I hadn’t, though. Medication didn’t always mix well with my alien biology, and it was too risky to start experimenting now. Milo was in charge of the kill switch and the timed detonator gave me a little leeway, but I didn’t want anything dulling my reflexes when I pressed that button.
I looked down at my forearm, where Alison had traced the outline of my chip—the lurking spider beneath my skin that only she could see. And it did resemble a spider, with the blob of quicksilver in the middle and sensor-tendrils branching out in all directions. But the “legs” were only a couple of centimeters long, so it shouldn’t be hard for Sebastian to avoid them. Or so I hoped, because the alternative was a massive seizure.
The marker brushed my skin again, drawing a line ten centimeters below the elbow. Not Alison this time: she’d dropped the pen and fled, tears of pain glimmering in her eyelashes. It was Milo who held the marker now, his dark head bent so low that the glasses were sliding off his nose. His hand shook, the line wobbled, and he breathed a curse.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just a guideline.”
He pushed his glasses back into place and straightened up, his eyes haunted. “You’re so calm,” he said. “How can you be so calm?”
I didn’t feel calm. My stomach was seething like an active volcano, and sweat trickled down my spine. But if I didn’t keep it together, Milo and the others would fall apart too. And I couldn’t afford that. I needed him. I needed all of them.
My free hand gripped the detonator, thumb hovering over the button. The strap that bound the EMP bomb to my wrist was too tight, blood throbbing beneath my reddened skin. I concentrated on my breathing—in through the nose, out through the mouth—while Sebastian worked quietly behind my back and Milo wrapped the tourniquet around my upper forearm. I was going to get through this. I was not going to panic. I was not…
A muffled clank sounded from the other room, unexpected but familiar. It took me two dazed seconds to realize that it was my phone, tucked inside my discarded hoodie. Someone had sent me a text—and since pretty much everyone else who’d ever texted me was here, it had to be one of my parents.
“I’ll get it,” said Milo. He ducked through the strip curtain and returned, frowning at the screen.
“What did they say?” I asked.
He shook his head, and set the phone aside. “Never mind. It can wait.”
“No, it can’t,” I said. “That was my dad, wasn’t it? What’s the message?”
“Look, you don’t need this right now. Let’s just—”
“Tell me!” I shouted.
Milo closed his eyes, as though I’d exhausted him. Then he picked up the phone and turned it toward me.
It wasn’t from Dad. It was my mother.
–DECKARD WAS HERE. I’VE CALLED DAD. HE’S COMING TO GET YOU.
As though running could save me now, from Deckard or anyone else. And the thought of Dad barging into the maker-space, finding me like this, was unbearable.
“Lock the door,” I said to Alison, but Sebastian spoke before she could move: “It’s locked.” He crouched in front of me, laying a steadying hand on my shoulder. “I won’t let Deckard hurt you,” he said. “Don’t worry about him.”
“I’m not,” I said thickly.
He gave me a penetrating look. Then he stood up. “I’ve taken the guides off,” he said, “and cleaned the blade. I’ll need you to lift your elbow.”
My hand felt slick on the detonator. I flexed my fingers, willing the cramped muscles to relax. “All right,” I said, and a cool metal plate slid underneath my forearm as Sebastian pushed the saw into position.
A sliding compound miter saw, to be exact—also known as a chop saw. It consisted of a large circular blade suspended vertically over a metal platform, with a slit through its center so the blade could be fully lowered. The blade was designed with a hand grip at the top, so the operator could pull it down with as much strength as necessary to make a clean cut through the wood or metal below.
Or in this case, through the flesh and bone of a scared alien girl who might or might not survive the operation but either way would never use her right hand again.
My righteous right hand, Mrs. Park’s Bible verse had said. I was fairly well ambidextrous, but even so, I depended on that hand for so many things. Without it, what kind of maker would I be? Not very righteous, I suspected. I’d be slow. Clumsy. Dependent on other people’s help. No doubt I’d learn to compensate eventually, but I’d never forget what I’d lost.
