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The thing with the god of light in the drains.

sy, internally: "I saw the other Lambs turn to look at me. Gears turning, scanning me, taking the question in. Considering their options. Under normal circumstances, they might have been tempted to say something derisive, comparing me to an unsavory or unappealing animal, like a slug or a rat.

But I'd been ready. My body language, my phrasing, the way I carried myself, it was all in service of presenting myself differently. Wilder, more feral. Modeling myself after Helen, in a way. I could imagine Gordon seeing me differently, now that I'd brought the question to light. As a lion, maybe. He tended to think in terms of brute strength. Lilian, by contrast, might have seen me as a wolf. Cunning, dangerous, but also social. She knew me well enough by now to know how I operated. A wolf in Lamb's clothing, as it were.

Helen, true to form, was harder to pin down, but I had a guess. She wouldn't see me as an ordinary animal. Helen thought differently than the rest of us, and she'd spent a lot of time in the Bowels, in the company of the Academy's strangest and most deadly creations. It was very possible that she had more familiarity with augmented creatures than with any mundane, ordinary wildlife. She might see me as a new type of beast, then. Not a lion or a wolf, but a hybrid of mix of the two.

King of the Junjle, I thought. I smiled. I liked the sound of that."