Silver smelled like rotting ozone and burnt hair. It was a sharp, chemical stench that instantly overpowered the heavy copper of the blood already pooling on the lobby floor.
Jane looked down at her chest. The silk of her high-collared designer dress was melting into her skin, bubbling into a black, synthetic blister just above her sternum. The pain was a blinding, white-hot static radiating outward from the center of her chest. It was a nine out of ten on any human scale.
So Jane simply stopped being human.
She visualized the pain as a mechanical dial. She reached out in her mind, gripped the heavy plastic knob, and turned it down to a three. She built a thick, clinical glass wall inside her head and stepped quietly behind it.
Her knees locked. Her spine straightened. Her breathing we
