I’m back in the apartment, my cheek pressed to the carpet. My arms are locked around my knees, jaw aching from the bite of my own teeth. The taste in my mouth is blood and saliva, just like before.
Nothing has changed.
Except now, I can hear footsteps in the hall. Not Moore, not this time.
It’s Jace, moving silent and slow, the way only his kind can do.
I brace myself for the next thing.
The next lesson.
Andthen white.
The second lesson always comes faster. Once the body learns how to split, it’ll do it on its own, like a dog returning to a trigger word.
Back on the chair. Strapped, naked except for the shirt bunched up at my shoulders, legs spread and held open by two leather cuffs buckled tight against the ankles. Moore likes to make the spreader bar visible, a metal rod connecting my legs and locked in place at either end.
He’s already here, gloves changed, clean lab coat on. The tray is ready, a new lineup of instruments I can’t name. Some are curved, some are blunt, some just glass vials with liquid in different shades—yellow, red, blue.
He sets his phone on the table and turns on the camera. Records everything, always. For posterity, he once joked. For the Board, more likely.
He stands in front of me, hands behind his back, and starts in on the lecture.
“Do you remember why you’re here?” he asks. Voice so soft, so reasonable. I shake my head, because there’s no right answer.
He tilts his head, a look of disappointment. “Let’s review.”
He approaches, takes a swab, runs it along my thigh. The cotton stings from the antiseptic. I try not to flinch, but my leg jerks anyway. He looks at me, mild and patient.
“Today’s lesson is about obedience,” Moore says. “You have failed to obey three times. Do you remember what happens to failures?”
He waits.
I try to answer but the words stick. He reaches up and pinches my nose shut, forcing me to gasp through my mouth. Then he shoves in a rubber gag, biting down hard enough to almost split my lips. The taste is chemical, bitter. He tapes it in place, then strokes the side of my cheek like I’m a child.
He starts with the needles. Always the needles.
One in each thigh, just above the knee. The first one bites sharp, then turns to a dull ache. The second, the same, only deeper. He slides the needles in so slow it feels like being pulled apart in segments. He narrates every motion.
“Femoral insertion,” he says. “See how the skin resists? See how it adapts? The body is remarkable.”
He presses a button on the chair. The needles electrify. Not enough to kill—just enough to make the whole world boil down to the legs, to the hot, vibrating current running up anddown the bone. My hands clench so tight I feel a tendon snap in the palm. I focus on the hairline crack in the ceiling, count the milliseconds between zaps.
He leaves the current running and moves to the tray.
He picks up a glass rod, holds it to the light, and admires the rainbow refraction. It’s blunt at one end, rounded and thicker than a finger, the other end shaped to a flare. He runs it under warm water, then comes to kneel between my legs. I try to close them, but the bar won’t let me.
He doesn’t warn me. He never warns.
The first push is cold, a pressure that makes my vision white out. He moves it in slow, then out, then in again, twisting every time. It’s too much, the body’s own defense clenching down, but he just waits it out, humming a little tune under his breath.
“This is for calibration,” he says. “You’re going to be tested by many men after this. I want you to be ready.”
He keeps working the rod until my body stops fighting. The current from the needles makes everything more intense, like every nerve is raw and stripped down.
He sets the rod aside, wipes it clean, and writes a note on the clipboard.
He turns off the current. The aftershock is worse than the pain—legs gone limp, muscles jumping on their own. My head lolls to the side and I see the other vials, the ones with red liquid.
