Part of being a better liar, she has come to learn, is realizing when elaboration would do your cause more harm than good. Her instinct runs to justify herself, to answer all of Barrow's questions before he can ask them—but Ness restrains herself, and lets him imagine for himself why she might not have reached out to one of the taller agents of Riftwatch. He'll come up with something that makes sense to him; people usually do.

"The fracture itself was... awful," she says instead, and she doesn't have to lie about that at all. "Now..."

She moves her residual limb slowly, flexes the remaining muscle. It hurts, her body trying to carry the message to move down to tissue that no longer exists, and Ness hisses sharply... but she doesn't scream. There's pain, but it's not unbearable. Not all the time.

"I'll survive. That's the important thing. Doctor Strange took very good care of me."