“Wait,” said Milo. “I have to tighten the tourniquet.” He bent over me, pulled the strap snug, and twisted the pin until my arm throbbed in protest. “Okay, I think it’s good.”
I looked down at the sleek, professional-looking band, clearly designed for the purpose. “You got this from your mom?” I asked.
“Yeah. I told her I had to do a presentation on emergency medicine for health class.” He straightened up, his eyes avoiding mine. “She was thrilled. Drove back to work and borrowed a whole bunch of stuff.”
“Tori.” Sebastian spoke quietly. “We’d better get started.” He looked over his shoulder at Alison. “Ready?”
Alison was breathing hard, freckles stark against the whiteness of her face. She’d pressed herself against the opposite wall, as far away from my Noise as she could get, and she looked ready to faint at any minute. But she nodded.
Milo moved behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and holding me tight. He said huskily, “I’ve got you. Try to relax.”
“Just don’t forget to let go of me afterward, okay? If it takes me, and you’re too close—”
Milo bowed his head, silky hair brushing my cheek. His lips moved softly against the nape of my neck as he whispered, “I know.”
He didn’t want to watch what Sebastian was about to do. I didn’t blame him. I clenched my right hand around the strap of the EMP bomb and poised my left thumb over the detonator. My throat ached, and my mouth felt dry. Any second now, it would begin.
“Niki!” Dad’s voice echoed from the corridor outside, muffled but frantic. He was knocking on the door—no, pounding on it, with those big bear’s paws of his. But it was a heavy steel door with a deadlock, and it wasn’t going anywhere. “Niki, open the door!”
Sebastian looked at me for confirmation. I replied in a harsh whisper:
“Do it.”
The saw buzzed to life, its whine escalating to a scream. Alison shrank back, covering her ears. Sebastian’s lips moved, inaudible but clear: “God have mercy.”
And the spinning blade came down.
The pain was white-hot, searing, breathtaking. It bit through my skin and ground straight down to the bone; it strangled the yell that had bubbled up in my throat and turned my insides to slurry. As the saw ground to a halt in mid-cut, Sebastian shaking with the effort of holding it steady, I felt darkness whirling in from the edges of my vision—
No!
I fought for consciousness with all my remaining strength, clinging to my own agony like a lifeline. I had to stay alert until the chip in my arm registered that my life was in danger, until the relay came zooming through the doorway to rescue me, until the instant I heard Alison cry out—
“NOW!”
Sebastian’s hand jerked down. The slice of hot steel through my forearm gave way to a sickening rush of cold air, and the weight of the EMP bomb dropped away. My left thumb shook and slipped around the detonator, groping for the button. Where was it? I could feel the chip in my arm vibrating, and I knew I had only nanoseconds left—
All at once I was yanked backward, breath crushed out of me by the force of Milo’s arms. The detonator tumbled out of my hand as I went flying away from the workbench, speechless with pain and the shock of failure—
I crashed to the floor with Milo beneath me. His head smacked the concrete with a sickening crack, and he went limp. Panicked, I scrabbled to get off him as my ears roared and my skin began to tingle—
“No! No, Tori, stop!”
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Alison’s face swam into my vision, blurred and distorted by tears. She grabbed my shoulders, sobs breaking like mad laughter from her lips. “It’s done,” she gasped. “It’s over.”
The saw whined to a halt, leaving only a deafening silence. I was shaking uncontrollably, my right arm numb to the shoulder, and when I tried to speak, no sound came out. Weakness swept through me, and the room spun sideways as I fell—
CLANG.
It sounded like the biggest gong I’d ever heard, a deafening reverberation that shocked my mind blank and turned my muscles to water. I heard Alison scream, and then a black hole opened up in front of me and sucked me in.
PART FIVE: Regenerative Feedback
(The increase in signal strength that occurs when part of the output energy returns to the input signal and reinforces it)
Phase I
It seemed like only a minute before I fought my way back to consciousness. But when I opened my eyes, everything had changed.
