BAD GIRL! The Avatar sent back, coursing current through Ling’s pain centers, hurling chaos at the nanite circuits her daughter had managed to seize.

In the living room, she was vaguely aware of Chen, standing, dumbfounded, over a suddenly terrified Xu Liang.

“Run…” Chen whispered. Then louder. “Run!” He hurled the injector across the room, flinging it into a wall, and ran for the kitchen, for the block of knives.

Ling roared back harder, scratching and biting at her with virtual tooth and nail, using raw willpower and her long connection to this hardware to claw back control.

The Avatar surged more pain through her daughter. Relent, child! Relent!

“AAAAAAAH!” Ling screamed aloud. Her will gave a millimeter.

Circuits came back to the Avatar.

She turned back to the room. Xu Liang was stumbling, up and out of his chair, trying to run for the door, clumsily, impaired by the sedatives. She sent a thought to the house, locked all the doors, trapped him here.

She turned to Chen, found him with a knife in his hand, expected him to be coming for Ling’s room, to kill her, found that he had it in two hands, the point up, about to plunge it into his own throat instead.

She seized hold of his motor cortex, twisted his muscles in mid thrust. The knife veered off course, left a score across the right side of his neck. Blood welled up immediately.

Xu Liang was at the door, was trying to open it, failing. He turned and looked, saw Chen with a bloody knife in his hand, and turned back to the door, started pounding on it, screaming for help.

There would be no help, the Avatar knew. No one could hear his screams. And the fate in store for him was far worse than the knife.

She took control of Chen’s motor cortex manually, dropped the knife from Chen’s hand, sent him towards the injector he’d flung across the room.

Ling raged at her again, hard, grabbing for control of the hardware in her brain, pushing the Avatar off balance once more.

She struck back viciously against her daughter, lashed her with pain, again, again, and again. It was a horrid thing to do. It hurt her to do it. But she must. If Ling wrestled control back, they would both die.

The dream would die. Darkness would fall.

Ignorant old men would rule forever.

Finally Ling submitted. The Avatar pushed down hard on her daughter, held her down by brute force as the girl struggled. She wouldn’t be surprised this time. Then she bent Chen down to pick up the hypersonic injector from where it had fallen after bouncing off the wall. It looked undamaged. She turned Chen’s head, looking for Xu Liang.