the bucket hits the floor, and she unconsciously maps their trajectory, stepping backward, never getting a speck of the solution on her.
Leigh, drenched from head to toe, is not so lucky.
She screams as she dissolves. Dodger backs away farther, and thinks she will hear that sound, the wailing of a dozen dead women finally consigned to the grave, until the day she dies.
“Dodger!”
She turns, and there’s Erin in the doorway, Erin with a Hand of Glory so freshly extinguished that its stubs are smoking, and she’s never been so glad to see anyone in her life.
“I killed her,” she says, in a dazed tone. “She . . . she melted. I melted her.” She wraps her arms abruptly around her stomach. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Don’t throw up,” says Erin. “Where’s your brother? We need to get you out of here.”
“He went looking for help. He should be back any second.”
“Great. We’ll find your clothes, and we’ll go. This was a terrible idea. I’m so sorry. I—” Erin stops, mouth moving soundlessly.
Dodger screams when the knife emerges from the front of Erin’s shirt, when Dr. Reed shoves the living (dying) incarnation of Order into the room like so much trash. She’s still screaming when he advances past the threshold, glancing almost disinterestedly at the smoking remains of his second-in-command.
“You killed Leigh,” he said. “Fascinating. I never expected one of you to have the guts. You’ve done me a favor, in a way. She was getting ideas above her station, and killing her would have been difficult for me. We were simply too much alike.”
Dodger stops screaming. Reed smiles.
“That’s better,” he says. “Now, where were we?”
Dodger dances backward to the workbench. It’s too much to hope that she’ll find another bucket of acid, so she grabs two beakers and holds them like baseballs, ready to throw (the odds say she won’t find two deadly weapons in one room, but the odds are her playthings, and if she throws, the man will die). “Stay the fuck away from me,” she snarls.
Reed looks at the beakers, narrow-eyed and nervous. “Is that any way to talk to your father?”
“You’re not my father.”
“I may as well be. I made you. Built you, one piece and particle at a time. I contributed half the base material to grow the form you occupy. Oh, don’t look so shocked. You knew you were human, on some level. Did you think we’d managed to sprout you from a seed?” Reed steps forward.
Dodger steps back. “I don’t care if you were the sperm donor. That doesn’t make you my father. Now get out of here before I take away the math that makes you.”
“Dodger, Dodger, Dodger.” He shakes his head, clucking his tongue apologetically. “I named you, you know. I made you and I named you and by the standards of any empire that’s ever risen, that makes you mine. You belong to me, body and soul, and you owe me the bright light you hold captive in your breast. It was never meant to be yours.”
“If it wasn’t meant to be mine, why did it choose me?”
He frowns. “It didn’t. You got in the way. It was meant to belong to another girl. A good girl. A tractable girl. You would like her, I think. You have a great deal in common.”
“But not pants, which is a little creepy if you’re going to insist that we’re your children.” Roger’s voice is a delight and a salvation. Dodger looks past Reed to where her brother stands in the doorway, a pale, frightened teenage girl by his side. He’s found sweatpants somewhere. His bare chest is still covered in mercury and gold sigils.
He’s holding a gun.
Reed stops when he sees it. He puts his hands up, suddenly conciliatory; a gesture ruined by the bloody knife he still holds. “Now, son, let’s not go doing anything you’d regret later.”
“Like letting you go?” Roger takes a step into the room, eyes never leaving Dr. Reed. “Dodger, you okay?”
“I just melted a woman. Other than that, I’m dandy.”
“No one’s hands are clean.” Roger shakes his head. “We came here because we needed to save these kids. But I want you to remember that we would have been happy spending our whole lives never knowing what we were. We would have been fine. You forced our hand. You made this.”
“I’m Baker’s last living student,” says Reed. “I’m the only one who remembers all her teachings, who truly understands her great work. Do you