![]() ![]() I lie in agony for what feels like hours. It begins at my feet, blooms up my legs, unfurls in my stomach and works its way up my throat only to explode behind my eyes, inside my and I cry out, but only in my mind, my useless hands still limp on the armrests, and I’m so certain he’s going to kill me. The blade is so sharp he meets no resistance as he slices clean lines into my forearms and blood, blood, heavy and warm, spills down my wrists and into my open palms and it doesn’t seem real, not even when he stabs several electrical wires into my exposed flesh. ![]() He moves with such startling efficiency I don’t even realize he’s removed my manacles until I see the scalpel. Tears fall quietly down my face and my father whistles a tune, his movements light and easy even as he sets up an IV drip. Only basic, instinctual functions seem to work. My brain is slowly disconnecting from my body, like I’m being removed from myself. My father carries my limp body into a blindingly silver room, props me up in a chair, straps me down, and panic pours into me, hot and terrifying, flooding my mind. I feel both awake and asleep, like I’m spinning in place, like there’s too much grease turning the wheels in my brain and I try to speak and realize my lips no longer move on command. I don’t know what was in that needle, but the effects are unlike anything I’ve experienced. Like nothing strange has ever happened, like I never stopped being their daughter-not in the ways that matter, anyway. He and Evie are acting like the horrors of the last seventeen years never happened. He doesn’t sit me down to offer me long histories about my presence or his he doesn’t reveal groundbreaking information about my life or the other supreme commanders or even the nearly six hundred people I just murdered. My father doesn’t invite me to dinner, like Evie promised. ![]()
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