge of pop-culture references and idioms. His eyebrows crept up towards his hairline; he’d ask Babylon about these later, or maybe Colin. Probably Colin, he admitted to himself. “I’m not here for Quartz,” he said. “I’m here to help you.” He hopped over the railing on the fire escape, landed gracefully in the alleyway. “Our Wonders were connected. My past self mentored yours.”

He knew secrets. Using those seemed like a good way to get to her; she was the sort to hate people being more intelligent or well-read than she was. Play to her arrogance, and she’d fall into your hand like a stone-struck bird.

Megiddo narrowed her eyes at Camlann - she doubted he’d ever do anything even approximating a favor for her. He wasn’t here to help her - he was here to help himself. “So what?” she asked. So his past self had mentored hers - Megiddo had no connection to that girl, no reason to honor that bond. “So you need something from me? I’m not gonna take a knee and do what you say over some old patriarchal bullshit. In case you hadn’t noticed, I outrank you.”

She’d ******** earned this cape, she thought. “There’s nothing I need from you,” she said with a harumph. “So you’d better ******** make this worth my time.”

“It’s not patriarchal,” Camlann said. “My past life was a woman.” He smiled. It was strange on his face, insincere, like he was using muscles that had withered from disuse. That wasn’t untrue; it was only that he wanted it to seem more natural. Too bad he was pretty much terrible at dissembling. He was sure Irinei--Melanite--his old self had been better at it. “What I know would help you in your… murder quest,” he said, tipping his head towards the girl lying dead on the ground. The blood pooled under her head, staining brown hair black in the dim streetlight.

He shrugged. “If you do not want to know, I’ll take my leave,” he said, turning on his heel.

Megiddo’s eyes remained narrowed. She suspected…. something. A trap or a scheme of some kind. Even the news that Camlann’s past life had been a woman left her unmoved. Still, she was curious about whatever he thought he knew - even if it was probably bullshit or worse.

“Wait,” said Megiddo. “What the ******** is going on? I don’t think you want to help me - I think you need my help. So let’s make this mutually beneficial or I’ll wipe that dumb look off your dumb face. You deal with me, you deal with me square - solid?”

Better the devil you knew than the devil you didn’t, after all.

“This doesn’t benefit me,” said Camlann. It was technically true; nothing he was doing would directly benefit him, but neither would it benefit her. Except in, like, the long-term metaphysical sense. Maybe next time she wouldn’t be a psychopath. “If you aren’t interested in becoming stronger, then I am not going to push you. Goodnight, Megiddo.”

Megiddo crossed her arms over her chest - now he was just pissing her off with his vagueness. “Could you just ******** flat out say what you want me to do?” she asked. “You’re being about as clear as milk right now, for ******** serious, and I’m starting to doubt this thing even exists. Why the hell would you want to help me? Sure as ******** not out of the goodness of your heart. First of all, you don’t have any. And jury’s out on the heart.”

“Take me to your wonder,” said Camlann, stopping in the mouth of the alleyway. “I can show you what you need to know once you’re there. I’m not sure how to explain it.” Let her think him heartless, and he wasn’t going to give his reasoning for ‘helping’. For one thing, then this wouldn’t work. For another thing, even if this thing did work the way he thought it would--she wouldn’t ever agree. “If you think I’m ******** with you, then you’ll be able to throw me in your well. Where I’ll die. Safe for you, a risk for me. Does that sound… ‘square’?”

Well, the opportunity to throw Camlann down a well and be permanently done with him was tempting. Megiddo sighed and took a step towards him. “Okay,” she said, still not certain she was buying what he was selling. She extended a hand to Camlann. “Let’s go, you c**t.”

She muttered her oath like it was a dirty word. The courtyard materialized around them, gas lamps burning through the fog. The well stood a few meters distant, lonely and silent as ever. Megiddo shook free of Camlann’s grip. “Okay,” she said. “Here we are. Excuse me if I don’t give you the grand tour, but there’s not a ******** ton to show. What’s your grand revelation?”

He ignored her, as much as he could on her Wonder, to peer into the well. “Every Wonder has a ritual that must be completed for its Knight to become fully bound,” he said, his voice echoing back up to him weirdly. “Your past self told me about it.”

Beyond that, he knew this place. It had come to him in a memory, as much as anything did. Shadows behind the eyelids, being somewhere he shouldn’t have been. In a body that was even less his than the one he occupied right now. The gas lamps and the fog were familiar to him, and so was the well-cover close to hand. He just needed her to come over here, and he could do away with her. Forever.

He was close to the well, thought Megiddo, and this could go either way. A quick push, and Camlann would tumble down, down, down, to where all drowning people went, and it would poison the water forever after but it had already done nothing but give her bad dreams. She didn’t think she’d be drinking from it ever again. ******** knightly duties - she was her own woman.

It wouldn’t even be a hard fight, she thought. Camlann was eight inches shorter than her, and thin. She could overpower him in a heartbeat - not that that hadn’t historically proven to be untrue or anything like that, but she felt confident about her prospects here. “It you say jump down the well,” she said, pacing slowly, a fair distance away, “Then you’re a moron if you think I’ll actually do it. I’ve already drank from the damn thing - it gave me my knighthood for my trouble. Maybe I’ve already finished this ritual you’re thinking of.”

TL;DW: And then, after a brief struggle, Camlann shoved Megiddo down her well.