Page 203 of Somno Slave

I can’t—

God.

He’s going to touch him.

“Wait,” I say.

But nobody hears me. Or they do, and it doesn’t matter.

“Wait, wait, wait—” My voice is too high now, stripped of anything professional.

This is madness. Career-ending, life-ending.

But my chest pulls tight.

His fingers find Deogal’s neck and he presses lightly like he’s checking for a pulse.

No.

No, give it to me.

The thought comes so violently I almost say it out loud.

Give it to me instead.

My fingers twitch against the table.

I press my palm down harder, like I can pin the impulse there, force it back into something rational.

Harris raises the needle high, and flicks it with a taunting movement. Droplets jump from the tip of the needle, landing flat on the Deogal’s thigh. The orange jumpsuit darkens immediately under the poison.

I choke.

Grief drags it’s nails down my heart.

Please.

Not him.

Not him

The needle is angled by his neck and—I don’t decide to move. My body breaks rank.

My hand meets Harris’ wrist before I know it’s happening. I tear it from him with a sound I don’t recognise as mine, our hands colliding in a clumsy, desperate struggle.

Everything fractures.

My fingers snatch around the injection and I snatch it fast. I move quickly. The needle punches into him. Flesh gives with a wet little surrender that shoots straight through me. I feel it in my wrist. In my teeth. In the sick, hot place under my ribs that realises too late I wanted to hurt something. My hand tightens instinctively, pushing the plunger down in one uncontrolled movement, emptying it into him without a thought.

For a second, everything seems to stop with it, like the room itself has missed a heartbeat. I can still feel the resistance of the needle under my hand, the awful softness of skin giving way, the intimate wrongness of it.

He gasps. The sound rips through the room, his body jolting back violently as the syringe slips from my grip and hits the floor with a sharp shatter.

Relief tears through me so brutally my head spins. For one glorified fucking second, I can breathe again. My head feels a stone lighter. My ribs stop their violent seizing.

And then—hands hit me all at once. Fingers dig into my arms, my shoulders, my waist—grabbing, dragging, claiming. My body jerks backward so violently my shoes lose purchase against the floor, and then suddenly I am weightless.

Someone shouts my name.