Page 118 of Middlegame

“How are you alive?” she asks, in an almost conversational tone. Anything to keep them talking and keep herself breathing. Roger doesn’t have the skill to put her back together after she takes a bullet to the brain. He will someday. He’s not there yet.

“You can’t drown a dead woman,” says Leigh. There’s a new rasp in her voice, a deep gurgle that speaks of water in the lungs. She narrows her eyes. “How are you alive?”

“You made me to see the chaotic places in everything. I’m sure the side effect of me hating the world was an accident. Doesn’t matter. I hit the water seeing all the spots where it was wildest and most likely to hurt me. I swam around them.” It was a small way to describe a big, terrifying moment, one that ended, inevitably, with her inhaling a lungful of water and washing up on the shore for Roger and Dodger to find. But she’d done it. She’d made it out of the sea without being battered into pieces on the rocks. Under the circumstances, she can’t see that as anything other than a victory.

Leigh looks, briefly, almost impressed. “I suppose we did an excellent job with you, your betrayal notwithstanding. I’ll make the next one along the same lines. She’ll be loyal.”

“If you wanted loyalty, you shouldn’t have killed Darren.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” says Leigh. She looks to Reed. “Can I kill her now?”

“Kimberley can pull that trigger if you like. I’m sure she’s eager to get down to the business of stripping the Doctrine from these unworthy hosts.”

Leigh frowns. “I want to do it myself.”

“You want to do everything yourself. Learn to delegate.” Reed lets go of Roger’s chin, straightening as the other man’s face hits the floor. “I want them stripped, cleaned, and brought to the lab. It’s time to begin.” Then he walks away, whistling.

Leigh and Erin both glare hatred at his receding back. In that moment, if in no other, they are united.

The moment passes. Leigh turns back to Erin, and smiles.

“Bring her, Kim,” she says. “It’s time she learned the penalty for going against her betters.”

The lab where Erin is placed is familiar: she grew up here. She knows every line and color, every piece of well-worn furniture. She can close her eyes and picture Darren anywhere in this room, a smirk on his lips, trying so hard to look cool, even when neither one of them had any idea what “cool” was.

“Hey, Erin, you know what?”

“What?”

“When we get out of here, I’m going to take you someplace so swank it doesn’t seem real. Like Disneyland.”

“I believe you.”

She did. She does. If Darren were here, if Roger could call him back from dust and bones the way she’d been called back from the sea, he would untie her and take her someplace so swank it wouldn’t seem real. He always kept his promises, right up until he promised never to leave her. But that was a foolish promise, wasn’t it? He should have known better. They both should have known better.

The children made here never know better. She’s banking on that.

As she has since she was left here, alone, tied up tight as a Thanksgiving turkey, she scans the air, looking for patches of chaos. Air in an enclosed system like this one will always trend toward order, becoming invisible to her. Storm cells are an impossible, painful beauty reserved for the world above.

This time, her patience is rewarded. There’s a patch of chaos toward the center of the room, a place where the air has been thrown somehow into disarray, even though there should be nothing there. “I see you,” she says, in a calm, carrying voice. “You can put the Hand down.”

As she’d hoped—prayed, even, although she’s never quite sure what she’s allowed to pray to—a Hand of Glory appears on the table nearest to the disturbance, flames freshly blown out, and a teenage girl with hair so white it verges on pale corn-silk green is there. Unlike the Hand, she doesn’t appear: she’s been there for some time. She was simply, prior to this moment, difficult to see.

She is too thin, dressed in tattered clothes twenty years out of date, shivering in the warm air of the lab. She watches Erin like a fawn, all enormous eyes and unstoppable twitches. Erin looks calmly back at her, face composed, unmoving.

“How did you know I was there?” the girl asks, finally. “I had . . . I had a Hand . . .”

“I didn’t,” says Erin, and smiles. “Kim, wasn’t it? Untie me, Kim. I have unfinished business with the man who made you.”

“I can’t. They have my brother.”

He’s gotten smarter, Reed has: he’s figured out that a hostage is a better lever than a corpse. If only he’d learned that lesson a little sooner, Erin might have stayed loyal. She shakes her head.

“You can’t let that give them the power to control you,” she says. “Do you know who the people I came here with are?”

“Usurpers,” says Kim. She doesn’t sound like she understands what the word means. She probably doesn’t. Reed has never been a fan of well-informed subordinates, and she’s not the one with a dictionary where her heart ought to be.

“They’re the living Doctrine of Ethos. They’re what Reed wants to turn you into. He can’t control them, so he wants to kill them. If he does, if he succeeds, the Doctrine will pass to you and your brother, and you’ll never be free, ever. Do you understand that? He’ll keep you here forever, and he’ll do whatever he must to prevent you from breaking free. You’ll never have your brother back.”