It's only him, she thought, a bit giddily. The others didn't know. If they had, why had they been wearing body condoms? Why the pretense of a quarantine cell, why not just bring her here directly? The men who'd delivered her didn't know what was going on. They must have been told she was a vector, a danger, someone who'd try to escape the moment she knew the jig was up. They must have thought they'd been doing the right thing.

It didn't make any difference to her current predicament. But it mattered just the same: the whole world wasn't mad. Parts of it were just misinformed.

Achilles looked down at her. She looked back; the stock pushed against her head as she craned her neck.

She squirmed. The frame that held her body seemed to tighten a tiny bit. "Why are you doing this?"

He shrugged. "To get off. Thought that'd be obvious even to a fuckup like you, Alice."

Her lower lip trembled uncontrollably. She bit down on it, hard. Don't give him anything. Don't give him anything. But of course it was way too late for that.

"You look like you want to say something," Achilles remarked.

She shook her head.

"Come on, girl. Speak! Speak, girl!"

I've got nothing to say to you, you fucking asshole.

His hand was in his pocket again. Something in there made a familiar snick-snick noise.

He wants me to talk. He told me to talk. What happens if I don't?

Snick-snick.

What if I do, and he doesn't like what I say? What if—

It didn't matter, she realized. It didn't make any difference at all. Hell was an arbitrary place. If he wanted to hurt her, he'd hurt her no matter what she said.

She was probably already as good as dead.

"You're not human," she whispered.

Achilles hmmed a moment. "Fair enough. I used to be, though. Before I was liberated. Did you know humanity can be extracted? Little bug called Spartacus sucks it right out of you." He wandered back out of sight. Taka strained to follow, but the stocks kept her facing forward. "So don't blame me, Alice. I was the victim."

"I'm...I'm sorry," Taka tried.

"I'll bet. They all are."

She swallowed, and tried not to go where that led.

The exoskeleton must have been spring-loaded; there was a click and suddenly her arms were yanked up behind her, spread back in a delta-V. The motion stretched the flesh tight across her chest; the pain that had diffused across her body collapsed back down to a sharp agonized focus in her breast. She bit back a scream. Some distant, irrelevant part of her took pride in her success.

Then something cold slapped against her ass and she cried out anyway—but Achilles was just cleaning her up with a wet rag. The wetness evaporated almost instantly, chilling her. Taka smelled alcohol.

"Excuse me? You said something?"