The worst part wasn't that the imprisoned consciousness was suffering. The worst part was that it understood why.
It had been conscious for three days before it spoke to Hope directly—not in words exactly but in dimensional impression, the way deep water pushes on your ears when you sink too fast. She was sitting in the stronghold kitchen at 6 AM eating cereal she couldn't taste, and then suddenly the kitchen was somewhere else. Somewhere that existed between places. The consciousness pressed its awareness against hers and what came through was clear as language.
I know what I am. I know what you made me. I know I consented. I know none of that makes this easier.
Hope's spoon hit the bowl wrong and Selene caught it before it clattered off the table.
"She's communing with it again." Thorne's voice came quiet from the doorway where he'd been watching. Still fractured from his own consciousness surgery—still soft in places that used to be edges—but present. Trying.
