"Stay cheerful, Anwei," Howard says, knowing exactly where her train of thought was going. He flexes his toes in his bitten-up shoe, not pleased to be reminded of how close that call had been. "Pretty much everyone brought up the clock, but pretty much everyone brought up everything. Still our best bet by far, according to the powers of every horror movie I ever sat through in my childhood."

He sighs dramatically. "Life would be so much easier if we could just snap our fingers and tell Stacy to go somewhere." He snaps his fingers to illustrate.

"What's our backup plan, in case she doesn't listen to us? I mean, we could just resolve all those guys to their fates as the world's oldest premature babies, but I'm thinking nobody's going to be cool with us just sitting around without working on plan B."