“Nate!” Mia yells. Her hands are on my face now, her eyes wide with concern. “Talk to me. What’s happening?”
“Headache,” I manage to say as I blink at her. The pain is already fading, leaving behind that hollow throb I’ve come to know too well. “Just a headache. I’m fine.”
“You are not fine. You went completely white.”
“It’s nothing. Julia said it’s stress, the enhancements putting strain on my?—”
“Fuck what Julia said.” Her voice is sharp enough to cut, to make me sit up taller. “You nearly crushed my hand just now. That’s not stress.”
I look down. Her right hand is cradled against her chest, the knuckles red where I must have squeezed without realizing. Horror washes through me, cold and nauseating.
“Mia, I’m so sorry. I didn’t?—”
“It’s okay. I’m okay,” she says, but she’s studying me with an expression I don’t like, one that seems wary of me now. I can’t blame her. What the fuck is wrong with me?
“Come on,” she says, putting her hand on my shoulder. “You need to lie down.”
“I’m fine?—”
“You’re not fine, and you’re not arguing with me.” She stands, tugging me with her. “You get to bed right fucking now. Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re not a doctor.”
“And you’re not fine. Move it.”
I let her lead me to the bedroom, because honestly, I don’t have the energy to fight. The headache has faded to a dull ache behind my eyes, but that darkness—those thoughts—they’re still there, lurking at the edges.
Waiting.
Mia pulls back the covers and practically pushes me onto the mattress. I lie there, staring at the ceiling, while she fusses with the blinds and adjusts the thermostat.
“You don’t have to?—”
“Shut up.” She crawls in beside me, pressing her body against mine, her head on my chest. “Relax and get some sleep. I’ll be right here.”
Her hand rests over my heart, and the weight of it is grounding, real, the only anchor in a world that suddenly feels like it’s tilting and I’m about to go sliding off.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “About your hand. About…everything.”
“I know you are. Go to sleep, Nate.”
So, I do.
The operating room is cold.
White walls. White ceiling. White coats moving at the edges of my vision like ghosts. The lights are too bright, searing even through my closed eyelids, and it smells like antiseptic and something metallic. Blood, maybe.
“Prep for final integration,” someone says. A woman’s voice. Familiar.
I try to move, but I can’t. My arms are strapped down, my legs immobilized, something pressing against my temples like a vice. Electrodes. Wires. The hum of machines building to a crescendo.
“Neural patterns are stabilizing.”
“We’re losing cohesion in the?—”
Pain. Not like the headaches. Worse. Like being unmade at a molecular level, every atom of my being scattered and reassembled wrong. I try to scream, but there’s no air, no throat, no me, just data streaming through circuits, a mind without a body, falling forever through electric dark.
And then?—
