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I launched forward, my arms snapping behind me, as the shackles yanked me back. “That’s rape, you son of a bitch! Don’t do this! He doesn’t deserve this!”

“Rape.” The Drone licked his lips as if savoring the word. “Do you think you’ve dodged your own rape, Eveline?”

What? Would he send Dr. Jaffer back in for the man’s own enjoyment? He wasn’t that charitable with his employees. Every action served his purpose.

He leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms. “I could bite you now and make that fetus my own. Or I could dispose of it in any number of ways and resume where we left off with Dr. Jaffer.”

I sank back into the mattress, my arms winding protectively around my belly, around the energy surging through me. What would happen to him if he bit me? Would the child hurt him? Or would he gain her power? I didn’t know, and by the look on his face, he didn’t either.

“I need to think.” He swept out and slammed the door.

My heart hammered away the minutes as I waited. Minutes pulsed into hours, and hours became days. Eventually I lost track of time, locked within four walls, isolated inside myself, like Michio.

Every day, the Drone’s spiders fed me rice and unrecognizable meat and swapped out the shit bucket. No more toilets. No more showers. No change of clothes. The shackles never came off my wrists. I wasn’t allowed out of the room.

And Michio never returned.

I spent days stumbling through my thoughts, staring at my flat belly, and agonizing over people. People I wanted to kill. People I wanted to meet. People I missed with the entirety of my being.

Jesse and Roark. I was desperate to tell them I was pregnant, and my stomach ached and festered at the possibility they might never find out.

Michio. I trembled and raged, thinking about what Elaine was doing to him. I didn’t know how to reach him, didn’t know what I could do to take his pain away.

Annie and Aaron. Sometimes I dreamed of them holding their new baby sister, and it filled me with the sweetest, most harrowing ache. I couldn’t bear how much I missed them and wasn’t sure I would survive those lonely moments of longing. I just wanted to hold them so tightly, but they weren’t here…they weren’t here…

Joel. He’d told me to listen to the song. To love again. I was so grateful I had, but I hoped, wherever he was, that he knew I would never stop loving him.

The Drone. His presence was a constant pulse in my gut. I could feel him moving around the dam, his oily aura rioting my nerves and swelling my throat with dread. Would he bite me? Would he find some horrible method of abortion? How long would it take him to decide?

Me. A mother again. I was overwhelmed beyond all reason. Stunned, terrified, and so fucking overjoyed. The longer I lay there, imagining what she would look like, laugh like, fight like, the more attached to her I became. Even as I knew I wouldn’t live long enough to experience any of those things.

My daughter. She was the power buzzing inside me. Her existence changed everything. For my guardians. For the Drone. For the world.

My ribcage felt too weak to contain everything I felt. There were moments when I thought it would burst open, and all of my darkest thoughts and most hopeful dreams would explode in a terrible, beautiful wail of tears.

But that didn’t happen. So I thought about blowing up the aphids. It would cause a frenzy in the dam and the Drone would come. I was tempted. Fucking hell, I was tempted to end this godawful waiting, this not knowing, this mind-fucking game the Drone had forced upon me.

If I killed all the aphids now, though, how would that help me? The Drone could not only block my ability to control his pets, he could sense whenever I tried. He and I and the aphids, we were all connected by invisible threads. If I plucked those threads and signaled the aphids while the Drone was nearby, it would alert him as well.

I needed him distracted when I attempted it. I needed to do it as a way to magnify that distraction. But how and when would that happen?

It was in one of those moments of deliberation, when the door to the hall opened. I expected the spiders, a clean bucket, and a bowl of rice.

But it was Michio. A thinner Michio, with dark circles beneath his eyes and a bundle of rope dangling from his hand.

I scrambled to my knees and jerked against the shackles. “Michio?”

Deep longing throbbed in my chest at the sight of him standing in the doorway of my prison, alone. No visual or telepathic trace of the Drone. No other guards. Had he come to free me? Had he somehow escaped the Drone’s harness on his mind? His expression was unreadable, which it often was when he was tempering his emotions.