The warning wasn't necessary, despite what Li Hua's familiar calm stillness might have suggested. The news spread rapidly through the prison, and some women cried and thanked their gods while prisoners pumped their fists at the final stretch of a long battle while Li Hua looked on in the cafeteria, watching their faces like she could memorize them. In a few hours' time, this wouldn't be a victory, and they wouldn't be fellow warriors. The crying woman who had helped the man next to her braid a rope to drag palettes of food from the back of the store room would turn a glare on him and scream for him to be locked away again. She'd forget him in here and let him rot, with all of her memories of this cold place.
Li Hua couldn't trust any of them. At the right moment, she would slip through the doors and disappear back into the city, see it as it was when everything was rotten and what it took to bring good people to mingle with their pariahs and still would not kill them. She had watched how even the Avengers turned on each other, and it wasn't out of fear and desperation that they let their rot continue to feed off of them. They kept their one prisoner alive, put him in a hole and forgot about him only for him to escape, and reacted with surprise. This plague was something they had made for themselves. They were all sick.
"Sister," she greeted, sharp eyes darting to the advancing figure without another move like she was a statue at the head of the room. "What do you make of the news?" The woman didn't celebrate as the others did. Maybe she saw something even darker in it, understanding the way these people worked better than Li Hua could, or understanding sickness better than anyone.