The face she makes is at herself more than Avery. Keeping secrets is not her long suit, and especially in a world without Dyad, she's gotten careless about it, but not everyone's going to take it as well as Ruby had.

"Um. Really, really long story." She sighs, rubbing the back of her neck. "I'll tell you if you're interested, but the short version is that someone did something to me when I was really small and they wanted to see how it affected me as I grew up. And they didn't want me to know they were checking on me."