Then—light.
Not the white-hot light of pain, but somethin’ else. A new awareness.
Symbols. Numbers. A blinkin’ cursor in my vision. A rush of data that has no meanin’ yet, scrollin’ in thin blue text across the black of my mind.
My breath catches.
I see the world differently.
Like somethin’ inside me just woke up.
When I open my eyes,the pain is gone, Luther is panickin’—yankin’ at his hair, mutterin’ about dollies and broken things as he dances next to me. But Epsilon is grinnin’ like a demon.
“Oh, now this is very,veryinteresting.” His voice is low, serious. He’s not lookin’ at me. He’s lookin’ past me. At a screen, a projection—somethin’ only he can see. He hums, low and pleased. “Three layers?” He looks over at Luther. “That’s not supposed to happen, is it?”
Luther stops mid-mutter. Tilts his head. “Three? No! Not three. One! One is all anyone needs! One threading. Needles and thread! Making dollies only needs one!”
Epsilon sighs. “Yeah. That’s what I thought. But look.” Luther leans over me, squintin’ his eyes to see whatever it is that Epsilon is pointin’ at. A scan, I think. A scan of me. “This is the first attempt. It didn’t work.”
Marker two… holding. Pathways resisting.
“Then there was a second attempt… here.”
Proceeding with protocol override per home god instructions. Initiating secondary layering.
“That one,” Epsilon says, “is working well at the moment. At least,” he chuckles, “it was. Until we pushed in this third layer.” He looks away from the scan and over to Luther. “Perhaps we should add in an extra step to the protocol, Luther.”
“Extra! Yes, yes, let’s make it extra!”
“From now on, we’ll do the scanbeforewe thread. He’s an anomaly. The first of his kind, perhaps. But if one god did it, there will be others.”
“Scans before threading,” Luther shouts. “Scans, scans, scans!”
“At any rate,” Epsilon says, “It doesn’t matter much. Not with this one. Our layer didn’t fully take, but look here.” Once again, Luther calms down enough to lean in and squint at the scan.“The third threading is integrating with the first. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes!” Luther starts hopping around like a lunatic. Then stops. “No! What does it mean?”
I’m listenin’ just as carefully as the idiot, because I’d like to know myself.
“It means,” Epsilon says, “that he’s the first of my augments to have a secondcompleteset of threads.” He grunts. “This is amazing.” Then he looks down at me, maybe just realizing that I’m awake and listening in. “What did Delta do to you?”
“You tell me,” I croak. “Because I haven’t a clue.”
Epsilon chuckles, pleased with my reaction. Or maybe just himself. “We’re going to have a lot of fun, Tyse.” He says my name through a bright smile. Then he turns to Luther. “Luther?”
Luther is bouncin’ again. “Yes, master?”
“It’s time for a fight.”
“Fight! Yes!” Luther shouts, pumping his fist into the air. “Epsilon! Epsilon! Epsilon!”
“Show our new brother the prize…” Epsilon squints his eyes at me. “Should he win, of course.”
This is when I realize that the ceilin’ is actually a massive screen. And I know this because it blinks to life with light.
It’s a feed showin’ Clara, upright and strapped to a wall. Her cage of needles doesn’t hover over her like mine, but surrounds her like a cage. All the threads coming out of her, glowin’ with blue spark.
She looks dead. At the very least, she’s been drained to empty. Like the women we saw in Delta’s factory. She’s a husk. Gray and lifeless.
