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Chapter 1

The real probleht, was that you didn’t knohom to trust

Bryn Davis, monster, paced the floor in silence, surrounded by her friends and allies, and she didn’t dare trust a single one of them Not fully, not now Only one of theh Riley Block already shared the secret, and the curse, Bryn didn’t knohether she could, or should, trust her

As for the rest of them, they would be torn between horror and fury and pity, but someone would make it a mission to see her dead, and so, and everyone, apart

Some secrets just had to be kept in utter silence

“Bryn?” her lover, Patrick McCallister, said in the kind of voice one uses when the first few tries don’t break through the haze She stopped and looked up to focus on his face He’s tired, she thought, and despite how conflicted she was about her own situation, she wanted to comfort him She loved hi she couldn’t block even when she tried “Bryn, did you get anything fro on in there?”

She felt a wild urge to laugh, but it was the sae of a cliff Tell the o

Because she certainly had soh her veins, twisting her into so that was even further fro a dead wo and dependent on it for daily survival, to whatever she was now Because her little life-

Military progra

Can’t tell hiht, and shook her head instead “Didn’t have ti extremely hard to kill us,” she said “It looked like what I saw at the nursing ho innocent people for nanotech incubators Breeding more of the nanites This was probably some kind offactory farm ” Not a lie, not quite The nanotech was real, and they had been breeding it in the unconscious, drugged bodies It was just the type of nanotech she was silent about

“Riley—” McCallister turned toward the FBI agent sitting silently with her back to the wall of the small room Bryn had rescued Riley Block from a hospital bed in that terrible lab, and as different as the two of theonistic in many ways, they had this secret in common Riley didn’t look up, but then, there were people in the way Too many people It felt terribly, oppressively crowded—this cheap motel room they’d rented as their temporary safe house wassave the bed

Bryn felt constantly short of breath, on the verge of violence and screams She wondered whether Riley felt the same

Riley finally raised her head, and beneath the signature black bob, she see, just as Bryn was, about her circumstances

Patrick wasn’t done trying to elicit inforet anything from the lab?”

“No,” the woht lie “No idea what they were doing, but Bryn’s probably got it right I was unconscious ht, with just the right aht a do we have to stay here?”