Page 58 of Poster Girl

Only one of the guards enters this time. He takes her arm, gentle, and she stands at his urging. He steers her toward the edge of the steel table, and she sits. He presses her back, and she lies down, her heels at the edge of the table, her hands at her sides.

It’s then that something trickles in. Her eye. Something about her eye.

She sees the Insight’s glow, so constant it has become just a single thread in the weaving of everything she sees. She sees her father crouching in front of her to tie her shoe when she was a child, the white circle around his iris lighting up brighter when he meets Sonya’s eyes.See? It loves you as much as I do.

She watches Myth pull on a pair of rubber gloves. There’s a metal tray somewhere near her feet with a scalpel on it.

Her eye. Something about her eye.

She sees Aaron bending over her as she lies on the couch in his living room, his hair spilling over his forehead and the white light that greets her at the touch of his gaze, so like a physical touch—Worth theDesCoin,she thinks, as his lips draw closer to hers—

Myth picks up the scalpel in his steady, wrinkled hand. She knows the feeling of that hand on her, soft, dry. One of the guards appears in the doorway, his face shielded by its shimmer, breathless.

“Someone from the Triumvirate,” he says, his voice rough. “Outside.”

“How did they find us?” Myth demands.

Maybe it’s the scalpel, or the familiar light of the Insight, or the mention of the Triumvirate. Maybe it’s just that she’s empty and to be empty is unreasonable, untenable. Whatever the reason, Sonya screams.

Into the void around her, inside her. She screams, and Myth’s hand presses to her mouth, and she bites, feeling tendon and bone and skin between her teeth.

Myth swipes with the scalpel, cutting her cheek, and she flails, her body spilling over the edge of the table. She hits the ground hard, and the tray clatters beside her, and there are voices in the hallway, voices in her head, voices all around her.

The scalpel glints on the floor, in the dust. She grabs it by the blade, and it cuts into her hand; she fumbles for the handle and stabs it into the hand that reaches for her, the hand that belongs to the guard. The guard screams, and for just a second she can see his mouth through the Veil, a red yawn, a red wound, and a floor spattered red.

Over Myth’s shoulder, over the man’s hunched spine, Sonya sees Alexander Price.

He’s breathless and windblown, his hair wild around his head. He holds an Elicit in one hand, outstretched, and a knife in the other, his hands crossed at the wrist.

“Peace officers are on their way,” he says. “You can either waste your own time giving me a problem, or you can get a head start. Either way, they’re going to get this recording.”

Myth puts his hand on the guard’s back and steers him into the hallway and out, away. The guard’s feet leave bloody smears on the cement. Sonya drops to her knees, gasping. Something warm runs down her cheek. At first she thinks it’s tears, and she’s surprised by that, because it’s been years since she’s cried. Then she remembers the cut on her face.

Alexander crouches in front of her, folding up long legs like he’s collapsing an umbrella. He puts his hands on her shoulders and squeezes, firm, warm.

“You’re all right,” he says. “Shit.” He reaches into his pocket, takes out a handkerchief, and presses it to her cheek.

All at once, she thinks of the strip of photo negatives, his fingers pinching one end and hers pinching the other; the checkerboard between them, Alexander always playing red and her, black; the kitchen counter that kept him away from her, but not quite enough.

“Why’s there always so much between us?” she says.

Sonya drops the scalpel between them and leans forward, until her forehead is on his shoulder. He smells like wet wool. Like rain.

The peace officers arrive, flooding the warehouse space in their white uniforms, pants, shirt, jacket, and boots all matching. They put on gloves, and start to sort through the items in the room where she met Myth. They stand around the generator across the hall and talk about pulling the data from the power grid. They crowd the sidewalk outside. Sonya is sitting on the metal table, sagging back against the wall, when they come in to ask her questions. She blinks at them in response.

A woman comes in, her bright red jumpsuit signaling that she’s a paramedic. She shoos the peace officers from the room, and Alexander,though he stays in the doorway where Sonya can see him. Judging by the oblong stain on his chest, she got blood on his already worn coat.

The woman’s name is Therese. It’s written on her lapel. She sets her bag down next to Sonya on the table.

“I assume by that look you’re giving me that you were given some kind of sedative,” Therese says. “Can you describe it to me?”

Sonya clears her throat.

“It was an aerosol,” she says. Her throat aches; she sounds hoarse. “White vapor. I feel...” She frowns. “Empty.”

“Sounds like Placatia to me,” Therese says. “Delegation developed it for civil unrest, much good it did them. I thought the uprising destroyed it all—guess not. I’m going to inject you with something to counter its effects. Okay?”

Sonya nods. She thinks—she isn’t sure. But soon enough Therese is dabbing the inside of her elbow with gauze soaked in sour-smelling antiseptic and piercing her skin with a needle. Cold spreads through Sonya’s arm and clutches her heart. Her head clears. What spills into the emptiness inside her isn’t something she likes. It feels a lot like a scream.

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