Chapter 11 · The Other Girl in Her Head

I was dreaming about coffee when the headache split my skull in two.

Not the dull ache from three days without sleep. This was ice pick sharp, right behind my left eye, and it brought a memory with it that didn't fit. I was strapped in a pilot seat I'd never seen, running a pre-flight sequence I'd never learned, and my hands were moving through the checklist like they'd done it a thousand times. The cockpit was wrong. Too clean. Too new. And there was a voice over the comm I almost recognized.

"Subject four is clear for launch."

I snapped awake on the floor of Senna's ship, gasping, my jumpsuit soaked through again.

Echo-7's interface was hovering two inches from my face, pulsing that cool blue it did when it was pretending to be concerned.

"Your neural activity spiked. Another memory fragment?"

"Get out of my face." I shoved myself up, ribs screaming. The ship was still in low orbit over some moon I didn't care about. Senna was in the cockpit. I could see the back of her head through the open door.

Echo-7 didn't move. "That makes eleven fragments in forty-seven hours. The pattern suggests—"

"Suggests what?