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The others would be better They’d be used to things like this They knew that they’d survive His hindbrain wasn’t at all sure Needles dug into the flesh of his thigh, injecting him with another cocktail of hormones and paralytics Cold like the touch of ice spread from the injection points, and a paradoxical sense of ease and dread filled hishis blood vessels elastic enough that they wouldn’t burst and robust enough that they wouldn’t collapse Hisand detached in its place It was like pure executive function without a sense of self What had been his s he remembered, but wasn’t him

In this altered state of consciousness, he found hi inventory Would it be okay to die now? Did he want to live, and if he did, on what terhter as if it were a physical object Loss was the soft pink of crushed sea-shell, where once it had been the red of old, scabby blood The red of an u to drop free He reht in her laugh She wasn’t like that anyravity-bent mind, he s All along, he’d been wrong The hours of sitting by hiht he was toughening hiht at all He’d said it, he’d tried to believe it, because the thought was co tortured If she was dead, she wasn’t scared If she was dead, then the pain would be all his, entirely his, and she would be safe He noticed without pleasure or pain that it was a pathological hter taken from him, had survived in near starvation while the cascade effect ate as left of Gany hout the solar system as a wife beater and pedophile He had no reason to be sane It wouldn’t help him

And on top of that, his knee really hurt

Soht and air, so buzzed three ti back to hi from the bottom of a pool

“Okay, y’all,” Alex said across the ship’s system “We’re callin’ this dinner Take a couple minutes for your livers to crawl up off your spinal cords, and we’ll ot fifty minutes, so enjoy it while you can”

Prax took a deep breath, blowing it out between his teeth, and then sat up His whole body felt bruised His hand ter, but it felt like e, and his kneepop He tapped at his terminal

“Uht, Doc” Amos’ voice came from the speaker “I’ll co we’ve got to a medic unless you wanna hand it over to the ether,” Holden said “It doesn’t work”

The link went silent While he waited, Prax checked his inco for the screen, but that had been true since the initial ed

BABY RAPERS SHOULD BE TORTURED TO DEATH

DON’T LISTEN TO THE HATERS

I BELIEVE YOU

MY FATHER DID THE SAME THING TO ME

TURN TO JESUS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

He didn’t open them He checked the newsfeeds under his own name and Mei’s and had seven thousand active feeds with those keywords Nicola’s only had fifty