Page 55 of Forget Me Twice

Next, my vision goes out in a brilliant flash of white, followed by a dancing mural of reds and purples. Everything jumps and writhes before me like a living Van Gogh painting.

I can’t even appreciate the weird beauty of it, because the drug is still burning a steady, painful path through my system like a wildfire that’s raging out of control.

There’s a harsh, grating sound in my ears that’s fighting my climbing heartbeat for dominance. When there’s a flare of pain in my jaw, it occurs to me that the sound is my teeth grinding together.

Then that moment of lucidity is gone along with all feeling in my fingers.

My breathing is already very labored, but then it’s like the entire weight of the universe rushes in to wrap around my rib cage, trying to crush it like a vice.

I’m convinced every bone must be broken. Surely my heart can’t take this kind of pressure. It must be about to combust right there in my chest.

Abruptly the twin grips on my arms fall away, and without the added support, my knees give out and I slump to the floor. My arms are still pinned to my sides by my sleeves.

I hear a moan.

It might be mine but I can’t be sure. I think I’m dying.

I must be dying.

“I knew it—you do lookrightat home on your knees, Winters.” Sloane’s voice comes from everywhere and nowhere at once.

I’m not able to formulate any kind of answer except for a shameful kind of gurgling noise from somewhere in the back of my throat.

Lights dance in front of my face and giggles echo around me. Sloane says something else that I don’t quite catch, but then hands are adjusting my jacket, before picking me up under the armpits and dragging me.

Where are we going?

I can’t feel my hands or my tongue. My feet are five hundred pounds of lead, trapped on the ends of legs that feel as if they have thousands of fire ants crawling all over them. I wish someone would remove my skin for me. I think I’d prefer to live without it right now.

We only make it a few feet before I’m unceremoniously dumped on the floor again. I can hear movement and voices but they sound distorted, like I’m underwater.

A thud, which could be the door.

And then nothing but the muted sound of whatever music’s playing outside the room and the deafeningswooshof my pulse.

Belatedly, I find my view is blocked by something dark and solid. I attempt to focus on the unmoving obstacle, hoping to use it to orient my rioting senses and at the very least, persuade my optic nerves to settle the fuck down.

When it seems like I can blink without my eyesight doing a backflip, I try to make sense of what it is I’m looking at. It takes several moments longer for me to corral my thoughts into some kind of sensible order, but then I realize I’m looking directly at the back of the couch.

Now that I have some idea of where I am, I decide to try and take stock of my physical state. I attempt to turn my head but pain rips through my neck and ricochets down my spine.

Christ on a fucking cracker. Death, take me now.

My vision swirls again, and I do my best to breathe through my nose, but that only seems to force my jaw to clench more tightly. I let it out in little pants instead.

Slowly, after what could be minutes, an hour—or decades for all I know—the muscles along my vertebrae begin to relax enough that I am able to roll gingerly onto my back.

I lay there, chest heaving—wondering how I could possibly let myself get to the point where the need to secure my next fix was more important than securing my blindspots.

I know made it too easy it was for them to get this ammunition to use against me in the first place. Sloane is a princess in our Underworld after all. I’d just assumed Daddy had shipped her off to keep her out of the muck, or perhaps for her protection.

Did her father also give her an official recruitment directive, or is she just using her peers as she sees fit?

Had she actuallyintendedfor it to be lethal?

Have Igrosslyunderestimated Sloane O’Sullivan?

I try to concentrate on just breathing, even as a million questions continue to cascade through my brain.

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