Something in Rowan snapped.Pure unadulterated rage boiled free.Haven’t you fucking done enough?Breed me, breed Justin, like animals?Would you watch while we copulated or just inseminate me at a distance?
Jilssen’s eyes cleared.He stared through the horn-rimmed glasses.Horror and comprehension wandered across his expression as he looked down at the unbuckled restraints.
Too late.Rowan struck.
Fear.Agony.Guilt.The fury of her retaliation, the absolute incandescent rage she had never dreamed herself capable of.She battered at him with the full force of her horror and loathing, her thirst for revenge.For each traumatized, broken psion she had nursed back to health, each grief she had swallowed, each horror she had witnessed.She poured it all into his brain, striking snake-quick, severing vital connections, smashing and burning everything she could reach.
It was soeasy.
He fell as if shot, straight down, head clipping the chair-arm with murderous force.Something sparked wildly in the lab, the monitor closest to her emitting a shower of fireworks and popping noises.She reached, clumsily, and unbuckled her throat, her torso.Had to get her legs free.
Oh, God.
Jilssen, crumpled in his soiled lab coat.She blinked back tears.Her head pounded fiercely, the dull red smolder of rage like the aftermath of a forest fire, ash and pillars of smoke, a wrecked mind, a wasteland.Blood and the reek of feces—death had not come gently for the doctor.She’d seen enough by now to expect the sphincter’s loosening with its advent.
He lay twisted on his side, a bloody gash in his temple where it had hit chair, one arm curled awkwardly under his body.If she hadn’t known better she could have sworn he was sleeping.Except there was no glow of thought, not even the banked messy fire of a normal mind at rest.
I think I’m going to throw up.Please, God, don’t let me vomit just yet.
She managed to get her legs free, fingers shaking as if palsied, then ripped the electrodes from her forehead, tossed them aside.She tore the IV out of her arm, pressing on the hole the needle left until it sealed.Immediately, she felt better.
Not by much, but better.
Her duffel and kitbag were nowhere in sight.No weapons.The red light flashing at the other end of the lab taunted her.She was in her sock feet, jeans, and a tank top.Dragging her fingers back through tangled hair, trying to think.
Why were the lights turned down?What had Jilssen planned on doing before Anton arrived?She shuffled away from the chair and the slumped human body.Her skin crawled.
A shiver bolted up her spine.Where am I?The installation I was nearest to was thirty miles away.Or did they take me to Zero-Fifteen?What do I do now?
She dropped, crouching behind a lab counter, her breathing coming hard and fast as she sought tothink.Anton, this Colonel, was due any minute.He was late for a meeting with Jilssen, maybe to gloat over her capture.She cast around wildly for a weapon, anything.
Could she do it again?She’d killed Jilssen with her mind alone.The very thought made her nauseous.Sickening, but also… Well, there was an unholy glee to the concept.
A cleansing, murderous satisfaction.A step toward revenge, no matter how small.
I’m no better than they are.The thought flashed through her head, was immediately discarded.
She could almost hear Justin’s voice.Move and think, operative.One without the other is useless.Get going.
She searched again for a weapon, found none.Even the clipboard had only a flimsy plastic pen, not likely to stand up to any real abuse.The red light and soft beeping continued.She glanced at the two monitors, useless.Her fingers curled around a heavy, empty glass beaker.
Didn’t Jilssen at least have a gun here?What I wouldn’t give for my kitbag.And boots.I’m in my frigging socks.
The realization was welcome, rational.At least she was thinking for herself again.She let out a soft half-sobbing noise of relief just as a chime rattled against her ears.Down again, taking cover behind another long, low counter as there was a whoosh—a door, opening?
Voice activated?Or maybe some kind of key?They had both at Headquarters, too.
The thought filled her with fresh fury.It was as if all the anger she’d ever pushed away or repressed in her life was now welling up, demanding an exit.Demanding to beused.
And God, the idea scared and exhilarated her in equal proportion.
“Hello?”A hard, old voice full of unyielding purpose, slightly rasping.“Henrik?”
She heard a tapping—a cane, a footstep, a cane.
Oh, my God.The image of the blind man’s white stick rose, tapping, sweeping the floor.No.Not again.Not again!
She absolutely could not endure another rape of her mind.
