“Yes . . . yes, you’re right,” said the Master. Its body was big and male, strong and healthy, but effort and fear had sapped the strength from its voice; it sounded distracted and anxious. “Yes. All right. Thank you.” It headed out to the receiving room.
That was when Sadie threw herself against the transfer room door and locked it, with herself still inside.
“Sadie?” Olivia, knocking on the door’s other side. But transfer chambers were designed for the Masters’ comfort; they could lock themselves in if they felt uncomfortable showing vulnerability around the anthro facility’s caregivers. Olivia would not be able to get through. Neither would the other Master—not until it was too late.
Trembling, Sadie turned to face the transfer tables and pulled the letter-opener from the waistband of her pants.
It took several tries to kill the Eighteen Female. The girl screamed and struggled as Sadie stabbed and stabbed. Finally, though, she stopped moving.
By this time, the Master had extracted itself from its old flesh. It stood on the body’s bloody shoulders, head-tendrils waving and curling uncertainly toward the now-useless Eighteen. “You have no choice,” Sadie told it. Such a shameful thrill, to speak to a Master this way! Such madness, this freedom. “I’m all there is.”
But she wasn’t alone. She could feel them now somewhere in her mind, Enri and the others. A thousand, million memories of terrible death, coiled and ready to be flung forth like a weapon. Through Enri, through Sadie, through the Master that took her, through every Master in every body . . . they would all dream of death, and die in waking, too.
No revolution without blood. No freedom without the willingness to die.
Then she pulled off her shirt, staring into her own eyes in the mirrored wall as she did so, and lay down on the floor, ready.
© 2014 by N. K. Jemisin.