Awake

THIRTY ONE

Fear flooded through me. My reflexes weren't anywhere near fast enough to keep deflecting Rao's weapon. Particularly now he knew how I was using my shard for defence. I had to come up with a new strategy.

I had to stop him. I had to break the connection between his two needles. Maybe I could somehow trap his shard – maybe I could somehow hold it down: hold it still.

I didn't have time to think anything through, I could feel myself bleeding out. Blood doesn't feel like blood as it seeps out of you – it feels like heat draining away, leaving you cold and sluggish. Dark spots were drifting across my vision like stray pieces of ash.

I focused on Rao with difficulty. His face was impassive again, but his eyes flicked to my left. I stared at him, puzzled. He remained perfectly still, then his eyes flicked to the left again – deliberately.

"Hurry up," snapped Mila.

I realised that Rao was warning me just as he flicked the tip of the shard he was holding to the left, and the other half of the shard before him swerved in mid air, then disappeared as it arrowed towards my side.

I threw my shielded hand out, not trying to deflect it this time: wanting to catch it – to hold it.

My hand was thrust back as the point of the shard hit my palm and I felt a sharp, tearing pain in my wrist. In a split second, I tried to twist my hand to hold it, trying to push back against it instead of merely allowing my hand to be blasted out of the way. Do something, I thought furiously. The point where Rao's shard touched mine felt wrong – cold, brittle – resistant.

I screamed involuntarily as I felt my shard crack like a sheet of ice. The forward momentum of Rao's shard hadn't stopped, and the resistance of my hand was nothing to it. It pierced through my palm, tunnelling through the skin, the muscles, the tendons – exploding through the other side in a flower of blood.

I fell backwards with the force of it, and felt my fingers go limp. I hunched over my knees and gripped my wrist. Pain shook through me. I tried to clench my fist. My thumb and little finger twitched weakly, but otherwise, nothing. The muscles that controlled my middle three fingers had been severed. I could see a gleam of gold through my palm. The beautiful, golden bird nest floor was visible through the hole. A wall of shock was coming between me and the world, filling my ears with cotton wool, softening and blurring everything.

"She's done," said Mila.

My head snapped up, and my hands slammed down on the floor. Rage moved me faster than thought. I leaned towards her – my teeth bared. "Get out!" I screamed, barely recognising my own voice.

Something pulsed through the building with the sound, and Mila flickered like an image on a television with bad reception, like a scratched DVD.

Her expression shifted to one of blank shock, but I didn't care. The hot flash of fury was still alight in me.

My blood was smeared on the dust of the floor, slippery on the metal. I saw pieces of my shard scattered around on it like broken glass. Stained with blood, they almost looked like part of the building that surrounded us: like broken, bloody pieces of floor. At the thought, the fragments of my shard melted, pooling like mercury. As I stared at then, they disappeared, absorbed into the golden, woven strands.

Without my shard, I was defenceless against Rao. I glared at him. He wasn't moving. The hand holding his shard hung loosely at his side, and his long fingers were relaxed. If I couldn't trap the shard he was using as a bullet, I could stop him from moving the hand that directed it. Pain burned through me, but this time it didn't distract – it fuelled.