He Asked Me to Die Again, So I Named My Price novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Seven Faces
Yvette wakes as a night cleaner with a new face, gives Alaric thirty days to be conquered, and finds he filed her hospital job before she signed.
The first cut was the last thing Yvette felt on purpose.
After it came the long part, the one the system had warned her about.
It lasted until the white lights went out.
She woke on a concrete floor that smelled of bleach.
Her cheek was pressed against a rubber mat, and a mop handle lay across her ribs.
She sat up slowly.
Her chest did not hurt. It never did when she came back. That was the one mercy of the new bodies.
She raised her hands in front of her face.
They were small and square, with chipped blue polish on the nails and a burn scar across one thumb.
They were not her hands.
"Body secured," the system said. "Female, twenty-six. Papers are in the uniform pocket."
"Where am I?" Yvette whispered.
"Stoughton Memorial Hospital, basement supply room. Your shift began two hours ago."
She found a steel bucket on the shelf and tilted it until it showed her face.
A freckled face looked back, with a sharp chin, green eyes and red-brown hair tied in a knot.
The seventh face.
She had never once liked a new one on sight, and she did not like this one either.
"Yvette."
The door was open. She had not heard it.
Alaric Stoughton stood in the doorway in a dark coat, with a steel thermos in one hand.
He knew this face was hers.
He had said her name before she could speak to him, as he did in every life.
"How long have I been gone?" she asked.
"Three days." His voice was rough. "The surgery took nine hours."
"And Calla?"
"Awake. Her heart is working."
He unscrewed the thermos and poured into its lid.
The smell of ginger filled the small room.
He held the cup out to her.
Yvette took it because her hands wanted something to hold.
It was too hot, and the honey was already in it.
"That is all you have to say?" she asked.
Alaric looked at the bleach cart and the mop and the stack of folded towels.
"Your badge is in the left pocket," he said. "Your locker is on the sixth floor. The shift supervisor thinks you have worked here for two weeks."
She stared at him.
Six deaths, and she had never heard the word thank you once.
She had never heard sorry either.
She understood, for the first time, that she was not going to hear them this time either.
So she set the cup down on the shelf, carefully, because she wanted to throw it.
"I want to say something," she said, "and I want you to listen to all of it."
His face did not change. But he did not leave.
"The system says I finish when you tell me you love me and mean it," Yvette said. "I have asked for that politely for four years."
"Yvette."
"You have turned me down in six bodies. You have watched me die in six. I have been very patient."
She stepped toward him, and the freckled face felt strange when she lifted her chin.
"Thirty days," she said. "That is what I am giving you. I am going to finish this my way, and I will not do it quietly."
For a moment he said nothing at all.
Then his jaw tightened.
"No."
"I did not ask."
"I am not available to be conquered, Yvette. Not in thirty days, not in thirty years." He put the lid back on the thermos. "Do what you like. I will not say it."
"Then you can watch me try."
He turned, and for one second his hand rested on the doorframe.
His knuckles had gone white.
Then he walked out, and left the thermos on the shelf beside her.
Yvette let her breath go.
Her hand found the uniform pocket, and she pulled out the badge and the folded papers.
The badge said YVETTE HUTCHINSON, ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES, and a hospital seal.
Under it was a hire date.
She read it twice.
It was dated eleven days ago.
Eleven days before the consent form, before the study, before she had said yes to anything at all.
Someone had put her name on the schedule of this hospital before she had agreed to die.
Someone had put her on the sixth floor, outside Calla's room.
The system spoke into the silence. "Employment record filed by A. Stoughton."
Yvette stood very still in the basement with the badge in her hand.
He had known she would sign.
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