Owen managed to mirror the smile, twisting his hand to grasp the one George—Ken, dammit—had reached out with. He simply held there for a long moment, then nodded in agreement. "Of course. We should tell others — warn them that something is... something is wrong."

Now why couldn't he convince himself to just do it? Perhaps it was the threat of punishment for breaking rules they didn't understand. If that was what had happened before, what if it happened again and something even more precious became scrambled? More than that, he wasn't sure he could explain it to anyone else without projecting this fear onto them. Fear he hadn't really experienced until he was vulnerable as any other living being once more after a generation of freedom. "Should do," he murmured again.