“God, make it stop!” I heard myself moan, heart thudding. But I couldn’t escape. I was going insane. It would be easier that way. One by one, my barriers began to crash, the loud bangs echoing in my head.
“Down! Get down!” someone yelled, and I realized the thumps were real. Something was happening.
“Edden?” I whispered as the squat but powerful man spilled into the room, his eyes alight and a bellow of outrage coming from him. With the sound of a thousand wings, the splintered mystics rose up from me.
At least I thought it was Edden, and I stared, my head lolling as the splinter hazed the room. He was head to toe in black, little half-moons of charcoal under his eyes. A cap with no insignia was on his head, and a clearly non-FIB-issue rifle was in his hand.
“Get away from that machine!” he shouted, and a little sob escaped me. Confusion rose among the splintered mystics, and I felt a shift, a tiny bit of control.
Ayer had his own weapon pointed. “The FIB?” He laughed. “Are you serious?”
“I’m not FIB tonight,” Edden said grimly, and I could hear David shouting in the hall. “I’m running with the pack.”
Ayer’s confident motion to bring his pistol to bear hesitated as Annie shoved the barrel of her weapon into his kidneys. “Sir,” she said, and Ayer froze.
Betrayal! the mystics screamed, recognizing Ayer’s emotion. I gasped, head dropping as I tried to calm them. “Get this off me!” I cried, but no one moved.
“Annie?” Ayer put his hands slightly up and away from his body. “They killed your father. You’re going to let that happen again to another innocent?”
“This isn’t right,” she said, nervous but her hand steady. “It’s a choice everyone makes. You can’t make it for them.”
“Put your weapon down!” Edden said as he edged closer to me. “Now!”
I gasped as Edden jerked one, then another of the electrodes from me, eyes never leaving Ayer, muzzle never wavering from the vampire. But it made no difference. There was enough splintered mystics in me that I’d become a battlefield. The savage need to survive sparked from one to the next—and like a tree catching on fire, I was suddenly fighting the desire to destroy every thought but my own. Problem was, I couldn’t decide who I was anymore.
Wild magic prickled along every nerve. It hurt to breathe, and I held my breath—eaten alive as the mystics looking to me tried to mend the splinter I’d taken in, calming them with the elasticity of my own thoughts and turning their circling into growth and change. But it wasn’t enough.
Ayer breathed deeply, his eyes flashing black as he took in the fear of the room. “You can have my weapon when you pry it from—”
“Your cold dead hands,” Annie finished for him, digging her muzzle into him a little harder. “It ends here. You said we could leave any time we wanted. Consider this my notice.”
Panting, I hung my head. I could see my feet. I was in socks. I am in socks? That seemed important, and I concentrated on it, letting the mystic noise roar in the back of my head. I, as in singular. Am, as in existing. In socks, meaning I had feet. I was solid. I was real.
“Put the weapon down!” Edden shouted. “Now!”
“Hold on, Rachel,” someone whispered, and I felt the last of the electrodes being plucked from me as the spicy scent of Were sparked a memory of David. I. Am. Real.
I breathed. Groaning, I tried to move, my hands unresponsive since they were still bound to the chair. David was at the machine flipping levers with a reckless abandon. I felt the thrum of the air shift, and the ache of wild magic began to pull from me, lifting like a fog, most of the mystics drawn away by a brighter light than my own. The insane splinter was flowing past my awareness with the coldness of a January moon. Slowly my confusion abated.
Kneeling, Ayer put his weapon on the floor.
“All the way,” Annie demanded, and he lay down, gaze never breaking from mine.
“I think that’s it,” David said, thumbing off the power and turning to me. He looked anxious as he dropped to kneel before me. “Rachel. Are you okay?”
I was tied to a chair, but yes, I thought I was okay.
“Rachel?”
He touched me, and I twitched. Mistrust flooded me, born from the mystics. It’s David! I hammered at the ones who had ignored the pull of the machine, demanding that they heed my single thought. But he’d seen my fear, and pain had filled his eyes. “I’m okay,” I said, not moving as he undid the straps. Still in the chair, I rubbed at my wrists. It was hard to focus. Remnants of the wild magic lingered in me, spinning like purple eyes. I was afraid to touch the line—the air already crackled with a lingering cloud of mystics.
Within me were more mystics than before, most tainted with the quick bite of insanity, but the ones I’d saved were circling, trying to absorb them like a white blood cell absorbs a virus. The confusion I felt wasn’t mine, but it was still real, and I sat and breathed as it slowly eased and abated. “I’m okay,” I said again, wanting to believe it.
“Can you move?
Looking at David, I was shocked with how angry he was. His hands had been so gentle. Somehow I managed a smile. “Yes.” Edden was standing over Ayer. The man was facedown, his gun kicked away and his hands on the back of his head as Edden recited the Miranda. “How many people did you bring with you?” I asked, hearing noise in the background that couldn’t be good. “It will take many singularities to end his dream.”
Aghast, I put a hand to my mouth.
David straightened, exchanging a nervous glance with Annie standing guard over the Ayer. “Thanks for your help. I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to cuff you.”
“Use mine,” Edden said, reaching behind himself for his cuffs.
“Look out!” I shouted, falling back into the chair as Ayer lurched from the floor, grabbing Annie and yanking her to his chest.
“Resignation accepted,” he snarled, and my heart sank at the sudden twist and snap of her neck.
“No!” David shouted as he dove for Annie, now falling as Ayer ran for his weapon. She was dead dead, the second death. I couldn’t tell you how I knew, but the energy from her mind was suddenly not there. I hadn’t even realized I could sense it until it was gone.
She shouldn’t have trusted the singular, the mystics thought, most of them siding against me. Many outweigh the one, they scolded me. You will become and do as the majority say.