I was lying on a bed in a darkened room, with tubes and wires hooked to me everywhere and a monitor bleeping softly above my head. Light slanted through the half-open door, and sounds drifted in: the rubbery squeak of shoes on tile, the rattle of a wheeled cart, the distant ring of a telephone…
A hospital. I was in a hospital.
Terror stabbed into me. I grabbed at the bedrail, trying to push myself up, but my hand passed through it like a ghost. I fell awkwardly onto my bandaged elbow, dull pain radiating up to my shoulder as my other hand flailed for support. Only when I’d steadied myself and got my breath back did I realize why I’d fallen.
My right hand and half my forearm were missing. There was nothing there now but a temporary prosthetic—a thick stump of padding that started five centimeters below the elbow joint and ended in a rounded knob where my wrist used to be.
And yet I could have sworn I had fingers. I could flex them open, curl them shut—I could even feel my nails digging into my palm. How could an illusion seem so real?
A sob trembled against my lips, but I swallowed it back. I had no time for self-pity. I had to pull these tubes out of my body, find my clothes, and get out of here fast, before—
Then something stirred in the chair by the foot of the bed, and a sleepy voice murmured, “Tori?”
I froze. “Mom?”
“Oh, thank God!” She leaped up and rushed to me. “I was afraid you’d never wake up!”
“Who brought me here?” I asked. “And when?”
“Your father drove you,” she said. “Eight hours ago. You’d lost a lot of blood, sweetheart, and none of us knew how to fix what you’d done to yourself—he had no choice.”
No wonder I felt so weak. “I can’t be in a hospital,” I said. “I have to get out of here.”
“It’s all right,” she said, smoothing my hair back and kissing my forehead. “Just rest. Your friend Sebastian said he’d look after everything.”
How? By hacking into the hospital’s server and altering my medical records? I didn’t doubt he could do it, but that wouldn’t erase the memories of all the doctors and nurses who’d worked on me since I came in. And it definitely wouldn’t stop Deckard and the people at GeneSystem from finding me.
“He asked me to give you this,” my mother added softly and pressed something into my upturned palm.
My fingers closed around a sphere of brushed metal. I lifted it to eye level, turning it in all directions. It gave no light, no warmth, not even the slightest vibration. And when I put it down on my lap and tried to twist it open, the top half refused to move.
The relay was dead. And I was here, alive.
“Oh, honey,” said Mom, touching my wet cheek. “Let me get you a Kleenex. And then I’ll call Dad—they must be finished splinting his hand by now.”
“His hand?” I took the tissue she offered and clumsily wiped my eyes. “What did he do to it?”
“Broke three bones, trying to get to you. We didn’t realize at first—we were so afraid you wouldn’t make it through surgery, and then…”
So they’d operated on me while I was unconscious. I had a feeling I’d be better off not knowing the details. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t want him to get hurt.”
“Shh.” She squeezed my good hand. “Don’t worry about that. He’ll be fine.”
Phase II
After all the pain, stress, and emotion of the day before, not to mention the nurses checking on me every half hour all night, I slept badly and woke far too early the next morning. My parents had gone home to sleep at my insistence, so there was nobody I could talk to, and eating breakfast one-handed was frustrating, especially when I flipped my bagel off the tray and it landed jam-side down on the blankets. But by eight o’clock they’d taken most of the tubes out, and by nine they told me I could get up and walk around a little if I wanted.
I was shuffling down the corridor with my IV stand beside me and my injured arm in a sling, trying to ignore the cramping in a wrist I no longer had, when I heard footsteps coming up behind me. Automatically I stepped aside to let the nurse pass, but then a voice said, “Niki?” and I turned.
It was Alison.
She looked pale and nervous, a magazine twisted into a tight spiral between her hands. But when our eyes met she gave a little smile. “You look amazing.”
“Don’t you need a barf bucket for a lie that big?” I asked, and she laughed.
“I said amazing, not beautiful.” She gestured back the way she’d come. “Do you want to go to the lounge? It’s not far.”
