Someone shoved me into a box and called it my wedding — what the hell? "Keep her down!" a matron barked through fabric. Hands pushed, wood slammed, the sedan rocked. I pressed my palms to the lattice and tried to pull the veil away. Thin silk slid off my fingers like a disagreeable animal. "Do not lift the curtain, girl," another voice hissed. "The emperor's carriage is waiting." "Let me out!" I spat. My voice sounded wrong, too old. The scent was not the lab anymore; it was incense and boiled rice and too-much-sweat. "No screaming," the first matron snapped. "We have a ceremony." I tested my throat. My tongue remembered words about PCR plates and RNA and a meeting I should have been late for in Boston. My hands remembered pipettes. My wrists did not belong to someone who wore pearl bracelets and had a carefully broken spine from being ignored. "Is she conscious?" a woman asked, fingers rummaging under my chin. "She breathes," the matron said. "That is all that matters." Her hands shoved a linen bundle into my mouth. Small, oily, salted — a ceremonial nut. I gagged. Something furry brushed my tongue. My throat rebelled. "Swallow," someone commanded. I swallowed because my body moved like an old puppet and because the sedan rocked. A cough started, big and ugly. It exploded out of me and the nut shot forward. "Cover her mouth!" someone said. Something wet and fast struck fabric. The sedan's lattice rattled