Page 193 of Everdoll

“Shut up!”

The high-pitched sound tore out from inside the ring and shook the entire square. His scream had shattered the walls of the sphere. A force surged out of Raymond all at once. The blast threw me and the white soldiers backward like a bomb going off.

I was dragged onto a roof, right next to Eleanor. My back throbbed with such excruciating pain from the impact that I thought it had cracked. I couldn’t hold back a scream. Eleanor leaned down to help me, but in that split second, something happened.

Raymond came flying straight toward us.

“Don’t touch Mina!”

He lunged at us like a predator. The sphere struck Eleanor, but my body passed through the invisible wall.

I was inside.

Raymond’s metal arm had wrapped around my waist and pulled me against him. Up close now, I could see it, the ends of his long black hair were singed. Almost to his ears. He still looked pretty. In fact, in such a wretched state, he somehow looked even better than usual.

Damn it, this was not the moment for that.

“Remi…”

I placed my hands on his shoulders, trying to steady him. Flashbacks of a few weeks ago flooded my mind. When he thought I was a clone and shoved me into his car. We were in the exact same position. But this time, we were floating in midair.

“Don’t touch Mina, don’t touch… Go away…” he kept muttering under his breath, but with every word, arcs of electricity jolted from his body, piercing mine. It felt as though I had stepped into a server room right as every computer short-circuited and exploded at once. Static course through every inch of me, though it wasn’t strong enough to be lethal.

“Mina is here.” At my whisper, his rambling stopped. His head snapped up, and I saw raw agony in his heterochromatic eyes: the blue drowned in grief, the green gleamed with a dangerous light. I reached out and cupped his cheeks; my fingers curled from the electric current, but I didn’t stop. “Remi…” I murmured again. He was like a wild animal I was trying to soothe. I removed my necklace, wrapped it around one of my fingers, and used another to part his lips. But when I tried to slip it inside, his mouth rejected it, thrusting it right back out. The force repelled me as well, though I remained inside the barrier. My back slammed against its translucent edges. My chest heaved, and my head began to spin. This time, I placed the chip between my own lips and surged forward.

I gripped his trembling shoulders and pressed my lips to his. Even as I tried to transfer the chip inward, his tongue wouldn’t let it go any further. So I kept my lips there, refusing to pull away, holding on as though I were glued to him.

As though my life depended on it.

His body pushed me away again. And the chip was in my mouth, filled with his saliva.

Finally… I swallowed.

At first, nothing happened. A strange sourness settled in my throat, like swallowing expired medicine.

The moment it hit me, I forgot what breathing was.

It felt like every cell in my body had been struck simultaneously, something had reached deep into my gut and pulled. A white, total obliteration behind my eyes… My muscles seized before I could think to brace for it, every nerve firing. I couldn’t scream. My throat had forgotten how.

The energy moved through me like a high-voltage current through wire. I could feel it passing, tearing a path through tissue, nerve, and bone, refusing to anchor itself to my cells. It didn’t want me; it couldn’t settle. I was merely the ground wire, the living channel. That was what Eleanor said. My body understood that even as it burned.

I tried to open my eyes, but my vision had gone entirely white, then dark at the edges, collapsing into a thin, flickering point of light. My heart stuttered once, twice, trying to find its rhythm beneath the catastrophic interference.

Through me, I thought, distantly. It’s going through me.

And then it was gone. Into the air around me, and out.

The last thing I was aware of was the child inside the sphere, trying to hold onto me. But he was no different from me. He couldn’t keep his eyes open either. But I saw it.

The green color was no longer there.

For the first time, Remi’s eyes were deep blue as the vast ocean I’d only ever seen in books. Only blue. Pure, clear blue.

The urge to cry rose in me, and I let my eyes fall shut. The electric ring surrounding us was dissolving, or perhaps, I was only imagining it.

I couldn’t tell anymore.

CHAPTER 14