Cassie had never developed much of a poker face; Diana and Artemis and Donna had taught her not to let her rage control her but they'd all agreed it was important to be aware of and in touch with her emotions. So as Nux talked, he also got to witness the full array of reactions Cassie was having to his words: confusion, suspicion, dawning horror, fury, sympathy, all of them chasing each other across her face like alarmed bugs or hunting spiders.

There were some details that she couldn't quite grasp, but she didn't really need to. What she did get and what she could extrapolate told her plenty.

"My world isn't like that at all," she said softly, looking at him with sympathy in her eyes. "My world looks like the one you saw when you got here -- it's green and brown and blue, and there's still water. There's --" her eyes went hard again, "--I won't say there's no one who treats other people like this Joe scumbag treated people, but they mostly have to do it in secret, because other people would try and stop them. Would stop them. There are people in my world who can fly or can throw cars or outrun them, people who have actually died and lived again after -- but they never acted like it made them better than anyone else. They were just glad to see their friends and loved ones again. And they use their amazing abilities to stop people from doing things like Joe did."