Queen of Chaos by CJ Lyons & CJ Lyons

Author:CJ Lyons & CJ Lyons [Lyons, Cat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edgy Reads

Chapter 12

Annie was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life. Beyond frightened—panicked? Terrified? She didn’t even have a word for it.

First, men had almost killed her with those stun guns, then they’d sent the drone after her and it’d shot up a public square where innocent children were playing, and now she was on the run with a boy she didn’t know, walking into a place where they used blood as currency?

Worst of all, she’d lost N-8. The one person who felt like home.

That’s when she realized that she had felt this way before. In the split second when she saw the bus speeding toward Nate, when she realized he was going to die if she didn’t save him but she wasn’t sure if she could.

That fear, that feeling of the world spinning out of control…she felt that way now. Because not only had she lost her Nate and his counterpart N-8, if she was really here and this was really happening and N-8 was really telling the truth, then a lot of people might die.

And she had no idea what to do to save them.

Through it all, her body simply kept going. Its heart keeping a steady beat, its lungs never straining, its gut never clenching, no matter how much she felt like throwing up from worry. This awful disconnect between what she felt and her inability to actually feel it was disorienting, made her feel like she was in two places at once.

You’ll get used to it, Chaz reassured her. Hearing from disembodied voices inside her head—no, her new brain housed inside her new chest, where her heart should be—wasn’t exactly the comfort she was seeking. Even if Chaz had helped when he told her what to say to the guards back at the gate.

Almost worse was the fact that when the three guards spoke to each other with their communication devices implanted in their skulls, she could hear them.

It’s all a dream. Those four words had been her lifeline back to sanity. But no more. This was real. She had to accept that. Which meant she had no hope of ever seeing her family again.

She stumbled, halted long enough for Killian to turn back and take her hand. His felt warm—and very, very real. Maybe there was one good thing about this world.

Could she trust him? She wanted to.

Follow your instincts, Chaz told her. They saved you already when you knew to get above the drone.

That was common sense—drones were piloted by humans and humans focus on where they’re expecting the object they’re looking for to be…no, it was logic. Like how a machine thought. Did that mean she wasn’t even in charge of her thoughts?

It’s more than the AI’s logic that saved you, Chaz said. Climbing that wall? That was pure Annie McCoy. You simply thought of it faster because your meta-consciousness is augmented by an AI.

AI. Artificial intelligence. Great, more bits and pieces of her new lifestyle of the clueless and robotic. As if being a sixteen-year-old human girl hadn’t been hard enough.

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