Page 62 of Vicious
Poh took a single step toward me, then stopped, jerked her feet as if to go farther, and flicked her gaze up to mine again, hovering slightly aboveher.
I snatched at empty air to stop my ascent. “Someone’s magnetizing thestation.”
She lifted her pants bunched at the ankle and revealed blue metal legs structured like exposed bones. “Automatic magnetized legs. Should the needarise.”
I shook my head, rising higher into the darkness, at a complete loss. What the fuck was she? Anandroid?
The whirring sound grew louder. My chains pulled toward the high ceiling and the ring above the space station, harder and faster the closer I drew. I slammed headfirst into the top of the room hard enough to crack my teeth together. The rest of my chains swept past my ears and thudded against the surface. The magnetization found the metal in my corset and crashed my back against the ceiling. Air emptied from my lungs. Pressed this close to the magnet, it yanked the chains from between my teeth and whipped them out of my mouth to plunk above myhead.
As soon as they had snaked past my tongue, the ghost next to Poh whipped his black gaze up to mine. Instead of silence pouring out of his open mouth, he bellowed. Every frosted glass cubicle wall shattered. The doors that led to the bloody hallway splintered. A burst of cold washed through the room. Amid the broken shards were ghosts. Peering in from the bloodied hallway. Sitting in their cubicle chairs that had been painted red with blood. Hundreds of them. Their black gazes pinned to me high above them. Then they flung themselves at me in a lethalswarm.
My arms dangled free, so I wrenched my hands above my head to my chains and yanked. The magnet held them tight. A panicked growl worked through my clenched teeth, and I pulled with every bit of strength I had in my fist. But the magnet was too powerful. And the whirringincreased.
My only iron, so close but gone. I couldn’t invite the ghosts inside. I couldn’t repel themeither.
I stiffened my arms and legs and braced them against the ceiling as if to sink into it and hide. But it didn’thelp.
The ghosts turned corporeal as soon as they neared me. They bit and tore at my flesh, their black eyes piercing to the back of my skull. Bloody fingertips wormed into my mouth and pried my jaw open, demanding entrance to all of them atonce.
“Come in,” Ibegged.
Their faces twisted together in a whorl of black smoke and filtered inside my mouth, digging, clawing to the back of my throat and beyond. I gagged at the death inside me, then inhaled sharply, trying to draw themin.
But I couldn’t. They ripped out of my mouth, spun into a physical form, and screamed at myface.
I wouldn’t survive this. A glance down my body revealed dripping gashes. And the cylinder of consumectalons still down the front of my corset, open andleaking.
A wretched, unearthly howl scratched at my eardrums from somewhere below, a sound that shot deep trembles up my back and cratered a hole in my skull. An answering howl echoed back, impossibly close. It came from inside me. Out of my mouth. Green washed over my eyes and sharpened and dulled my vision at the same time into something completely foreign. Oh my Feozva, what was happening tome?
The nearest ghost lunged at my jaw and pried it open. Another grabbed my throat. The rest kicked and punched their way into my body. But I couldn’t letthem.
Tobacco smoke touched the back of my tongue as a voice that wasn’t mine hissed between my lips. “Consume.”
I didn’t hesitate. I freed the cylinder, tipped the connected cap up, and while hanging stomach-down from the ceiling and my mouth wrenched open, some consumectalons made it onto my tongue. What didn’t make it inside rolled off my chin and trickled underneath the bandages on my arm to myscales.
A massive torrent of energy soared through my body until I thought I might burst. Higher. Higher still. The blood sheening my skin glowed. The faces of those fighting to get inside faded into the darkness for just a moment. Somewhere in the background, the whirring noise began to rundown.
“Go in,” Iordered.
And they did, but not where I expected. They morphed into black smoke and surged toward the empty glass cylinder. On and on until smoke curled out the top and the glasscracked.
I gasped. Slammed the connected cap on top to trap them. Stuffed it down mycorset.
Had I just commanded them where to go, sort of but not really? If I could do that, surely I could do the same with those already inside me. If I knew exactly where to sendthem.
The lights blinked on again, except those immediately around me, throwing spots around the large room. The magnetizing whirringstopped.
Below, Poh stared upward, her yellow eyes rimmed in white. “Absidy!”
My arms and legs dangled, followed by the rest of me. I plummeted, screaming. But it abruptly cut off when a pair of human hands whipped out of thin air and caught me. I huffed a breath, allowing myself one second to gather what little wits I had left, and gazed up at the owner of thearms.
A man, sixty-something, with a blood-smeared white button-up shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows lay doubled over a wide steel platform hanging from theceiling.
“Absidy Jones,” he breathed, sweat rolling down both gray sideburns. His hazel eyes were wide, panicked. “You saved mylife.”
“Pull me up,” I said, my voice cracking on a sob, “and I’ll explain all the ways you have thatwrong.”
“Fair enough.” The tendons in his arms strained as he pulled my arms above the edge of the platform. Once I could brace my forearm on the flat surface and I could pull myself up, he released me. “Don Summertack. I saw your video you sent us. I had my Mind-I taken out, based on what you said, before the Saelis arrived. Others weren’t solucky.”
