Chapter 1

VAPORS BILLOWED INTO the chamber in thick masses of orange. Devin choked on the sickly sweet odor.

“Don’t fight it, child,” came the voice—equally cloying—from the darkness beyond the floodlit, glass-walled chamber. “Give yourself up to it.”

The gas surged into Devin’s face, blinding, gagging her. She made it go away. By force of will, a moment’s mental reflex, she flung it back.

Fresh air flooded her nostrils and drove out the syrupy stink. She sucked in a cool, clean breath.

“No!” snapped the voice, crackling with amplified static. “You must not.”

The therapist dropped her with two thousand volts. Devin collapsed to the chamber’s floor, her body jerking, her nerves on fire. The pain was beyond enduring. A pain this intense must be lethal. But she did not die. As she convulsed, her muscles knotted in spasms, she could not scream. No part of her, not even her voice, was under her voluntary control.

“Try it again, child.” Smooth and saccharine once more, her unseen therapist spoke from the concealing shadows as the shock ended and Devin’s pain faded. “Stand up,” the torturer ordered. “And this time, do not fight it. Or your punishment will be the same: swift, sure, and severe.”

Devin struggled upright. She had to brace against the curved glass wall of the gas chamber to keep on her feet. Her muscles had melted from knots into jelly.

An orange cloud flooded the chamber and filled her nose with the stink of rotting fruit.

“Breathe it,” her therapist instructed. “You must.”

But again, Devin reacted by instinct alone. No conscious thought interposed between stimulus and response. The cloud approached; she pushed it away. Pure reflex, action of mind: act of self-preservation. The gas held back, suspended in midair, blocked by the power of her impulse.

On the instant, thousands of volts knocked her to the floor. Pain engulfed Devin, such a pain as must be lethal but wouldn’t do her the service of killing her. She writhed, silent and barely conscious.

Her therapist withdrew the punishment. Devin remained on the floor of the isolation chamber, curled in the fetal position, her long brown hair covering her face. Her body was hers to command once more, but her muscles had no strength to obey.

“You give new meaning to the word persistent, don’t you, girl?” muttered the disembodied voice. Then, more forcefully: “The first step toward healing is to admit you are diseased, Miss Perridin. You have an illness. A mental disorder. I am offering you the cure—in a pleasant aerosol spray that you need only breathe. Once inhaled, the drug acts quickly, and its effects are lasting. But you must take the first step and acknowledge that you want to be cured.”

The voice grew soft, sugary. “Child, for as long as you hold to the notion—the mistaken notion—that your disorder is in some way a strength or a benefit to you, you will continue to fail. And you will suffer the consequences of that failure. We can’t have that, can we?”

Devin gathered the remnants of her strength and rolled onto her back. To stand was impossible; she could barely shape a word.

“No,” she whispered.

She wasn’t speaking to her tormentor.

But: “That’s the spirit!” the therapist responded, sounding genuinely enthused. “Now we try again. Take your medicine like a good girl.”

The orange stink flowed in at the top of the chamber. Devin, lying face up, watched through the curtain of her hair as the cloud descended. She had time to ward it off, to make it go away. But in the soul of her being, nothing sparked. Her reflexes, her instincts, failed to respond. What had been a spontaneous force of mind over matter could offer no resistance.

Devin’s mouth filled with the sickening taste of defeat. The orange cloud enveloped her, a sticky weight, and she choked down lungfuls.

“Wonderful!” her therapist exclaimed. “My dear, I couldn’t be more pleased. This is the tipping point. Your recovery will be much easier from now on, I promise.”

Devin breathed the sickly sweet drug and felt the core of her mind go dead.

Then came the retching. Her body contorted in gut-shredding paroxysms as the drug made her vomit—or attempt to vomit. Her keepers had starved her for so long, her stomach had nothing to bring up. The dry heaves racked her with such violence that she could not breathe. After long moments, unconsciousness brought relief.