I looked down at my hospital gown and old-lady slippers. One of the nurses had helped me put on some pajama pants, and tied the gown up in back. But I still felt half-naked. “Is there anybody else in there?”
“No. The TV’s off.” The tone of her voice said, Thank God for that. “Come on. I bought you some coffee.”
The lounge was a few meters behind us, down a short hallway: a cozy, sunlit space with plump chairs, plenty of tables, and a wall of windows overlooking the street four stories below. I lowered myself into a seat across from Alison, took the coffee she handed me, and breathed the fragrant steam until I felt human again. Or as human as I’d ever be, anyway.
“So what happened back at the makerspace?” I asked between sips. “I thought I’d screwed everything up.”
“You didn’t,” she said. “You hit the detonator at exactly the right moment. Milo pulled you out of range, and I tried to reassure you, but you were in shock, and you fought us. You didn’t realize the relay had already beamed your arm—and the bomb—away.”
That was what I’d banked my life on. The relay’s beam had a limited range, so it couldn’t disintegrate two separate objects at once, and I’d guessed that the part of me with the chip in it would take priority. Though I’d also known it would quickly recognize the error and try to correct it, which was why I’d panicked when I couldn’t get away from Milo fast enough. Because if my EMP bomb didn’t go off and the relay came after the rest of me, there’d be no escape.
But Alison was still talking, and I didn’t want to interrupt. “When I looked up, I saw the relay hovering over us,” she said, “swiveling from side to side like it was confused. Then it just … dropped.” She spread her hands in a final gesture. “It hit the floor so hard the whole room turned blazing orange, like the worst migraine I’d ever had. But when the pain cleared and the taste in my mouth went away, I felt better. More than better. I felt normal, for the first time in ages.” She closed her eyes, savoring the memory. “That was when I knew the wormhole had finally closed.”
So that was the clang I’d heard just before I blacked out. No wonder Alison had screamed. “What about Barry?” I asked. “Please tell me he’s not still tied up at the makerspace.”
“Your dad found him on the way in,” she said. “That was why he was so anxious to get to you—he thought Deckard had done it. We let Barry go before we took you to the hospital.”
“We?”
“Your
dad and I,” she said. “Faraday stayed at the maker-space with Milo.” She turned the curled magazine facedown on her lap and made a half-hearted attempt at smoothing it out. “I haven’t seen either one of them since.”
Dad had told me last night that Milo had a mild concussion and that Sebastian had taken him home to rest. I also knew that at some point Sebastian had talked to Mom and given her the relay. So I wasn’t worried, but I was surprised. “Then where did you sleep last night?” I asked.
“In your room,” she said. “Your dog is adorable, by the way. I don’t usually like dogs, but I’d adopt yours in a—”
She stopped, staring at someone behind me. I sighed and twisted in my chair. “Look, Sebastian,” I began, but the words died in my mouth.
It wasn’t Sebastian. It was Deckard.
“Good morning,” he said in his soft voice. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
Rage boiled up in me, too hot for fear. How dare he come after me now, after what I’d just been through? “This is a hospital,” I snapped. “I am a patient. I’m calling security.”
“Wait.” He held up his hands. “Just hear me out. I’m not here to cause you trouble.”
I ignored him, looking around and under the chair in all directions. Where was the button? There had to be a call button around here—
“Tori.” Alison’s voice was quiet. “He’s telling the truth.”
“I came to tell you there’s no need to run from me anymore,” Deckard interrupted, as I drew breath to yell for help. “You and your parents are no longer part of my investigations, on behalf of GeneSystem or otherwise. And Dr. Gervais has agreed not to make any further attempts to contact you.”
“Agreed with whom?” I asked, but Deckard only gave a thin smile.
“I’m not at liberty to disclose that information,” he said. He tipped his head to me, two fingers raised as though touching an invisible cap. “Good-bye, Ms. Beaugrand. Enjoy your freedom.” His eyes flicked to my right arm, cradled in its sling. “Such as it is.”