Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
The hand that wasn’t a talon shifted back to her arm, shook her hard. She couldn’t tell if it was causing her pain, but she felt the desperation in the other person, and that, she understood.
Turning again, she tried to focus on the person to whom the hand belonged, because surely it must belong to someone…unless this was a nightmare and she was lost in her own broken brain.
Exposure. Had she hit Exposure?
An echoey sound, as if someone was talking to her through a long tunnel.
Again and again.
A sob.
It was the sob that reached her in a pristine ball of clarity.
A child was crying.
She didn’t know why, but she reached out her hand into the chaos of color and sharp edges that cut and made her bleed, telling that crying person to grab on to her. The fingers released her arm to grip her hand.
Solid, strong, shielded.
Feathers in her mind, against her hair.
“—please, please!”
The echoey words had taken shape, become a plea. She still couldn’t make out the shape of the person who held her hand, and while her mind stretched and tried to reach the PsyNet, it couldn’t.
It was too shredded, too twisted.
But this being was pleading with her, and the part of Eleri that had assisted survivors of abuse escape murder charges reacted out of primal instinct, hearing in the plea the cry of a being who was trapped with no way out.
Their leg in irons.
Their freedom shackled.
She squeezed the hand.
It squeezed back, and the echoes continued, as did the nausea and the lack of clarity.
“—drugs! He said—your gloves—removed—”
It took a very long time for Eleri to process those scattered words, to even begin to gain some comprehension of the shape of them. It was the part of her that she’d designed to flick the shutoff valve to her life that got it; she’d separated the valve controller from all the normal pathways of her mind so it could flip the off switch even if the rest of her was compromised.
It was small and restricted and had only one real goal, but right now, it was also the only part of her that had retained even basic function. Cut off as it was from all other pathways, it had been accidentally protected from both the drug that had sown chaos in her brain and the impact of any direct contact she might’ve had with the person who’d peeled off her gloves.
All these thoughts happened in that same secretive part. The rest of her was a puppet with its strings cut.
Whoever did this knows Psy react badly to most narcotics, murmured the tiny hidden part of her. They overdosed you with something that ensures you can’t reach for help on the PsyNet. I can’t. I’m your secret. I’m not designed for communication, my only function to flip the switch.
Something dripped from Eleri’s nose. It smelled of iron.
That hand left hers and a soft sensation was dabbing at her lip…and that was when Eleri realized she was starting to regain a hint of clarity. Though the PsyNet remained out of reach, she’d been able to connect the sensation with the act, could now see the blurred outline of the person with her.
Young, so young. And such beautiful hair.
Malia.
Malia’s head jerked, her hand dropping as her breath caught.
When she grabbed Eleri’s hand again, the connection cleared up the chaos enough for her to comprehend the words the girl was speaking. “He’s coming. He’ll drug you again so you can’t telepath for help.”
Eleri wanted to tell the child that she couldn’t telepath anyway. The drugs had broken something in her already wounded brain. Things were never going to sit quite right again; she felt that in the deepest fiber of her being. That same part keened with a sense of loss and grief, but uppermost was her determination to save this child who was Adam’s.
Adam.
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t say anything, but she made her hands move and took the child’s face in her hands, then jerked her head to the side, even as she pushed the child that way.
Malia’s eyes were panicked, huge.
This time, Eleri pushed at her shoulder, shoving her toward the darkness in the corner.
“You want me to hide in the shadow? He’ll still see.”
Eleri shoved again, and this time, Malia, this child who was scared but trusted Eleri to help her, went where Eleri had thrust her.
A sound in the chaos, a creak. A door opening.
Eleri had already dropped her head to her chest as she slumped against the beam behind her. Drops of red in her vision as her nose bled onto the white of her shirt.
That was good. The more blood, the more…She couldn’t follow that thread, but an instinctive part of her knew not to worry about the blood, that it was something that could help Malia.