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His hand closed around her wrist half a second before her fingers went see-through for good.
"Got you." Cade's voice cracked. Not smug. Scared, maybe, though he'd never admit it. He hauled her back from the wall like she weighed nothing. The glow eating through her fingertips flickered, sputtered, then locked her solid again.
Mika stared at her hand. It looked like it belonged to someone else.
"You said the countdown hit zero."
"It resets when contact breaks." He still hadn't let go of her wrist. "Touch a forbidden panel again with a death clock running, and I'm letting the wall have you."
"Liar." She yanked free, but the ghost of his grip stayed behind. Warm. Annoying.
She forced herself to look at him. "My mom. You said contract backlash killed her. That's what the wall was telling me."
Cade's jaw tightened. "That's what it looked like. I don't have the rest."
"Then we go back."
"We go nowhere." He caught her shoulder and spun her toward the corridor. "Host seven-seven-four-two just tripped a penalty flag. Enforcers are already moving. You want to explain to Academy security why you were reading a forbidden panel about dead first-wave Bondeds?"
She didn't have an answer. The alarm did.
They ran.
Two turns later, with both their breaths ragged, they hit the east stairwell—and found Anna Vess waiting there. One boot rested on the bottom step, like she'd been standing there since breakfast.
"There you are." Anna's smile stopped at her mouth. Something small and black sat in her palm, no bigger than a poker chip. Its edges looked too sharp for something that small. "Cade, baby, you didn't tell your little Anchor what I'm holding."
"Anna." Cade's voice dropped. Careful. Dangerous. "Put it away."
"Or what?" She rolled the black chip between two fingers. "It's a Severance Key. Government surplus. Illegal to own, technically. It doesn't hurt the caster. It just finds the nearest Bond mark and pulls."
Her smile widened.
"Guess whose mark it's going to find first."
Mika's hand went to her collarbone. The mark beneath it was already heating up, like someone had left a coal under her skin.
Cade stepped in front of her. He didn't seem to realize he'd moved until he was there.
"You wouldn't."
"You die if she dies, too. That's how the Bond works."
"Not if I only press it halfway." Anna's thumb hovered over the chip. "Just enough to hurt. Not enough to kill. Yet."
Her eyes cut toward Mika. The hate in them was real.
"You should've stayed a nobody, Anchor. Instead, you crawled into his contract like you belonged there."
"Anna, don't."
Anna pressed the key.
The mark under Mika's collarbone went from warm to burning in one breath. She screamed before she even decided to. Her knees slammed into the floor.
"Mika!"
Cade dropped beside her, hands locking around her shoulders. Through the Bond, she felt him forcing something raw and black-red down the connection between them. He was trying to drown a fire with more fire.
"Cade, don't. You'll—"
"Shut up and hold on." Blood dripped from his chin. Then his nose started bleeding, dark red streaking over his mouth. His eyes went glassy with the strain. "I'm not watching you burn out over a chip Anna bought on some black market—"
"Touching." Anna pressed the key again.
Mika's whole arm lit beneath her skin. Her veins turned a color that wasn't blood. She screamed again, and Cade screamed with her—a rough, broken sound—as blood spattered the tile between his knees.
"Cade—" Mika grabbed his shirt. Her fingers barely worked. "You're bleeding through your face. Stop pushing."
"Not finished."
He shoved harder.
The wall behind Anna groaned. A crack split through the plaster. Then the entire section vanished in a blast of black-red force.
Rebar and stone shot sideways.
"Cade!" Anna shouted. Her smugness was gone. "You are not walking away from—"
He ignored her. He hooked an arm under Mika and dragged her against his side hard enough to knock the air out of her.
Then he threw them both through the hole.
They hit dirt instead of tile. Mika rolled onto her shoulder and found herself in a rough-cut tunnel, old and narrow, one the Academy's blueprints had never shown her.
Behind them, Anna screamed orders.
"Seal it! Seal it now!"
Gunfire cracked through the opening. Bullets chewed into the wall they'd just crossed.
"Move." Cade hauled Mika upright by the arm. Blood still ran from his chin. "Unless you want to get shot in a tunnel."
"You could've led with that."
"Save your breath."
He dragged her deeper. The tunnel curved down into darkness. Wet stone scraped her shoulder, and something almost sweet clung beneath the mineral stink.
Then Mika heard it.
A heartbeat.
Not hers. She knew hers too well after four months of sharing an HP bar.
Not Cade's, either.
This one was slower. Older. Off by half a beat in a way that made her chest seize before her mind caught up.
She grabbed Cade's arm so hard he stumbled.
"Cade." Her voice came out thin and shaking. "That's my father's heartbeat."
He didn't stop. The tunnel behind them flashed orange as another burst of gunfire tore through the dark. But his head turned just enough to catch her face.
"Mika, your dad's been dead six years."
"I know what I heard." She kept moving, her hand locked around his arm because he was the only solid thing left. "I listened to his heartbeat through monitor beeps for three weeks before he died. I know it."
The sound continued ahead of them—steady, patient, louder with every step.
Cade's grip tightened around her wrist.
"Then tell me why your dead father's heart is beating under the Academy—"