Page 133 of Born for Lace

I want to bark at him like a rabid dog, but the words won’t form around my thickening tongue or press between my gnashing teeth.

“You’re no good to us with a temper.” He smiles, and I continue to jolt around, unable to stop myself. This is my humanity. Feeling… This is feeling. I have too many for her. I am drowning, drenched in Dahlia. I will inhale every sensation, hold it, and care for it. I don’t want the humanity she has given me to go. I don’t want to lose it. Again.

“I’m going to enjoy working with you, Zero Zero Six,” he states with genuine satisfaction riding his tone and disappears behind me. “See-you soon.”

ChapterForty-Two

Dahlia

Murmured conversation moves around me, the deep voices finding me in my unconscious daze. A dull ache grips my neck when I swallow, clearing bile and fluid—waking up.

“You interrogated him?”

Robert…

“He is here for Spero.”

Tomar…

“He told you that?”

“He didn’t tell me anything,” Tomar says. “He’s a damn Shadow. They don’t break. I just know.”

“Did you know, Tomar?” Robert asks, his voice dripping with accusation. “All this time? That he was one of them.”

“He is not one of them.”

“Why did he do that to Dahlia?” Robert’s voice is odd, deep and angry. This is his community, and I’ve been nothing but trouble. Two Xin De finding their way into the community, searching for me, herebecauseof me. “Why not just take the child? Why touch her? Why did he do…that?”

Why did he do… that?

That. That.

Take me and choke me.

I roll to my side and smother my face with a pillow. Finding false privacy, I curl my knees up and gasp through my sobs.

“Is he awake?”

Robert.

“It’s unclear.”

“And Dahlia?” Before Robert can finish his question, I am bolting upright.

He is awake.

Alive.

My Lagos.

Disorientated by the unfamiliar room, I take a moment, scanning the area, my gaze moving from a monitor to the door.

I rush to it. The thin gown I’m wearing sways open at the back, but I don’t care. In the hallway, I dart to the only other Patient Room, away from the small lobby and the men conversing too loudly.

The community only has one Common Medical Cabin, and it is unassuming, just like the Community. It’s no bigger than the two-bedroom wooden cabin I live in, but the Trade technology they have managed to raid and salvage is beyond anything I ever saw at the Half-tower.

Flinging open the door, I freeze in the gasping gap when I see Lagos strapped to the bed, thick leather cuffs wrapped from wrist to bicep.

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