His jaw dropped, quavered. Cognitive reasoning informed him that Karla's fingers were inside of him -- inside of his brain -- though he couldn't feel it, he couldn't sense it with tactile nuance. Had this happened before the City, before Heropa, he would have thought he was suffering a delusional breakdown. But this was real, this was actual --

-- this was a humiliating death, smiling back at him.

"Please," he whispered, hoping to God that such would not be his last words. "Karla, please." His legs quivered involuntarily. "Don't."

Chilton's soft voice, usually amplified by the slick sneer of a superiority complex, was thin, dry, granular. He knew he needed a stronger argument.

"-- Think about. How many psychics lives here. How many magic users I administer. Therapy. To. They would know, they would all know how to look at you. They would all see you like I see you now. You cannot reconfigure yourself again from that."

Bones pressed into a wall, a shadow of vicious flesh taunting his brain. A stripping of control. Chilton couldn't hear his own heartbeat.