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The shot slammed into my chest, driving me into the wall. Sparks burst behind my eyes and I cried out, sliding to the floor, heart fluttering.

Tremblers roamed the room, searching, black eyes roving.

The sound of their constant chattering teeth crawled up my spine, and I huddled against the corner. Confusion flooded my mind, and I pulled a bullet from the center of my armor. Struggling to breathe, I writhed from the deep ache the bullet left. Flashes of a fight. Of Ashton, stuttered across my thoughts. Cold mist floated from my lips, and I looked down at my hands, startled at the blue veins rising up my wrists. Hands shaking, I felt for the mechanica at my temple. It was broken, the shrill tone muffled. Anger and fear rose and ebbed in my mottled mind and I heaved a sob, my body wracked with pain. “A-Ash?” I called, staggering to my feet.

A Trembler turned at my voice, but I batted his arms away. The warbling voices in my head grew, drowning out my own thoughts. My baton lay on the carpet and I bent to pick it up, lost my balance, and fell to my hands and knees. Broken, disjointed images pierced the mottled fog of the tone in my head, and I strained to think, to remember what had just happened. The mechanica pulsed, snapping my control away. “No…not again,” I gasped.

You are not his…

Taking a breath, I yanked at the other device in my temple. It ripped from my skin, the wires sizzling as incredible agony shot along my cheek and down my neck. I doubled over, screaming. Please, help me…

Unfathomable pain rushed through my mind as my psyche burst open and a thousand buried memories flooded out. I gasped, reeling back the torrent of days I thought were lost to me.

The cold of new metal on my skin. The haze of surgery. Sparring with Ashton, the weight of the baton in my palm. His lips on mine blazing heat through me. Blood, sticky and warm on my fingers as I stood amid my foes. Flaming buildings under the domes and ships sinking beneath my feet. Years of fear and pain and battles and loss tore through me, and I held my hands to my head, screaming.

My father, Sadie, Telsa, Mara...I had lost everyone and everything and there was one reason why. The Order. Arecibo.

With the dead swarming around me. My mind and body pushed beyond what I thought possible, I rose to my feet, heart racing in my chest. I knew who I was. I knew what I had done. All of it. Taking my baton, I held it in my hand and welcomed the surge of power.

I was Charlotte Blackburn. I was not a debutante or even a daughter anymore. I was destruction fashioned by their own hands, and I was coming to end them.