Her heart pounded, and she felt Silas’s confidence as he gathered the memory to him, not fragmenting it but setting it aside as true. A new one took its place of Jack’s face, white from shock, his expression bunched in pain as he lay on a yellow scratched floor. She knelt with him, her hands holding his stomach in. No! she thought, heartache making it hard to breathe.
She didn’t want to see this. Everything spun in a nauseating blur until Jack wasn’t on the floor, but standing beside her, the ladder next to them. Relieved, she let herself remember.
“Sandy doesn’t care we lost our downtime. Neither does Frank. They’re our psychologists, for God’s sake.”
Shock darted through her, magnified by Silas’s emotions twining with hers. Frank and Sandy? They were corrupt? Her own psychologists?
“I’m not a mercenary. I don’t kill for money,” Peri shouted, wiggling in Frank’s grip as Jack levered himself up on the low stage, his middle covered in blood. But he wasn’t dying, and Peri stared as the sound of Velcro ripped through the air and he took the body armor off.
“If you’re not doing it for money, then you’re doing it for kicks,” Jack said. “Admit you like it. The thrill, knowing that you might have to kill someone to survive. The sense of superiority you get from it. Otherwise it wouldn’t have taken you this long to figure things out.”
That’s not true, she thought. Betrayal was an acidic blanket, burning both Peri and Silas. Bill was corrupt. Jack was part of it. He’d been lying to her. Her entire world was a lie.
But Silas was gathering the memory up, making room for more. It hurt, and Silas’s fingers spasmed as Peri clenched in pain. She looked down, focus wavering as she saw she was shot in the chest. Something had happened. She’d been shot.
By Jack …
He stood by the door to Overdraft, his Glock in his grip. Peri’s fingers were warm and wet when she touched them to her chest, and she coughed, scared when it came out bloody. The floor was hard against her back as she looked up at the ceiling. Not again.
“Jump.” Jack holstered his weapon and stood over her. “Go on and draft. I like you better when you’re stupid.”
Peri knew she wasn’t dying in Overdraft. She sensed Silas sifting through the swirling morass, frustrated as he tried to organize it. He didn’t need to pull the memories from her anymore. They were bunching up on each other, fighting to be realized. Groaning, she slipped out of the chair and hit the floor. Silas followed her down, wrapping his arms around her to keep her connected.
Suddenly it wasn’t Silas’s arms around her, but Allen’s. She could draft and forget for a chance to kill Jack, or die.
“I’m not dying for her,” Jack said, backing to the door.
Allen’s lips quirked. “How about it?”
“You’ll wipe me down to nothing,” she groaned. “Use me.”
“Someone will. You’ll never remember Jack, but I’ll give you the chance to shoot him before you forget.”
“No,” Peri moaned as she realized she’d done this to herself. She’d let Allen scrub her for the chance to kill the man she’d loved. What kind of a monster was she?
And then Silas caught and saved the memory as another pushed into its place. She could feel his heartache mirroring hers, building on it, making it hard to think.
“We’re in a draft!” Frank shouted. “Twenty seconds and she’s done! Sandy, get down!”
Jack backed to the door, his bloody hands outstretched. “Babe, let me explain!”
“There are no words,” she said, and with an unhealthy amount of satisfaction, she pulled the rifle up and shot him in the back as he ran.
Another fragment layered over it, wrong and out of place, making her dizzy.
“I told you she was verging on one of her epiphanies,” Sandy said as Allen one-handedly caught the keys that Frank tossed him, locking the front door before pulling a chair from a table and sitting, his feet spread wide and stance alert but casual.
Agony pulsed through Peri as a memory rose from the rest, out of synch and dizzying. “Love!” Sandy shrieked. “There is no such thing as love!”
Teeth clenched, Peri threw her knife at her. She wanted her to shut up.
Sandy twisted to avoid it, crashing into the mirror behind the bar, shattering it as she fell.
Peri moaned as Silas destroyed the memory since the mirror was clearly intact, but more memories ran in its place, a confusing blur until Silas fastened on one.
“Hey, I gave her a clean memory,” Jack said, and she hated him more than anyone in her life. “Do you know how hard it is to fragment an entire person? Make a realistic timeline from two?”
Groaning, Peri tried to get away, but it was a trap of her own making, and Silas was failing. He couldn’t control it. Numb, Peri existed in a haze as images passed faster and furious. Silas couldn’t catch them, and it was going to drown her in insanity.