The Gender Fall (The Gender Game #5)(29)

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.



I was flat on my back. My left arm, my only good arm, had a needle stuck in it. I felt a groan bubbling up in my throat, but I bit it back, trying to compose myself, using my cast to fumble uselessly at the needle taped to my skin…

The door opposite me opened, and my eyes grew wide as I watched two men and a woman enter, their faces all fixated on me. Their voices cut back and forth, their faces blurry… Hands fell on my arms and legs, holding me down, and I wheezed in fear. I could barely feel the tears leaking out of my eyes onto my cheeks, the way my breath was coming shorter and shorter, the way my cries were subsiding into moans. My energy was waning fast, and my limbs began to feel leaden. It would be so easy to stop struggling—but who knew what would happen if I calmly let these strangers have their way with me? I couldn’t stop, couldn’t think, and the pain that shot through my side every time I wrenched my hips was getting to be too much.

The people who held me were talking, but too fast to make any sense and too loud to calm me down. Then I heard a voice, strong, commanding, powerful… I homed in on it, the warm cadence alone slowing my thrashing, making me stop and breathe.

“That’s it, Violet. Just take deep breaths, and listen to my voice.”

I went limp as Viggo’s deep timbre rolled over me, and I sighed and turned toward it. It didn’t stop the pain, but it was enough to make me stop squirming, to get my eyes to focus on what was around me. I looked around, searching for him, but couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see… anything.

“Am I going blind?” I asked.

“Are you having problems with your vision?” came a sharp female voice, and I flinched away from it, trying to hide my face without being able to move.

Viggo’s hands were on my face. I started to lean into them, and then remembered I had been crying, screaming, drooling. Embarrassment flooded me—he shouldn’t have to see me like this. I began to groan as embarrassment added to the stew of helplessness and fear curdling my stomach.

I heard somebody say something, but it was too far away for me to hear. Viggo was whispering in my good ear, trying to soothe me, his hands stroking my face. “It’s going to be okay, Violet. You’re sick, but we’re going to help you. I promise.” There was a pause. “Your cousin is here.”