Lindsay whimpered as the collar began to do its work, silencing and neutralizing his magic, the magic

he had just started to feel once the drugs had been flushed from his system. Every time they brought him

here, he was sure he wasn’t going to scream, but he screamed anyway. He shook and writhed, trying to

escape the artifacts locked around his neck and wrists. The gag didn’t stop him from screaming, it only

muffled his agony enough that he wouldn’t interfere with the carefully calibrated machines that measured

his power and his pain.

Time stopped, then disappeared completely. There was no time here, just magic filling him up from

within, magic crawling under his skin, magic wailing to be free. The pain was worse than anything he’d

known. The drugs and the hours in restraints never came close to this. He screamed through the gag and

tried to rip his wrists and ankles free, over and over again, until they were hot and slick with his own blood.

Fighting for breath between screams, he looked up into the eye of the camera and saw an alien staring back

at him.

White, it was so white, and its eyes were wide and almost black. Like him, it was crying. But the alien

wasn’t crying tears, it was crying blood, blood that welled up in its eyes and ran down its colorless skin.

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Anah Crow and Dianne Fox

“The readings are maxing out, Dr. Moore,” someone said in the distance. “Heart rate is over two

hundred. The containment field is holding. Prepared for stage two—the guided experiment.”

“Lindsay.” The woman’s voice was all around him, snapping like a whip. “Lindsay, I need you to

listen to me. You’re going to make an illusion of rain in the room. Do you hear me? Make it rain in the

room.”

He couldn’t hear anything but his blood pounding in his ears, couldn’t see anything but a haze of red.

His body twisted with agony, and his stomach lurched. His magic, his magic that they had kept from him,

his magic was filling him up and searing his bones and drowning his lungs and burning his brain. He

slammed his head against the steel table over and over, trying to break his skull open, trying to let some of it out.

“Are you sure about this?”

“He can hear me. He’s ready. Regere.”

There it was. The crack in the wall. Lindsay didn’t understand the word, but his magic saw the gap in

the restraints before the echo of the command had faded.

Rain. Let them have it. Let them have a flood. The ceiling cracked and water crashed in, sweeping the equipment across the floor. The lights in the halos overhead exploded one by one, going out in blinding

showers of light and glass.

“Holy shit! We’ve got to get him out of here.” One of the technicians flung himself against the

rushing water to unlock Lindsay’s restraints.

“Don’t touch him. It’s not real,” the woman snapped over the intercom, her voice edged with hysteria.

“You were told what to expect.”

“Help me! He’s going to drown.” Lindsay’s feet were loose and the man fought to undo his wrists and

the strap over his waist. Water crashed against them and sent the gurney spinning as it sucked the

technician under.

“Open the doors,” the other man was screaming, throwing himself against the locked doors at the far

end of the room. There was the sound of the locks clicking open, slowly, too slowly.

Lindsay curled up on his side, clawing at the last restraint on his wrist. The waves crashed around him

and he pushed the water out into the halls, pushed it up into the air ducts, washing everything clean.

“Get to him. Sedate him again,” the woman was shouting in the background. “Celare,” she said

desperately. “Celare! ”

The gap was closing, the collar was tightening again. Lindsay’s magic seared his nerves as the collar

forced it into his body. He spat out the gag, struggling for breath so he could scream, so he could end

everything, end the pain.

8

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Tatterdemalion

“No! ” The word ripped up from his gut, tore free of his spine, and exploded out of his skin. The collar blew apart in a hail of shrapnel. The cuffs followed a moment later, shredding his skin with stone

flechettes.

And then, instead of nothing, he could feel everything. He was everything. Tied to nothing, bound by

nothing, he was a hundred minds at once—a thousand, even. He breathed a thousand breaths a second,

spoke a thousand tongues, laughed, cried, smiled, frowned, opened his eyes, closed his eyes, saw through

every eye. Every soul was under his skin.

“Stop!” he screamed, trying to make the torment end. He saw the face of every person who had

caused his pain, clenched his will around their hearts and minds, and ended them all. Curling up on his side, clinging to himself, trying to hold himself in his own skin, he vomited blood and bile. “No more,” he

whispered with his ruined voice, between sobs. But there was nothing to answer him, only silence.

When Lindsay opened his eyes, the techs were lying on the floor, the dry floor. It was as though

nothing had happened but that they had gone mad, clawing to escape, soiled themselves, and died. There

was silence from the observation room above. The camera lens was black and unmoving. Lindsay’s own

blood-streaked, tear-stained face stared back at him, and he realized what he’d done.

All dead. He got his wrist loose and slipped off the gurney. There were no alarms ringing, no voices,

no footfalls. No one was coming. He fell to his knees. His legs wouldn’t hold him up, so he crawled

through the open laboratory door and out into the hall. He dragged a white coat from one of the bodies in

the hall to cover himself.

At the stairwell, he used the railing to pull himself to his feet. Surely, someone would notice soon.

They would search for him, and they would find him. He tried to hide himself with an illusion, but pain

made the world go dark. Clinging to the railing, he pulled himself up again with almost nothing but the

force of his will.

Up one flight of stairs, then two, he had no idea where his strength came from. He stumbled over a

pair of bodies wound together in the dark stairwell, under the red exit light bathing everything in a bloody halo. The door opened when he fell against it, and he tumbled outside.

It was freezing outside and it was night. The snow fell in thick clots, nothing like feathers, and so fast

he could hardly see through it. Falling down the stairs hurt, but it was a pain he understood. He clawed at the fender of a car until he got to his feet. One staggering step at a time, he stumbled into the dark. The snow covered up his footprints.

Even the guard at the parking-lot exit was dead, slumped over his open cash register. A man in a black

car leaned back in his plush seat, arm extended, coins still in his palm, and snow was slowly shrouding his dead body. Lindsay crept past, clutching the white coat around his thin, cold flesh.

Lindsay staggered a block, maybe two, hidden by the snow, clinging to the shadows beside the

buildings that lined the silent street. Distantly, he could hear sirens. They were coming. He tried to run, but

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Anah Crow and Dianne Fox

only ended up on his hands and knees in the snow. If he couldn’t run, he would have to hide. Getting to his feet, he took two steps and fell again. First, he would have to crawl.

He crawled in the snow and the muck, shoulder to the wall of a looming building, until an alley