Still it would be inconvenient if you are mobile—” Their free hand closes around her knee, almost a caress. Even though in that instant Orfea knows what impends, she cannot prepare for it, cannot brace for the oncoming terror. Seung Ngo gets a firm hold of her leg and gives a sharp, decisive twist. Orfea screams, a rough scrape of noise. She draws breath and screams again. There is nothing else, no other available response—the agony unmakes her, bends all her reactions and instincts to animal. A cosmology of pain: she is blinded by it, she is subsumed.
