Housebound Ch. 09

"Oh, because you care so much about their welfare. Our welfare." Katie shuddered. "This is what the training is for, isn't it? This is what you wanted to do to me. And Jen, and Emma, and Amber. Wipe our minds and swap us into... this. Thing."

"Four is the preferred number," James said. "You need three running to keep the system in balance. With a spare girl, you can rotate them, so no one spends more than twenty-four continuous hours wired in." She could hear the twist of his mouth as he spoke; it was mocking, cruel. "Plus, you can fuck the extra one if you feel like it."

"I'm going to kill you," she said.

"I won't underestimate you again."

"The kneeling pad downstairs," she said, "it's supposed to be for the spare girl, isn't it? But she's missing."

"Very good, Katie," he said, and this time his voice had grown cold.

"What's the matter? Did someone escape? Did big bad James make a mistake?"

"Someone killed her," he said. "Trying to get her out."

He'd been so clever, so quiet, letting the speakers continue to broadcast his voice as he approached her. It was only the slightest change in his breathing that told her he'd been climbing stairs. It was only the faint tingle on the hairs at the back of her neck that told her to move, now.

As his hand descended to drive the needle into her shoulder, she turned in toward him, a fluid spinning movement, and caught his strong, heavy body under his arm. She turned and bent with the long muscles of her back, her small form magnified by leverage, and threw him. The needle went flying. James hit the floor hard. Katie didn't know what told her how to fight him, but she did know a great satisfaction as she heard the grating pop of his dislocated shoulder.

James was up again, grimacing, right arm hanging useless at his side. His gaze flicked to the needle, unbroken, rolling on the floor. He started to move toward it, but Katie was faster than him, faster than she'd ever felt. She slid along the glass, needle in her hand now, but he'd only been feinting, and had sprung around one side of the room to half-run, half-fall down the spiral stairs. Katie whipped the needle at him like a dart; it caught the fabric of his dark sweater and shattered on the wall.

She glanced back at Ashley, Rika and Erin. Could she believe him? Would freeing them really be worse than what they were going through now? They hadn't responded to her voice or to the noise of the fight, and the fact was that James had never actually lied to her yet. She would come back for them, after. She promised them that.

Then she went after him.