Chapter 3

“You haven't had today's booster.”

The little robot at my elbow opened with a click and a curl of white vapor. I took out the vial, drew up the dose and gave myself the shot. Before a drop of blood could well up, I pressed a clotting pad over the puncture. It would have been embarrassing to turn my room into a crime scene with a needle that small.

“Morning, Jacob.”

“Good morning, Ms. Arkwright.” The red lights in its eyes blinked. “Please place used supplies in my storage compartment for disposal.”

I deposited the syringe and the empty vial. Four days in Cities of Ash, and I was starting to get the hang of my mornings.

Central sent the robot. It shared a processor with Jacob, the central system back in Haven, and at eight sharp each morning it rolled into the research center with a booster to follow up my new antigen. I had to give it to myself. If anybody else so much as saw the drug, Central would call off the entire deal. We had our own research staff. They might be a long way behind Central's, but if they ever managed to reproduce what was in that vial, Central would lose its hold on River.

I hadn't seen him in person since he dropped me off. Some new deal with Central seemed to be keeping him away. He'd video-called a few times. The calls were always short, as though he just needed to see me alive and could hang up happy.

I'd learned my way around the center. Getting near the Devourer had proved harder. I lived over in residential, among the researchers' families. The labs were a long way off, behind the highest security in the building, and I most definitely wasn't on the list. Given that my arrival had been the first time I'd even seen a Devourer, my new brother seemed to have put considerable effort into removing every conceivable source of danger from his sister's life.

Everyone else did their part by leaving the room when I entered it. You'd think two minutes of conversation might kill me. It did have its advantages. Nobody had spent enough time with me to notice that the person inside this body had changed.

There was only so far I could go alone. I'd tried a couple of trips outside in the cloak. Ten minutes. After that, the skin started to change. One of those experiments had sent me back to Ellis.

“I get three uses a week,” he'd informed me, with a look usually reserved for something stuck to a shoe. “In future, please update your will before you go outside. It'd be nice for the commander to have it in writing that whatever happens to you wasn't my fault.”

What a mouth on him. Still, I didn't get the same hostility from him as from the others. Mostly I got indifference. If he did notice anything unusual about me, I could count on him not to care enough to investigate.

Once Jacob left, I was going to take a slightly wider loop around the building. I couldn't get to the Devourer and I'd seen most of residential. Might as well find out what lay within ten minutes' walk.

Red lights came on. A siren ripped through the building.

Lab Seven containment breach. Subject 256 has escaped. All personnel except Vanguard, clear central sectors 2-30 through 2-60. Assemble below the main lobby.

For a second I just stood there. Then it hit me. A specimen was loose. This was my chance.

There was a strange tug inside my chest. When I turned, I had a rough sense of which direction to go. I looked down at my pale, useless hand. I'd played the game. I had no illusions about what one of these things could do to me. But once that specimen went back behind a lab door, my next chance to get near it might come after River and I were out on the street. Leave my life in other people's hands till then, and I already knew the ending.

I'd signed the consent form for a fifty-fifty shot at a working heart. I could take a chance on this.

Everybody was moving away from danger. In the rush nobody spared a glance for the girl going the wrong way, until a hand barred my path. It was the woman who'd pulled the injector from the Devourer's neck. Her badge read DR. JUNE SHAW. The shadows under her eyes looked like three all-nighters and a missed deadline.

“Where are you going? Exit's that way.”

“Sorry. I was going back for my cloak.”

A girl who hardly ever left her room could easily take a wrong turn. And if we had to evacuate the building, I'd need the cloak. She rubbed her forehead. “I'll go with you.”

“June!” A man in a lab coat was waving to her. Whatever he wanted, it looked urgent.

“Really, it's just around the corner.” I smiled. “I can manage that far.”

She hesitated. “Straight there and straight back. I don't want to have to explain to the commander how we lost you.”

She went to join her colleague. In a moment, their voices came through as clearly as the whispers in the corridor on my first day.

“Damn thing regenerates so fast. Burned right through the inhibitor. How did it even get out in that condition?”

“We still haven't pinned down the ability, but its attacks are weak. Low threat rating. The Vanguard's on it. They'll clean up.”

“It's smarter than you think. How do you suppose it got out in the first place? Anyway. What did you need me for?”

“Right. Elliott just found something. The aberrant in Two-Fifty-Six isn't just one—”

And there my hearing cut off. One what? I'd have given a great deal to materialize at that man's elbow. This was the second time I'd heard people speaking much too far away. Just those two voices. None of the hubbub between us had gotten any louder. Maybe it took a particular scene, or a particular line, to trigger it. Had I changed something just by showing up? Was I awakening a power?

Please don't let my superpower be selective eavesdropping.

I went back to my room. For one thing, if anyone asked later, June could say I'd gone exactly where I'd told her. For another, I had something there I wanted.

I unwrapped the scalpel. Every stick of furniture in my room had rounded corners. Forget a gun. There wasn't so much as a sharp edge in the place unless you counted this, and I'd had to steal it from Ellis while he treated me yesterday. Whatever else my preparations lacked, I had a good blade. I pocketed my communicator, too. It could reach River or the Vanguard, although by the time I had to make that call I doubted either could do me much good.

I waited for the voices outside to die down, picked up my cloak and slipped out. Nobody had come looking. Of all the people inside the game and out of it, the one who'd notice if I died was away from the shelter. Most of the people who remembered I existed would cheer. That left me an unexpectedly free hand.

Within sight of the security camera I paused and looked lost before setting off. The residential corridors had emptied fast. Sectors 2-20 through 2-60 were part of the central block, outside the research wing, so I had clearance to walk through.

Fast regeneration. Low threat. High intelligence. I went over what I'd heard as I walked. Cities of Ash scored aberrants from D up to S on two separate scales before assigning an overall rank. Threat measured, more or less, how much damage a species could do. Intelligence was exactly what it sounded like. Some of the things out here could outthink a human. A few species could outthink most of us. Still, a low threat rating should mean this one couldn't hit very hard.

Isn't just one—

Five minutes later I reached 2-25. The pull in my chest got stronger and stopped giving me a direction. I stood in the silence. According to whatever sense I was using, I was right on top of it.

I looked up.

The host had come with it. White tendrils sprouted from all four limbs, suctioning him to the ceiling in a camera blind spot. He stared down at me with eyes gone milky white.

I felt a little muscle jump in my temple. Stick that shot in a horror movie and you'd earn every penny of the ticket price.

Text appeared over him again.

Class · Devourer

Bodily damage · 99.9% (claim immediately)

Symbiont · Thread viper

Threat · D

Intelligence · A

Then I saw what was hanging over my own head.

Character · Mara Arkwright (old stock)

Primary identity · *** (absorb one aberrant to activate)

Ability · ***** (inactive)

Second identity · Player (spectator)

Support ability · Active. As a spectator, the player can experience the creator's story from the audience's point of view. Activates automatically within the same space.

Third identity · Supporting character

Support ability · None

Fourth identity · ???

Support ability · ????

I was still reading when the fine white worms streamed out of the host and twisted together into a snake as thick as my arm. It whipped around my waist.

I hit the wall.