“It has to be better than being hurt or dead.”

She shook her head.

“Don’t make me be an asshole,” he said.

“I just want to go back to my friends,” she told him, her voice small. She could feel Capricorn being kicked hard. Felt Aiden’s back slide against a surface as he tried to make himself small. “They need me.”

“That’s exactly why I can’t let you do it,” the man said.

“Life has really, really sucked for a long time,” she told him. “I finally have good things. I have a boy I like.”

“Cuff yourself, then.”

She shook her head. She had to swallow gorge to keep from coughing or vomiting into her mouth. Just the idea of it brought her to that point, made her breathing uneasy. “I’d lose my mind.”

Aiden noticed, turned her way, touching the wall.

Not that it helped.

She broke the connection. The absence was palpable.

The man approached, knife held out, until it touched her throat. She breathed hard, her eyes wide.

Was there even help coming? Someone coming through the wall? Aiden’s Aunt Rachel?

No. Not this soon. Even if she came in fifteen minutes like she’d said.

She created a connection to Operator. Connecting her body to his.

The knife moved, touching where her jaw met her neck, and pressing in enough to split the skin. It stung, and she saw him jump at the feeling.

She pushed the knife hand away, cut the power and punched for the balls—and he blocked her hand. He wrenched her arm to one side, so she bent over—

And she reactivated the connection. Let him feel that pain of arm being twisted backward.

Her foot had always had a quirk, where if she curled it in a crescent shape as hard as she could, it cramped hard. She did that.

There was an element to things where it was sympathetic, and while it was sympathetic, he felt compelled to adjust his balance, move his own foot, to do something about the cramp.

She shifted her weight, shoving into him with all her weight. He stumbled, still holding her arm above her, shoulder socket twisted nearly as far as it would go. She forced the twist, reasserted the connection so he could feel it just as much as she did.

He released her, catching her by the neck instead. He had the knife—

And she had her hands free. She grabbed her finger with the hand that still had the cuffs, and she bent it backward until something gave.

The knife didn’t reach her throat. It clattered to the floor and she was able to push and pull free of the hand that had her neck, the injured finger flaring with a pain that lanced to her funny bone and up to her shoulder, close to her throat, where the pain magnified the barfy feeling that had accumulated there.