Chapter 16

The victim of Victor Vance lay beneath a thin, clinical sheet, her chest rising and falling in the artificial rhythm of a respirator. Wires snaked from her scalp to a bank of brain-scanning monitors that hummed with a low, rhythmic pulse. The room was sterile, smelling of ozone and heavy sedatives. Seraphina Stone stood by the foot of the bed, her arms crossed. She hadn't moved for ten minutes. Her gaze was fixed on the girl’s face, tracing the faint tremors of her eyelids. "She’s in...