The Gender Fall (The Gender Game #5)

But when the image in front of me finally managed to solidify, horror flooded my body. It wasn’t just a stranger, a guard, a warden—it was Elena, her mouth lifted in a sweet smile while her eyes promised pain. Panic lent strength to my muscles, and I scrambled back as the Queen of Matrus looked down at me.

The pain that lanced through my body at the motion was nothing compared to what would happen if I didn’t, if I couldn’t get away… But I was moving horribly slowly, my body jerking and weak, like in a nightmare. Elena didn’t move forward immediately, but stared down, her hands held out in front of her as if to help me. She murmured something, reaching out, and I screamed and knocked her hand away with the heavy cast on my right hand, causing her to back up slightly.

“I killed your sister,” I taunted, my breath heaving.

Elena was on the right side of the bed, while I’d managed to move almost to the edge. I would fall off it if I had to. Maybe crawl underneath… I could hear her. She frowned, speaking in a gentle, even voice. “Let me help you,” she said.

I shook my head and began to scoot backwards again, crying out for Viggo, but I couldn’t move fast enough, couldn’t push through the pain… I was as weak as a newborn kitten, and Elena knew it. Her hands came back, and, effortlessly, she began to pull me toward her. I tried to pull away, beating my fists feebly on her shoulder and arm, but she was relentless, pulling me away from the edge of the bed, some unknown punishment in store, no doubt.

In that moment, I knew I had been wrong. It wasn’t Elena; it was Tabitha. I hadn’t managed to kill her, and now she was here to finish me off before I could. Slowly. The image of her blade slamming into my palm flashed across my head, and I fought back with renewed strength. She was going to butcher me with her shiny silver knife, one cut at a time.

“Violet!” Tabitha shouted in my ear—my good one—her voice cracking sharply into my skull. “Violet, just let me—”

“No!” I shouted, jerking my right arm out of her grasp. The cast hung weighty on my arm, and I lashed out with it, driving my hand into the woman’s core. I was rewarded with a loud ‘oof’ and a stab of pain from my own hand so intense I could barely focus to hear it.

But it had worked. Her hands slipped from me and she backed up, doubling over, resting her hands on her knees. My ribs screaming at the motion, my head reeling, my hand quested about as far as it could reach, searching for a weapon… anything to make sure she couldn’t get near enough to touch me again.

The woman didn’t say anything. I felt myself go still as she just looked at me, her eyes filled with tears of pain, fear tightening her face. The expression was so wrong, so unfamiliar, that my hands fell to my ears, my mind trying to understand. Tabitha didn’t cry. She didn’t acknowledge pain. If anything, it only made her angrier and more violent.

There was something here I could not grasp. Something in my brain seemed to be disconnected, something shaking loose or falling into place. I stared, disoriented and dizzy. Whoever it was I had been attacking, it was not Tabitha.

My breathing was coming in loud pants, and I was sweating and shivering again. I looked around. I was still in the same bedroom, the one at the camp where Ms. Dale and my companions had been. I looked back at the bed, and noticed Viggo wasn’t there anymore. I remembered—he had been here when I’d fallen asleep. When had that been? Had something gone wrong at the camp? Why were they doing this to me? Was there anywhere I was safe?

A wave of frustration filled me, and I noticed the scalpel sitting on a tray next to the bed—something I hadn’t been able to reach in my panicked grasping earlier. Reaching out with my left hand, I snatched it up and pointed it at not-Tabitha, trying to keep my hand from shaking. “Where’s Viggo?” I shouted.

Not-Tabitha raised her hands slowly, her palms facing out. She was watching me warily, but there was something… something about her face. “He’s coming soon,” she said slowly, taking great pains to enunciate.

“You’re lying,” I retorted. Of course she was lying—everyone in my life had lied to me. Rina, Lee, Desmond, Elena, Tabitha… No, that was wrong. I swayed, the knife blurring before me, as the memory came to me of people who hadn’t lied to me. Viggo. Tim. Owen, Quinn, Amber, Henrik, Solomon…

I repeated their names like a litany in my head, trying to find some way to reconcile my two different realities, unable to accept them both as truth. I became increasingly aware of my body trembling, shivering. A different kind of fear swept through me suddenly. Something was wrong with me. I was losing myself, and I didn’t know how to stop it. I looked back at not-Tabitha, noting the fear in her face and the slight trembling of her hands, and then my eyes drifted down to where I was clutching the scalpel tightly, my fingers bloodless, almost bone-white from the force of my grip.

Violent Violet. Violent Violet. I dropped the scalpel and folded my hands over my ears, the cast bumping my temple with a flush of pain, as I tried to block out the voices as they sang, taunting me. The air in the room evaporated, and I couldn’t seem to breathe. I gasped as the room spun around me, the voices in my head screaming.

What was real? I didn’t know anymore. A sweep of cold nausea sucked the blood from my body down deep into my stomach. My head pounded, my body throbbed, and time evaporated, consciousness draining from me.