He frees up her hand then, mouth working its way into a frown directed more at the ceiling - at the base, at the transports crowding the vr room, at the endless stream of nonsense on the overtaxed network - than at her. "Suppose we could do something about it," he says, flippant. Like he's not really serious even if part of him really, really is. It certainly feels like they've spent an awfully long time cooped with their wings clipped.

Because she's right. The day's meeting in the VR room was evidence enough of that even if Charlie didn't have a years worth of bonus material lying about to back it up. The Initiative might be actively in shambles, but it hardly had been much better down on the island itself. And now here they were, left without even that much direction or leadership. Hell, the transports had barely managed to wrangle together a police force and even that was a shoddy excuse, held together by spit and an assumption of a general communal moral compass that may or may not actually even exist. To expect anyone to somehow pull a magic rabbit of a hat when the hat didn't exist in the first place seemed like asking for a bloody miracle.