Page 23 of Monster Queen Rising

"Vance is here."

Madison's eyes snap to mine.

"You brought her?"

"She knows more about the protocol than anyone alive. She's our prisoner now. She doesn't come near you unless you want her to, and she doesn't touch you without your permission."

Madison's jaw sets.

"Bring her."

Crull brings Vance into the room. Her wrists are zip-tied in front of her. One of his hands stays locked around her arm.

Dean takes the doorway. I stay between Vance and the bed. The voice sits quiet at the back of my throat. Available.

Vance reads the room in a single glance—the guards, me, Madison on the bed—and settles into the detached professionalism she hides behind.

"I'll need my hands."

"Watch yourself," I say. "Treat her with respect. Tell her before you touch her. If she says stop, you stop."

Vance's eyes flick to mine.

"Understood."

She takes Madison's pulse and her pressure and listens low on her belly with a scope, narrating every move before she makes it, because I told her to and because she can feel what is waiting if she doesn't. When she straightens, the numbers come flat.

"Blood pressure is elevated. Not yet dangerous. Fetal heart rate remains elevated. The acceleration is running." She looks at Madison, not at me. "On this clock you deliver in four days."

"And if I want off it," Madison says.

Vance goes still.

"Then we give her the reversal," I say.

"I want it," Madison says.

Nobody moves. Crull's hand tightens once on Vance's arm.

"Before you decide," I say. "Vance. Tell her what it does, and what you tested it on. All of it."

Vance doesn't soften it. "It stops the cascade. It doesn't end the pregnancy — it drops you back onto the hybrid protocol's rate. Six weeks. You've carried about three. You'd have roughly three weeks left. And the pain stops. The cascade is what's hurting you."

"Then I want it."

"You didn't ask what it's been tested on."

Madison stops.

"Cells," Vance says. "In the lab. That's all. It's never been in an animal, and it's never been in a woman. On the bench it does exactly what it's supposed to — the cascade shuts off, the cells go back to the protocol rate. But a dish isn't a body. I can't tell you what it does inside a living person, because it's never been inside one. You'd be the first."

Madison takes it without flinching. She is a person whose job is telling small scared people the truth.

"So putting it in me might kill me."

"It might."

"And if I do nothing — four days, and whether I come out the other side is a coin you can't call either."