“She’s already on the table,” Gonçalves states, sounding a little testy to Nikki’s ears. “Oh, you mean the neck brace.”
“No,” Alice replies, insistent. “I mean I need the subject secured. Freeman is not the subject.”
Acting on some unspoken cue, one of the mercs raises the suppression rifle he took from Alice and shoots Beatrice with it, hitting her just above the collarbone in a cluster of tiny marks. As she reels around in disbelief, the merc she has just turned her back on zaps her with his electro-pulse, taking her out in case she does any damage before the sedative can act.
Then it’s serious déjà vu: the same two mercs moving with speed and efficiency to grab Alice’s twin before she falls, then laying her down on the same operating table Alice just vacated. Restraints simultaneously cycle and clunk around Beatrice’s limbs as they withdraw from around Nikki’s, while Daniels disarms Gonçalves of her stun pistol and secures her in a double armlock.
Nikki climbs to her feet. She’s not sure what just went down, but she’s happy to run with it.
“Release me at once,” Gonçalves demands. “What the hell are you doing?”
“They’re securing the subject,” Alice replies.
Silently they lift Gonçalves on to the other operating table and lock her into place. She strains against the loops in protest. This is in frantic contrast to Beatrice, who is unmoving, the suppression rifle’s sedative having taken hold.
“You’ve been betrayed, Maria. Twice. Leonard Slovitz sabotaged your system so that when you tried to edit my mind just now, my memory was protected and the vital information he needed me to know was uploaded instead. You ought to admire him. He acted out of self-sacrifice and loyalty.”
“Slovitz?” Gonçalves asks, as confused as she is incredulous. “Loyalty? Selling our work to criminals?”
“He wasn’t selling anything. He was throwing a clog into your loom, just like his mother did twenty-five years ago. Slovitz was Cassandra Shelley’s son. The fire was her doing, after she learned what you had done to Beatrice and me, after she realised what you were capable of. Shelley was dying of a brain tumour, so she sacrificed herself because it was the only way to stop you.”
Gonçalves’s face twists into a wordless grimace as a vast and precious piece of her past is ripped up and rewritten in an instant.
Yeah, bitch, that’s what it feels like, Nikki thinks.
“Shelley knew you would rebuild and try again, so she passed the torch to her son. Slovitz did what his mother asked in order to protect her vision, her values, except he didn’t need his brain interfered with in order to do so. But now there’s a simpler way to stop you.”
The tech assistants move in, engaging the neck brace and bringing the cradle into place around their boss’s head. Neither they nor the guards have uttered a single word, nor looked at each other, yet they are acting in concert. It’s the console. Alice is directing them like they are her appendages.
“No. Please. Jason, Michael, you have to release me.”
“Release you? They can’t even hear you. You should be happy. I’m going to follow your vision and take away the painful, damaging memories that have so corrupted you.”
Gonçalves strains against the brace to try and look at Alice. Her neck won’t turn, so she stares in desperate supplication at Nikki instead.
“No, please. I need those memories. I need my pain! It’s what drove me to achieve what I have, so that I might prevent such atrocities happening to other women, other children.”
“And what makes your memories, your pain worth more than everyone else’s?”
Gonçalves closes her eyes. Nikki sees tears leak out either side and run down her cheeks.
“I think she’s finally getting it,” Nikki says.
She looks to Alice, expecting her to stand down, but her fingers continue to work the console, busy and deliberate.
“Her remorse is coming too late as far as I’m concerned. Remorse can’t undo what she did to me and to Beatrice. She edited my mind, appointed herself a controlling voyeur upon my whole life.”
“Alice, you made your point. All threats are neutralised. Now you need to back away.”
“Why should I?”
Nikki walks between the operating tables, approaching the console behind which Alice is standing. Daniels steps into her path, arms folded. She feints to skip past him but he moves with each of her steps, blocking her off. Nikki pretends to give up in exasperation then turns around and tries to cold-cock him. He’s fast. He catches her fist, takes her off-balance and throws her back. She clatters painfully against one of the operating tables and drops to the floor, dazed.
The room spinning, she lifts her head and addresses Alice.
“Doing what she did was the only way Gonçalves could make sense of all the horrible shit that happened to her. Otherwise it was just meaningless suffering. People do terrible things when they can’t find any other way to deal.”
“She doesn’t need you to make her excuses for her, Nikki. She made this bed, so be grateful it’s her lying in it and not you.”
“It’s not an excuse, it’s a warning. You can’t justify tearing up her mind because bad things were done to you: that would make you as bad as her. You need to step away. You need to stop this.”
“Why should I?” she asks again.
Alice’s face is like stone, a cold determination in her eyes. She looks more like her twin in Omega’s grab than the goody two-shoes idealist Nikki has come to know and, she has to admit, kind of like.
Nikki crouches on the floor, catching her breath. There are now all three mercs forming a barrier, while the lab assistants stand over the operating table where Gonçalves’s head is secured inside the cradle. Green lights are flashing all around the crown, same as before. They are ready to rock.
Nikki has to find a way through. She can’t let Alice do this.
She looks around the lab for any kind of weapon, sees that the guards have got them all, even Gonçalves’s little stun pistol. However, they haven’t used any of them against Nikki: they haven’t shot her down or zapped her. Alice has got them programmed to repel, not attack.
Nikki vaults on to the edge of the operating table nearer the console and launches herself through the air. Two strong arms catch her and she is thrown back again, winded by the impact as she thumps against a wall. It is hopeless. Gonçalves is locked in and Alice has total control, in a perfect reversal of the situation a few minutes ago. The one thing that hasn’t changed is that Nikki is powerless to do shit.
Doesn’t mean she’ll stop trying, though.
“Alice, you gotta listen to me. Gonçalves wanted to change you into someone you’re not. You do this and she’s got her wish. How you’re feeling right now, all your anger, this isn’t who you are. But it’s who you’ll be for ever after if you don’t stop. You have to stop.”
Alice looks up from the console, eyes burning with rage. She fires out her reply like a hail of bullets.
“And I ask you again: Why should I?”
Nikki hauls herself upright, and in her exasperation grabs on to the last argument she can think of. It’s the only thing she’s got left, so she screams it out with all the authority she has ever brought to bear.
“BECAUSE IT’S AGAINST THE FUCKING LAW.”
And with that, Alice lifts her hands from the console in a gesture of surrender and composes her face into an expression of placid serenity.
“Thank you, Sergeant Freeman. You just said the magic words.”