Page 109 of Primal Mirror

“THE BODY HAS degraded even further than I recalled,” Auden said with clinical detachment, and this time, it wasn’t the other part of her. It was anger so profound that it was a sheet of glass over her emotions. Because if she let it go, if she cracked the glass, she would be a thing out of control, a mother who loved, a mother who would beat in the brains of the thing on the hospital bed.

What had once been Shoshanna Scott was a much-too-small lump of a torso with a head. No arms. No legs. Not even a full torso. “Alive” only because she was hooked up to so many machines that she had become some science fiction writer’s macabre creation—a human brain at the heart of a network.

“Yes, I’m afraid even with the amputations, the Councilor took too much energy from her body and organs in her valiant effort to keep her brain alive.” A glance at Auden, back at the bed. “I don’t know what to call you and her, sir.”

“Stick with the usual,” Auden said. “It’ll make it easier for both of us, and it’ll ensure you don’t slip up in the future.”

“Yes, of course,” the nurse said, and Auden wondered if she had any idea of her likely fate if Shoshanna had come back in Auden’s body.

The nurse would have had to die.

As would the doctor.

The chance of a leak would otherwise be too great. Charisma alone would have survived—because Charisma had already kept countless other secrets for Shoshanna.

“Wait at the monitoring station,” she ordered the nurse.

“Yes, sir.” Lomax moved to the far left of the room, from which she’d never get past Remi to escape and send up an alarm, should she be so inclined. It was possible that she’d already voiced a telepathic alarm, though she appeared to believe the story Auden had told her…but that made no difference now.

Auden knew what she had to do.

“Auden.” Remi’s rumble of a voice, quiet enough that the nurse would never hear it.

She looked up, the anger inside her a storm of violence born of years of abuse dressed up as medical experiments. “It’s time to finish this.”

He came with her as she walked closer to the body that was an abomination of what a living being should be—what remained of her mother’s body had all but mummified, her mutilated torso shrunken in. Her once glossy black hair was brittle straw, her face parchment over bone, but her eyes moved rapidly under her eyelids.

“She’s alive.” If this could be called life. “I haven’t felt her in the PsyNet since her supposed death, but that’s not a surprise. We didn’t have much of a bond.” Shoshanna could’ve been hiding in plain sight, and Auden would’ve never spotted her.

More likely, someone else—one of the faithful—had been shielding her mind from the world.

“What do you want to do?” Remi asked, the leopard in his voice.

Auden wondered what it made her that she didn’t hesitate. “I want her dead, this time for real. She’s done enough damage—I will not permit her to harm Liberty as she did me.”

Foolish girl, came a voice emotionless and arrogant inside her head, do you really believe you’re in control? I’ve had you in my power since the first day.

Auden’s breath caught, her eyes flashing to Remi. “She’s telepathing me.”

He went to move, as if to tear Shoshanna’s head off her body, but Auden stopped him with a hand on his arm.

Because her mother was still speaking. I think ten steps ahead. That’s why you were pregnant long before the unfortunate incident that caused my current state.

She was right; Auden had been impregnated while Shoshanna still lived. Liberty, Auden realized, had been created to hold Shoshanna’s mind no matter when Shoshanna died. Her mother had intended to mess with her baby’s sweet, emerging consciousness from the moment of birth.

We are connected, you and I. It was so easy to overlay my mind on yours for short bursts well before the incident that took my body from me. I negotiated the fertilization and conception agreement. I made the world see you as whole when it suited me.

Telepathic mind control, Auden thought. A difficult but not unknown thing among their race. Especially when it came to a telepath as powerful as Shoshanna who’d had unhindered access to her daughter’s damaged brain for years.

The thought sickened Auden.

But the transfer glitched when I attempted to take permanent charge after the incident, leaving part of me in you. If I die, the psychic shock will kill you, too.

Auden’s breath raced, her hand squeezing Remi’s forearm as she quickly relayed what Shoshanna had said, then turned back to her mother. “Why did you attempt a transfer into me in the first place?” she asked aloud and on the telepathic level at the same time. “You created a child for your transfer—a perfect, unbroken brain with specific genetics designed to ensure she’d be a high-Gradient telepath.”

I— A hesitation, a sense of white noise. I— The fetus. I wanted to enter the fetus as soon as possible. Better to embed while she was still forming and influence her development.

Auden frowned, because that didn’t make sense. “My brain is scarred. You had no guarantees you wouldn’t degrade once inside me.”

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