[ He's working up to saying something (no, for real) when she just drops her kids into the conversation, turning it into a completely different conversation. They're disturbingly easy to picture, thanks to the TV's occasional psychic transmissions—but the rest of it's a smoking crater, a rippling hole.

Okay, okay. He's worrying over nothing, he soothes himself. Summoning her kids from another galaxy? What are the chances? ] Yeah. [ Jupe says eventually, like he hasn't been staring at nothing for the past...hopefully thirty seconds, max. ] We should figure out somewhere safe to hide them. We should probably be doing that anyway. [ Somewhere far away from Openly Plotting Torture and Murder Boulevard.

He pauses, takes a breath and a calculated risk: there's no way she'll let him, even if she could. ] How complicated is it gonna be? Once it's all set up. [ With a no-big-deal shrug, he ventures: ] I could...