XI: OFFLINE
Pain. Horror. Pure, animal panic. As Min lurches back to consciousness, a maelstrom of anguish envelops her. Her heart races, jackhammering in her chest like some terrible piston.
With a jerk, she sits bolt upright. Her eyes dart from place to place, scouring every corner. She sees nothing, but that does little to quell the panic that holds her in its grip. In her mind's eye, every shadow festers with Misprints, and every sealed door swells under the weight of a roiling Botched swarm.
Min clutches her head in her hands. Her breaths come in ragged gasps. The carousel of nightmares from earlier has come back in force, but her graft-given detachment is gone. Each passing second brings a new deluge of horror, suffusing her and battering her to the floor. The images come faster and faster, memories of death and pain and the bleeding sky, of Misprints and monsters and her interminable march through a dying world.
She sees the Faceless, cruelly and mechanically pulling her hapless Enforcer apart. The louse-thing, greedily plucking scraps from a grandmother's sagging flesh. A screeching Botched pack tearing a screaming woman to pieces, their globular eyes glowing, their hollow faces encrusted with a pale-white slime that curdles like rancid milk.
She sees herself, running and hiding and struggling. Terrified beyond terror, but numbed to it. Prevented from feeling anything at all.
Until now. Now, Min feels everything. Every desperate breath brings down a new avalanche of terror.
She thinks of Orren. Imagines Misprints swarming over him like ants over a caterpillar, picking his thrashing body apart.
She remembers joking with him, arguing, kissing his head goodnight—
Wait. Min blinks, fear intermingling with confusion. That last one never happened.
More memories bob to the surface. Min and Orren together at the Academy. That infuriating smirk he'd put on when the Headmistress announced their grades. How small Orren had been as a baby, and how her heart would swell when she'd feed him and cradle him to sleep.
With mounting horror, Min reaches up to run her fingers over the bulge behind her ear. The graft. Willow's key. It'd had one previous owner, she'd said. Someone who could enter the MetroClave. Someone who could access its terminal.
Orren's mother worked in this building.
The epiphany is too awful to bear. And so Min retreats from it. Retreats from everything. She slides to the floor and rocks herself, hyperventilating into her own fist as she sobs noiselessly in the dark.
***
"You did it, kiddo. You actually pulled it off."
The intercom. Min nearly screams at the sound of it. Her heart feels swollen to the point of bursting with a chaotic blend of relief and betrayal. She opens her mouth, but all she can manage is a strangled croak.
"I'm here, Min," Willow continues. "And better than ever, thanks to you."
Min finds her voice. "You knew. You knew who my new graft came from." She spits out the words like venom. "You had every opportunity to tell me, and you didn't."
"No, honey. I didn't. And if you think with your head instead of your heart, you'll understand that was the right choice to make."
Min's eyes flash. "How the fuck can you say that?" she snarls in a voice that's only partially hers.
"You made it here, didn't you? Alive and in one piece." Willow's voice takes on the slow, patient tone that her nannies used when she was a toddler. "If I'd told you, you'd have been distracted. You might have even refused the graft. And if that had happened, it would've been over for both of us—especially for you."
"Go to hell. My friend—my probably dead friend—is also my son now, thanks to you." Tears of rage stream down her cheeks. "I can't make it go away, Willow! Everything I think about hurts! What the fuck am I supposed to do?!"
Willow's voice hardens. "You're supposed to deal with it, Min. Toughen up and deal with it. Break down when you reach the sanctuary, if you have to." She abruptly falls silent, but Min can hear her seething over the intercom. "…Look. Kiddo. If I'd had a different key, I would've given it to you. But at times like these, we use what we have. That's the best any of us can do."
Min feels the anger drain from her, leaving only despair. "Was Orren's mom still…" she begins in a small voice, sniffling. "Was I—"
"She was dead when I found her, Min. Trampled in the Revel." Willow's voice softens. "I promise."
Min weeps quietly, crying for herself, for her family, for Orren. For the intimate, disembodied memories that now inhabit her. "Why am I feeling all of this now?" she whimpers. "It's been hours since you installed the key."
"When you opened the gate, it must've shorted your graftware. Your security grafts took a hit." Willow's tone is soothing again. She sounds almost maternal. "They'll come back online eventually, but you need to get moving without them."
"I can't do it on my own, Willow. I really, really can't."
"You're not on your own, kiddo. I'm right here by your side. And look…" A holographic construct appears in front of her, a housecat formed from scintillating light. "I've made you a friend. She'll lead you to the sanctuary. All you need to do is follow."
"And you're sure I'll be safe there?"
"More than sure," Willow replies cheerfully. "Told you I'd arrange it, didn't I? Only the truth, like I said."
The glowing cat rises to its feet and pads toward the doorway.
"Now get up, Min. You can do this. There isn't much farther to go."
