Per 
Previously: Everywhere, NY
The motel is almost a hundred miles behind them when Egret finally bursts free of the delivery boy’s body. Her twenty-third rebirth is no less messy than the twenty-two before it, and the explosion of gore stencils the shape of the seats in blood on the Oldsmobile’s windshield.
It’s a credit to Amitha’s nerves that the car just kisses the dividing line of the highway instead of swerving off the road altogether. “A little warning, next time?”
“Harggggngh,” Egret gurgles, and spits up the small lump of meat that would’ve grown into her voicebox. She shuts her mouth, waits for muscles to knit into place, tries again. “I was waiting for hours inside him, Ami, just… sulking. How do babies put up with it?”
Amitha gives her an absolutely filthy look in the rear-view mirror. Her face is part-way through resetting into its former configuration: one eye’s refused to change its color back, its iris still stubbornly sky-blue. Not a bad look on her, even if that’s the ego talking.
On instinct, Egret grins back at her, but promptly stops smiling once she realises her backup canines haven’t grown in yet. She has a reputation to uphold. “Just- just shut up til your voice breaks. There’s pizza in the back, knock yourself out, you’re going to need the calories.”
Egret has to concede the point. A homunculus like her has about three times more muscle mass than the average delivery boy, and the energy to grow it all isn’t going to come from nowhere. Said pizzas are piled four-high on the back seats Egret (and her host’s human detritus) aren’t occupying. She sniffs at them, first eager, then disappointed.
“Ami!”
“I said when your voice breaks, not while it’s breaking. What now?”
“They’re all vegetarian.”
“Great. I’ll turn around and get you some pepperoni.”
“Could you please?”
“Eat what’s left of him if you’re going to complain.”
Grudgingly, Egret chews on a scrap of intestine from the seatwell. It’s a little bit rubbery, but at least it’s still lukewarm. “So what’d I miss?”
“Not much. You’re a warm enough body when you want to be: exfil was fairly painless with half of them disembowelled.”
“Yeah? Yeah.” Egret grins, tentatively at first, then wide and tetanic. “I’m so good, aren’t I?”
Amitha grits her teeth hard enough the muscles in her neck cord up.
Still unsatisfied, Egret reclines the chair back and puts her feet up on either side of Amitha’s head. “Where to now, boss lady?”
“Hiding out. No sense making it easier on Two to take whatever petty revenge he wants to.”
“Boring. We going somewhere nice, at least?”
“Pennsylvania.”
“Should’ve let me rot.”
They’re only halfway down the I-80 when the fuel gauge starts kissing empty. Amitha swipes a finger through the gore dripping off the inside of the windshield, sticks her arm out the driver-side window like she’s feeling the breeze; half an hour later and like magic, the lights of a gas station appear just over the horizon.
Egret’s been spending the last two hours catnapping through the pain of reconstruction. When the car starts pulling out onto the offramp, though, she snaps awake—old habits. Sudden deceleration never bodes well.
“You don’t think we need to, uh—” Egret rolls her shoulders back, feeling the newly-formed joints crack. “—wash this thing out? People tend to freak out around raw meat.”
“Someone’ll take care of it. All you need to worry about is looking human long enough that the cashier doesn’t call the cops.”
Egret slumps back into her chair, before the implication sinks in and she’s back upright again. “Wait, you’re letting me go into the gas station?”
In the rear-view mirror, Amitha arches an eyebrow at her. “Am I going to regret doing that?”
“No! No no no, I promise, Ami, I’ll behave, c’mon, I just- can we buy an icecream? I’ll pay you back. I think. I don’t know if they’re paying me anymore. Are they?”
“Why is that a question you’re even- you know what, never mind. Just don’t start a fire.”
