“Please, stop,” she is saying as I am hitting and hitting and hitting her. And when I am doing this, she is vanishing and room is vanishing and I am suddenly hanging from chains over my head and evil boy is plugging into me and grinning and my body is feeling like someone is lighting it on fire and he is taking shockstick and beating me and beating me and beating me while I am hanging and beating me and beating me and . . . “Please.” Then I am stopping and looking at Grace and glaring, and she is gritting her teeth and one eye is being swollen shut and she is telling me, “I’m never going to let you have her.” Even though she is saying this, I am not angering. Instead, tear is coming to my eye, and I am not liking what I am doing. I am seeing her face and I am knowing it is like that because of me, then shame is washing over me like water under Falomo Bridge that is trying to be eating us.

Grace’s eye moves from my face to room’s entrance out into hallway, and she tries to push herself up but I am on top of her and she is still bound to chair, so she is only coming up halfway but she is shouting, “Ify? Ify! IFY!”

And I am turning around, and it is Ify with one of the girl that is rescuing us from police station. And Ify is seeing Grace’s face and horror is coming to her eyes and she is saying, “Grace?” Then girl who is rescuing synths from police station is grabbing Ify and dragging her away. I run into the hallway and watch as more and more girl come to hold Ify while she tries to fight them and her shouting gets farther and farther away until I am no longer hearing her voice.

Xifeng is appearing in the hallway and she is looking at me, then she is walking away from me and Grace and in direction of Ify.

CHAPTER

33

They force Ify into a metal chair. She thrashes and struggles against them, but some of the people restraining her have the vitiligo and superhuman strength of synths, and it isn’t long before her wrists are bound behind her, her ankles magnetized to the chair’s metal legs. The sight of Grace’s face, swollen and bleeding, fills Ify with a rage she can’t remember ever feeling. But on the heels of that rage is desperation and an acknowledgment of her own powerlessness. But even as she knows she’s only wearying herself with each jerk against her restraints, with each thrash, she cannot stop.