The look Venus shoots Joel is outright betrayed, then furious - not at him, but at herself. She should have expected to be turned on. How stupid she was, to assume she had any allies here, to assume that Joel's dislike was only surface-level.

Later, she'll wonder what happened in the last few weeks to make her trust so weak, that made putting faith in others so disdainful. Was it as petty as the breakup or as serious as being shoved into a trash bag with duct tape around her ankles, thrashing around and passing out and bleeding in suffocating sweaty plastic while the Peacekeepers beat her until she would have told them anything if only she'd had something to tell?

But now, now she doesn't have even a moment for introspection. She moves subconsciously, self-preservation written harder into her muscle memory than it is into her brain, and ducks and rolls under a rack of clothes. She pops up on the other side and kicks it over at Alex before jumping up on a display table, bat held at the ready.

She's against a wall. She could try and crash her way through Joel and Tess to slow Alex up, and while the thought crosses her mind, she isn't someone who throws others under the bus. She just isn't.

So instead, she chucks the bat at Alex's head and takes a jump, kicking off the wall and praying the ceiling pipe she grabs is load-bearing.