Xen was in agreement on that.Go with the Maukin and the vampire, he urged the rest of the team present.
“Stop all of that and explain things to me!” Sophia cried out, unable to take the silence anymore.
“We’re going to MSA headquarters,” Thorne said, settling a heavy hand on Sophia’s shoulder.
“I apologize for the familiarity,” Xen said, and then before anyone could stop him, he picked her up to carry her.
24 /SIRENA
“So what’reyou going to do once you’ve mapped me?” I’d stopped hoping that Dr. Marek would consider me a human anymore—he didn’t consider normal humans humans, so why should I get any special consideration?—but he did like to preen, and he seemed to suffer from a lack of people to talk to.
And the longer he talked, the less likely he was to make me run what he calls “simulations.” Where he mades Hollows torture other Hollows and mades me try to stop them, repeatedly. He’d upgraded their weapons from thumbs to punching to knives, and it killed me that I couldn’t get the puppets he brought in to turn against him.
There were cameras on in my room, I was sure of it, but that didn’t stop me from running my fingertips over the box on my head at night, trying to figure out how I could pry it off. It felt raw, and hot, and puffy where my skin grew against its edges, but I’d unscrew the bolts with my fingernails and peel it all off...if I thought it would work.
The problem was, I didn’t.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to fight back...but when I did? I needed to make it good.
I needed to save up my strength—and frankly, at this point, my sanity—so that when I got the chance to use it, I could make it count.
“You mean once I’ve figured out how to control all your godlike powers?” Marek sniffed from behind his tablet, not once looking up.
“Has it occurred to you that the reason telepaths aren’t in charge of the world is because being a telepath largely sucks?”
That made him pause; then he chuckled. “Perhaps telepaths suffer from a lack of imagination.” He pondered this for a moment. “There’s never been a one of you to suffer from megalomania before?”
I shrugged my shoulder beneath the hospital gown. “I’m sure there have been. But maybe the rest of us just shut him down. I mean, the thing is, even if you do give yourself this power?—”
“When I do,” he corrected me.
“When you do,” I repeated—anything to keep the conversation going, to give myself another handful of minutes without horror, “other telepathsaregoing to be able to hear you coming. You can’t send and shield at the same time.”
“No?” he asked, tilting his head to give me an implacable look.
“I mean—you can’t,” I said more firmly—because I wanted it to be true. “Can...you?”
“Hmmm,” he said, which wasn’t an answer. He went back to his screen—but then stiffened, eyes catching on something in his data.
No—notthe data. He turned, just before the doors hissed open.
I couldn’t see the doors, but I’d already been trained to wince at their sound—it usually meant Marek was going to hurt people in front of me.
But this time, Marek seemed surprised, which was somehow worse. He rose too fast, smoothing down his lab coat like that would help.
The man who entered didn’t belong in a lab.
He looked like a hedge fund in weekend drag—forearms sunburnt from luxury, not labor, with sneakers too pristine to have ever touched pavement. Aviators tucked in his collar, a smile like a scalpel. Rich not in the way of comfort, but conquest.
I recognized him instantly: Demetrius Voss.
The man whose fortune backed the monsters in this place.
Whose whims had created the cages.
“Mr. Voss,” Marek said, startled. “You didn’t say you’d be?—”
“I don’t say,” Voss cut in, already halfway into the room. “Iarrive.People are more honest before they’ve had time to clean up.”
