I ducked, but she clipped my shoulder with the edge of her hand, and pain flared in its wake.
“She doesn’t want to do this!” I shouted, not to Voss—he was gone, unreachable—but to Marek, who stood frozen like he’d just remembered he had a conscience.
“She’s going to kill her,” Marek said, to no one in particular.
“No,” Voss said smoothly. “Not yet.”
“She’s just a puppet,” I spat. “What exactly are you testing—my tolerance for war crimes?”
He turned.
Slowly. Like a shark catching a current. His grin sharpened.
“Is this what you do when your VC buddies won’t return your calls?” I added, reckless now. “Stage death matches for your PTSD Barbie collection?”
His nostrils flared, and he looked at the controller he held. The Hollow’s posture locked up as he tapped his infernal device.
“You want to be clever?” he asked. “Then let’s see what your clever little tongue is worth.”
Another tap.
She moved faster than before.
Her hand slammed into my chest and pinned me to the wall. Her other hand darted for my mouth.
She gripped my jaw, hard—fingers bruising. One thumb forced its way past my teeth, and the other reached for my tongue. I scrabbled my hands against her, and felt somethinghard, bolted underneath her clavicle, with right angles—I knew it shouldn’t be there.
“Call her off,” Marek said, his voice strained. “You’re wasting a valuable?—”
“I am the arbiter of what is and isn’t valuable in this room,” Voss corrected him as I tasted the other woman’s blood.
I was pushing her away from me—and I realized that it wasn’t that she was stronger than me—she hadn’t been doing deadlifts between surgeries—it was that she had no hesitation.
And no fear, none at all, I realized, as my teeth ground against her bone.
I didn’t want to. I knew it was what they wanted from me—and so I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of it—but I also didn’t want to bite her fingers off.
I gave up and tried topushher away from me with all my might.
It didn’t work. It couldn’t, not while this fucking box was still installed on my skull, harvesting all the data I’d been trying not to give it.
“Enough!” Marek shouted, while Voss clucked.
The woman who looked like me went slack, and I shoved her, using the chance to snatch my pendant back. I spat her blood onto the floor and watched her stand there, mute, not even cradling her bleeding hand.
“And look at that,” Voss said, showing Marek his module. “Stronger data than you’ve ever gotten.”
“I was doing science,” Marek snarled.
“She doesn’t need a tongue for science. And, come to think of it—neither do you,” Voss said, snapping for his guards before storming out the door with Marek on his heels. The guards came into my pen and recovered the woman, and there was a brief gap where I could’ve tried to run. The guards moved robotically,and if no one was actively controlling them, I suspected I could dodge and sprint away.
But I would still be on a boat that had a helicopter with machine guns parked on it.
I sank back against the wall, feeling more doomed than I had previously, somehow.
Maybe because the taste of my doppelganger’s blood in my mouth wouldn’t go away.
Or because the pendant I held didn’t have anyone watching over me in it anymore.
