“Very good,” the tech said. Had they chosen her for her accent? It should have soothed, but nothing set Tara so on edge as the sense she was being soothed. The tech’s fingers pressed firm, soft, and cool against her wrist. The woman was paid to touch people, and did so with as much routine disregard as one would expect. Tara wondered—not a prurient interest, just abstract curiosity—whether the tech had to set all that aside when she lay with a lover, the way Craftswomen learned to discard habits of boardroom argument at home. Were this woman’s hands always her instruments?

Abelard laughed when she took his pulse.

“Hold still,” the tech said. “You’ll feel a tickling sensation.”

Then the needles went in, and the pain started.

*   *   *

Fangmouthswallowinggroundingoutgearsanddigestedtopulpbyathicketofthorncurledshapes

to wake from the dark dream of herself in a well-appointed office where, told to sit, she sat

Walkforwardtosomethingyouthinkisfreedomdownahalllinedwithrazorsangledin

and with every step the razors near, halfway down the hall and they press against your skin, dimpling flesh, and you can’t turn back because the light beyond the door at the end of the hall is so beautiful you could fall into it forever, at last, happy—there’s a monster behind you but you’re not afraid of monsters, even ones like this sculpted from childhood centipede fears, hooked legs too large for that enormous body and moving fast, a primal terror that barely makes sense because when save in the farthest mouse-shadows of history did your ancestors have to fear spiders? No, monsters do not scare you. But to face them, to defend yourself, would be to turn from the light at the end of the razor hall, which you cannot do. Your life waits there for you. Light washes you like water, like the tears you weep, like—Mom—rare as a father’s approving smile, it’s there and only your own skin is stopping you so you

step

into

the

razors

and

the

razors

bite

and you scream, you bleed, they’re inside you, cold lines rasping bone, but you’ve done this to yourself and having come so far what’s another

step

or

scream?

As Tara struck the deep and primal unifying terror, unseen machines channeled her through that fear, tore her to a gurgle of white noise like grinding glass and seashore rush and trills on a sharped violin.

And she was through.

Panting. Crouched. Naked.

She made herself clothes: the cream-colored suit Shale bought her. Arranged her hair. Looked down through glass into a city.