Page 84 of Born for Lace

My brain is on fire. Trapped deep inside my body, I propel my muscles forward through the magnetic fields. It feels like hooks pull my veins, drawing them out through my spine.

Vomit fills my throat, so I spit some out and swallow the rest down.

Panting, heaving, running, jumping, the treacherous terrain shuffling, I press through the resistance of the field.

Can’t stop.

All the beacons surrounding the Shadow Training compound are on, surging through me. Demanding my compliance. Ordering me back to my room, to be tortured, to be trained, to be hardened and charred.

I can’t go back even if I wanted to—they would kill me now. Knowing that I can fight the agony and push through a wall of pain that should be unbearable. Death is meant to come first, suicide, even. To make it stop. Not resilience, not against theIron-Draft.

Go back.

Go back.

Make it stop.

I don’t know where that slimy voice comes from, but I growl at it—ignore it. No, I won’t stop.

My thighs burn, my arms draw my torso onward, and I climb the rocky quarry walls, pound the ground, then suddenly?—

I hit a road.

The Redwind, a deep storm of crimson, swirls up the clearing, the absence of rocks and concaves, an opening for its unrelenting wrath.

I run. And run.

Hundreds of metres down the road, an old car suddenly flies by, too rickety to be Trade-aligned. I race after it, waving my hands. “Hey!”

But they aren’t going to stop for a half-naked beast of a man like me. Even at fifteen, I am more man than evolution ever allowed. My ancestors were designed. Built. Engineered. With traits of the beasts in the human formula.

I’ve got at least four different lives smeared on my torso, lashes of scarlet and bile, and sweat. I have wounds and scars up and down my skin; each holds a tortuous memory and pairs with a conditioned response.

The hands that cave skulls. The feet that stomp through bone. I’m terrifying.

Adrenaline pulses through me. I sprint down the narrow road. No one will be out here. No one will be close.

Goodwill is a lie.

No one would stop.

Suddenly, energy pours down my crown, blanketing me in sheer agony. My body convulses, but I growl and fight through the pain. Run.

They are trying to bring me down from the inside out, overwhelming my iron-blood. My legs threaten to collapse, but I thrust through it as if it were a tangible wall—I bash the bricks, the fibres, the cement down, baring my teeth. Nothing should hurt this much. No one should endure this. Every pain receptor inside me detonates.

Kill yourself.

It’ll all be over soon.

Just kill yourself.

ChapterTwenty-Six

Lagos

Now she knows.

I told her she should run from me—warned her. And now she is mine, and I’m in deep. Feeling greedy. I am going to finish what I started with her. I don’t know who I was trying to be—moral, I suppose. Tomar…

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