Rook

skin samples,” said Motha. “And they kept all the water they used to wash you. The doctors are hypothesizing that your powers protected you from the enzymes in the acid—it was organic, and you were actually in the process of denaturing it.”
    “How?” Myfanwy said, confused. She hadn’t even thought of attacking the acid—she’d been too busy trying to kill the brain. Oh, and dying. That had taken up some of her attention.
    “It looks like your immune system kicked in to protect you,” said Watson. “And not even that fully—which is why you look like you’ve gotten sunburned.”
    “Amazing,” marveled Myfanwy. “So—wait a minute! What about the other Checquy members who were dragged in? My bodyguard? Steele?” Everyone suddenly looked grim. “What happened?”
    “They didn’t make it,” said Ingrid in a quiet voice. Myfanwy remembered the horribly bleached bodies lying in the remains.
    “Oh God,” she breathed, and stared at the images on the inside of her head. “They were eaten.”
    “It’s only through the sheerest of luck that
you
survived, Rook Thomas,” said Motha gently. “To be honest, much longer and the acid would have started to do some real damage. If you hadn’t destroyed the cube from inside, well…” The young Pawn trailed off in awed silence.
    Well, Christ, it’s not like it was easy,
thought Myfanwy.
I was on the very brink of getting broken down for spare parts
. She didn’t feel any real triumph over her survival, just a melancholy over the deaths of all those people, people whose memories she had experienced.
    Then another, insidious thought occurred to her. Who knew if the women in this room were all loyal to the Checquy? Even Ingrid had not yet been examined for Grafter implants. This was a crucial development. If it was communicated to the Grafters that Myfanwy could destroy their weapons, they would waste no time in terminating her. They wouldn’t need to risk using their own biological weapons on her. A perfectly mundane bullet from a perfectly mundane gun would do the job. Regardless of the skinless psycho’s threats against Bronwyn, she would need to communicate to the Court the truth about the Grafters’ involvement in these two attacks. But first she needed to know whom she could trust.
    “Ingrid, how far have the medical tests of the Court progressed?”
    “Let me check,” said Ingrid, and she turned away with her mobile phone. While she checked up on the details back in London, Myfanwy had another thought.
    “Pawn Motha, you saw the internals of the cube—can you tellme how much of the civilians’ brains were left? I remember your saying that some parts had been excised.” The Pawn closed her eyes, remembering what she had seen.
    “Well, they’d been truncated, obviously,” said the Pawn. “As far as I could tell, there’d been some selective lobotomizing—designed to remove the parts of the brain that deal with initiative. I’m thinking the idea was to leave the central brain with all the storage capacity without having to deal with individual impulses. The crew back at the site are examining the remains, but the acid is hampering any meaningful study.”
    “But you’re saying that most likely the personalities of the civilians were erased or destroyed before I got reeled in, right?” said Myfanwy intently.
    “I don’t know for sure,” confessed Motha. “But that would make sense.”
    That’s definitely the kind of thing I would expect from the Grafters,
thought Myfanwy.
Especially that skinless bastard. But I like to think it means I didn’t kill those people. And if there was still some part of them in that thing, then I hope they are at peace now.
    “Rook Thomas,” said Ingrid, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. “Security Chief Clovis is on the line. He says that Chevalier Eckhart has been tested and came through with flying colors. He won’t tell me who’s being tested now.”
    “Give me the phone, please. Clovis, this is Rook Thomas,” Myfanwy said impatiently.
    “Good afternoon, ma’am” came Clovis’s voice.
    “Yeah, hi. Now, what’s this about not telling us who will be tested next?”
    “I’m sorry, Rook Thomas. In order for this to work, everything must be kept completely random. And secret.”
    “Fine,” said Myfanwy. “Has anyone other than Eckhart and me been tested yet?”
    “Not yet, no.”
    “Will they be done tonight?”
    “No,” said Clovis. “The end of the