I didn’t hear the response, because Snag reached up through the floorboards, seized my leg, and hauled me halfway through the floor. I might have gone further, but I braced myself with flight and forcefield.

It left me kneeling with one leg, the other stuck straight out and down through the floor, my hands on the ground in front of me.

I heard Blindside’s running approach.

Bat in hand, probably. I pushed out with my aura, hoping to give them a reason to think twice, buy myself a second.

Lurching to my feet, I brought Snag’s arm up above the ground. I reached down to grab his hand, and then kicked nearer to the elbow.

The mechanical arm broke off. With a bat of my own, I shifted my grip to the wrist rather than the now-limp hand, and held my weapon out, waving the broken end of the arm in Blindside’s general direction.

No blood. I’d broken it off far enough down. That was good.

I was breathing hard, my heart was racing, and old wounds felt fresh again, but I was finding some equilibrium again. I—

The arm I was holding self-destructed, or the emotional battery within it did. It stayed in one piece and it dashed me to pieces.

Again, the ripped-out heart feeling. Again, the heavy sense of despair. Deeper-seated now, because I hadn’t recovered entirely from either of the other two hits, the big one and the graze.

I saw double, more than double.

Months and years of seeing double. One eye on the computer screen beside me, watching the time, looking for chat notifications. One eye on the television. One eye on the door.

Twenty past two. Fifteen minutes late. I counted the minutes. Twenty-one past two.

Twenty-two past two. The sound from the television was almost abrasive, made to be attention-getting.

I wanted to say something, protest, and I didn’t have a voice. The computer was in arm’s reach, but it was a herculean effort to get a message out.

The door opening and the wrong person being on the other side. Just like with Dean. It wasn’t the staff member who came on weekdays at two-oh-five when I had visitors. It was someone else, with a face I knew, a name I didn’t, and a gentle voice that was telling me that another patient was throwing a tantrum and the facility was on lockdown, they had contacted my visitors.

My visitors, my family, had decided that because they didn’t know how long the lockdown would be, they would come another day. It was a long trip.