The metal squealed as I adjusted it. I glanced back Sveta’s way, seeing motion and color out of the corner of my eye. Case Fifty-Threes, very close to her. Engel was among them. Again, that fucking explosion of mixed senses, more violent than it had been in the past, yet all pleasant, all jarring when I was sweating, smelling my own sweat damp from my own body, my mouth dry, my heart hammering.

I felt the forcefield’s hair slip over a bare forcefield shoulder.

⊙

“It’s not perfect.”

“It—” Hard to breathe right, to get sound to where I needed it, like I was sucking liquid in through a straw with a hole in it. “Doesn’t need to be perfect.”

Her hands cupped my face, fingers stroking my cheeks, light brown eyes searching, analytical, studying.

“You fixed the acid burns. I hate to say it, but—”

“You don’t hate to say it,” she said, eyes still looking at proportions, features, trying to measure. Her face took up ninety percent of my vision, the dilapidated house with the flooding damage on the first floor taking up the last ten percent. The place smelled like damp. Freckles took up what seemed like fifty percent of the real estate on her face. “I can feel your body, everything in it.”

“Invasive,” I said.

“You don’t feel invaded either,” she said. “Heart rate normal. You’re uncomfortable but not in a way that’s hurting you. You’re breathing normally. Serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin and dopamine are close to normal.”

“They can’t be,” I said. “You altered my feelings for you. I feel those feelings right now.”

“…Normal besides that.”

“That’s why I hate to say ‘thank you’.”

“You don’t hate it,” she repeated.

“Master protocols.”

“I don’t know what that means, but I’m sure it’s clever.”

“Master protocols are to handle emotional changes with logic. Hammer past logic warping with raw emotion. Don’t stop fighting, especially if it’s physical puppeteering.”

“You’re such a dork,” she said.

I didn’t reply. I was aware of the physical touch, her hands on my face. I was aware I wasn’t fighting.

I was aware I was failing some test that a younger me had been convinced I would pass.

“I—” Still hard to talk. The hole was bigger. “—want to go home.”

“No you don’t.”

“I should want to go home. I—” I felt he air go out of me. I heaved in a breath. “—should be telling you it’s time to get a second opinion. You’ve compromised me.”

“Can you stop talking for three seconds?” she asked. “I’m concentrating.”

“It’s the protocols, Amy. I’m compromised, you’re suspect. The rules say—”

I found the breath lacking, and for an instant I thought she’d taken my ability to speak. I should have hated her for it.

My jaw worked, mouth moving, words absent.

The protocols were something I’d studied with Dean. In the moment, feeling the horror, feeling the horror go, just as fast, I wanted him with me. I wanted him to hold me and talk to me, and remind me if I was missing any of the master protocols.