"Okay," she let her hair fall back down on her neck and straightened slowly, her brow furrowed as she turned this over. She was both rationally weirded out and frightened because of all the implications of a barcode, but she was also irrationally upset.

Tattoos had always been a form of self-expression and independence for her. Defiance, in the face of expectations and rules that she didn't agree with, and there had been joy in the inking of her skin as well, the whimsical circles and flares on her hand and arm she'd doodled a thousand times before actually getting inked, the tribal vine and thorn curving downwards from her cleavage, she'd thought it beautiful, and the snake on her neck...

And now they'd taken the expression of her freedom and turned it into an expression of captivity. They'd numbered her like a box of cereal.

I think I'm almost ready to take that personally.

But when she speaks, the only hint at her thoughts being elsewhere is the somewhat absent tone in her voice. "That means that even if the wings are a natural part of being in this world, like it said, we had to have passed through someone's hands to get these before waking up here."