Page 82 of Poster Girl

Sonya lifts up the gun, though it feels so heavy it might topple her, and holds it up to her eye, the way she saw Naomi do, when she first arrived.This is your Alice,she thinks, and she has to swallow a laugh. Alice is Alice Gleissner, the woman whose Insight became Grace Ward’s—but Alice is also the girl in Wonderland, and this is what’s at the bottom of the rabbit hole.

“Tell me,” Sonya says, staring down the barrel at her. “Tell me all of it.”

Naomi pulls up straight and purses her lips.

“I harvested it from Grace Ward’s body a little over ten years ago.”

Sonya nods. She doesn’t dare look at Alexander. She knows she’ll find something soft and sympathetic in his eyes, and she can’t bear it, because this isn’t over, this isn’t over yet.

She needs to hear the rest.

“You knew my father,” Sonya says. “You knew him from after you died, after you left the city. You knew him because he came here, didn’t he?”

Naomi’s eyes are dark and cool, like earth firmed by frost. They meet Sonya’s without expression. It doesn’t matter. Sonya’s hands shudder around the gun.

“Tell me,” she says again.

“Your father took Grace Ward from her family and drove her out of the city with him,” Naomi says. “He gave her Sol. She died on the trip. He brought her body to me, and I removed her Insight. Then he buried her.”

Alexander says, “There are six Insights here.”

“Yes,” Naomi says. “Grace was the last one he brought to me, but there were others before her.”

“Children.” Sonya chokes on the word. “My father killed children.”

Naomi only stares.

Sonya charges toward her, and pushes the barrel of the gun into Naomi’s forehead, hard enough to jerk her head back, hard enough to leave a mark.

“Yes, or no?”

“Yes,” Naomi says.

Sonya lowers the gun, nodding again.

Grace Ward is dead. She’s been dead for over a decade.

She swings the gun like a baseball bat at one of the Insight cylinders, shattering it. Blueish liquid spreads over the tabletop. She swings again, and again, her arms aching, until every cylinder is in fragments. Underpinning the sound of glass shattering is a low moan that she knows is coming from her, but can’t seem to feel.

Strong arms wrap around her entire body and hold her tight. She drops the gun with a clatter. Alexander’s chin hooks over her shoulder and he holds her until she starts to sob, and even after.

After some time—

Some length of time that Sonya doesn’t feel at all—

After some time, Naomi takes her outside, behind the cabin, where there’s a path worn into the ground, with greenery creeping inward to fill the space. They pass through an archway of Douglas fir branches, heavy with needles, and reach a mossy clearing. Arranged in a neat row there are stones, six of them, smooth, each one the size of a melon. They’re streaked with beautiful colors, shades of tan, gray, and the teal of stormy water.

“Grace’s?” Sonya says.

“I don’t know,” Naomi answers.

Of course she doesn’t.

“Who are the others?” she asks.

“Older,” Naomi says. “Too old now for the Triumvirate to look into.”

Naomi leaves her there. Maybe she’s going back to salvage her precious Insights, Sonya thinks. The image of Naomi Proctor in white gloves leaning over the still-warm body of a child to take a piece of technology from her head makes her want to vomit.

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