Kara slumped into the corner of the lift, shaking as the aperture snicked shut. She wrapped her arms around herself, struggling to regulate her breathing. It wasn’t you…wasn’t you…
It might as well have been. The memories that she’s just taken—coerced from—that inmate were a part of her now.
Aggravated rape and assault.
Sodomy.
Kidnapping.
And then murder.
The whole sordid litany of crimes played out within her mind’s eye in crisp detail not even a VR holo could replicate. Smells, sounds, Glory, the taste of his victim—
Victims.
Crimes that hadn’t been in his file. Dozens of them. Hidden bodies, mutilated and left to rot in unmarked graves. Kara’s trembling hand rose to her lips, desperately trying to separate herself from what she’d sublimated into her psyche, and for what?
She hadn’t passed the program requirements. Her vitals had been too elevated during the trial, psychological responses dipping below acceptable thresholds.
In a nutshell? She couldn’t keep her shit together.
But what else was new? Kara laughed, wiping her eyes as the lift bumped to a soft stop. She pushed out of the corner and through the widening aperture, momentum carrying her across the corridor, palms flattening against the opposite wall. Her face crumpled, and she slid down the rough, cinderblock surface to the floor, pulling her legs tight against her chest, nose buried between her knees, rocking. Eyes wide. Unseeing. Seeing too much.
That was stuck in her head. Forever. Someone else’s sins playing on repeat, tainting and warping everything they—
No. Compartmentalize it. Kara ran a shaking hand over her face. Follow protocol. You know the protocol, but—She was weak. She was so very, very—No, stop. She just needed to focus. To look past the ravaged, gore-stippled flesh seared into her mind’s eye. To bind all of it up into a nasty little package and to shove it into the back of her brain where it could fester, unremembered.
That was the key. To forget it existed. Because if you didn’t, it all came rushing back.
And it had. She laughed again, pulling talent, for what? The fourth—fifth?—time, attempting to lock it all away. The ethereal, golden warmth suffused her body with power. She bound it ’round the depraved savagery infecting her, cocooning it in light and shoving it into the recesses of her psyche along with the rest of the trauma she didn’t want to think about.
Then, blessed static. White noise. A tear tracked down her cheek, alone in her mind once more. Thoughts her own. Glory. Was it over? She raised her hand to her mouth, worrying the pad of her thumb—
And it was the victim’s skin she tasted.
A keening sob eked past her lips, struggling to hold the rest of it back…
The alternating thunk, thunk of the training room’s double doors came from farther down the hall, heavy footsteps rapidly approaching.
Rogan.
“Kara?” His knees cracked as he crouched in front of her—
Before her trainer could finish the motion, she threw herself into his arms. He crashed onto his rear, and she pulled back in shock. What the—He was never taken off guard like that. Her eyes went to the bottle of liquid sloshing in his hand. Wait, was he drunk?
“Shit. You weren’t supposed to be down here today,” he muttered with a sigh, tucking his funny little stone pendant back beneath his shirt. “That bad, huh?”
She sniffled, burying her face against the crook of Rogan’s neck, drowning out the memory of that poor woman’s lilac perfume with his earthy musk. The sour tang of tequila rode above it, and she swiped the bottle from his hand, eager for the oblivion it offered.
He raised a silvered eyebrow. “Sure you wanna do that?”
Kara glared at him and tipped it back, chugging it down before the burn sent her coughing for air; the vile liquid firmly shocking her into the here and now. Glory, that was terrible!
He chuckled and she glared at him. The big Breaker scratched the stubble grizzling his jaw, his storm-grey eyes giving her a slow once over. They held more heat than usual—thanks to the liquor, no doubt—but it wouldn't go anywhere, no matter how much either of them wanted it to.
Kara forced down another mouthful of the nasty stuff. The taste was a small price to pay, considering the alternative. The memories she’d sublimated dragged at her, and she drowned them with another sip. Forget… She needed to forget. “I didn’t pass the test, so yeah, I want to do this.”
“Good.” Rogan snorted, his eyes on her breasts, running a hand down the shaved side of his head to scratch beneath his topknot. He sighed, looking away. “Shit’s an abomination.”
She stared at him. What? How would he—the coercion program was classified…
