Page 63 of Light

My senses go numb.

My arms fall limp.

I’m conscious only of letting Lux yank Ira away from me because even he knows Dada’s circuits have just been fried into the realm of beyond-fucked-up.

But in the same moment, I force my senses to weld back together—before blasting them back into the middle of the war zone. A battlefield I’ve been searching so long for. Built a whole command center to find. Pushed my team to their limits, over and over and over again, in a relentless push to locate.

On the other side of the world.

I lurch back up to my feet. Stumble forward, scanning Aliz’s face for a shred of insecurity or dubiety. She’s as certain about her words as if telling me the earth is round. No, worse. She’s telling me the earth is round, and now I’ve got to tell the heathens about it.

I’ve got to be the fucking hero.

But I’m no goddamned hero.

Not right now.

Will I ever be again?

Was I ever to begin with?

In this moment, I can’t comprehend those answers. It’s a dark, lonely hell to simply remember who I am. Who I am, not what. Not the creature I became after Alpha Two was born. Not the unthinking specimen they turned me into. Because thinking made all of it too real. Because feeling made all of it too vivid.

Because resisting made all of it hell.

They do not refuse. Just as none of us do. But you already know that…

“Jesus.” It tumbles from my barely moving lips. They’re still practically numb, reacting to the match of horror that’s touched off the poisoned awareness coursing through my blood. “I— I don’t…I can’t…”

But I have to.

No, my heart and soul blast back.

Proof. I need fucking proof!

I don’t bother asking Aliz for it. I know she already sees the denial across my features and is ready with a smooth swivel as I storm past her, heading for the locked white door in the wall behind her.

But for all the speed of my charge, I’m a brick of paralyzed fear once I brace myself before the doorway. The intensity of my grip burns black scars into the tempered steel frame. I’m so goddamn freaked, my muscles bunch and push against the shoulders of my jacket.

I drop my head. I beg the Almighty and any of his celestial pals to lend me strength. It helps, but only a little. I can’t stand how familiar this is. Too familiar. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen doorways just like this, only from a much different point of view.

Because I was always looking at them from waist height.

Because I was being wheeled through them on a rolling lab table.

Right past the bright buttons and blinking lights of security keypads—like the one I short out now, using a single pulse from the middle of my right hand.

The heavy slab disappears into its thick slot in the wall. Steel scrapes steel, and the sound rips into my senses like starving lions tearing open a gazelle. I keep my head dipped, certain I’m about to watch my entrails spill all over the glaring tile, but it still only feels like my intestines are being dragged from me like a skein of human knitting yarn.

Human.

If that’s what I am anymore.

As I order my feelings back and away, separating them from the horror of the memories.

As I command the rest of my senses to shut down, giving raw instinct its freedom to take over all of me.

Bracing for the impact of what I see.