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"Left." Cade's hand locked around her wrist and hauled her sideways before she could ask why, her shoulder scraping the tunnel wall hard enough to sting.
"You're hurting me."
"Would you rather I let them hit you instead?"
Behind them, gunfire changed pitch as it bounced off the concrete. It was closer than it had any right to be. Ahead, that heartbeat kept going—slow, steady, wrong in a place where everything else screamed.
"It's getting louder," Mika said. "We're going toward it."
"We're going toward the exit sign I can actually see. Don't make it mean something."
"It already means something." Her chest tightened around the sound. "That's my dad's heartbeat, Cade. I know it."
"Your dad's been dead six years."
"Then explain why I can hear him."
He didn't answer. His jaw worked instead. Blood had dried beneath his nose from whatever he'd shoved into his own chest back in the corridor. He looked less like the golden S-rank poster boy now and more like a man who'd lost a fight but kept moving.
The tunnel opened into a service corridor lined with steel doors. Vents blasted cold air across her face. Mika's mark throbbed beneath her sleeve, burning where Anna's key had touched it.
"There." She pointed. A door at the end was thicker than the others, with a reinforced window at eye level. The heartbeat pounded loudest behind it.
"Mika—"
She ran.
Rows of pods filled the room beyond the glass. Tall cylinders. Fogged panels. Cables disappearing into each one. Most were dark and empty.
One still had power.
She reached it without remembering crossing the room and slapped both hands against the glass. Her breath fogged the panel faster than she could clear it.
White hair clung to a sunken skull. The man's cheeks had hollowed. His wrists looked too thin for the restraints around them. A monitor blinked beside the pod, drawing the same slow green line she'd heard through the concrete.
"Dad." Her voice broke. "Dad!"
She pounded the door. "Dad, open your eyes! It's me. It's—"
"Mika, stop." Cade caught her from behind and dragged her a step back. "That door's rigged. Touch it wrong, and it floods the room."
"Let go."
"Half these units have kill switches. You don't know which one—"
"Let go!"
She drove her elbow into his ribs. He grunted but held on. She twisted and punched him across the jaw.
His head snapped sideways. Fresh blood touched the corner of his mouth.
For one second, neither moved. Her knuckles throbbed. His grip never loosened.
"Feel better?" he asked.
"No."
"Good. Neither do I. Now tell me why your dead father is in a research pod under a facility funded by the Bond program."
"I don't care why." She jerked against his hold. "I care that he's alive. Look at the monitor, Cade. That's a person, not a corpse in a jar. Get me in."
"The alarm goes off when the seal breaks."
"I don't care."
"I know. I'm the one whose chest stops if yours does, so forgive me for caring twice as much."
The words hit harder than his fist could have. Blood marked his mouth. His palm was hot around her wrist. He'd shoved half his power into her without asking, and now he stood between her and the only proof that her father wasn't gone.
"Then help me," she said. "Please."
His eyes hardened. He released her and pressed his palm to the security panel. Blue-white kinetic charge crawled over his knuckles.
"Anna's going to know the second I do this."
"Do it anyway."
He did.
The panel sparked. A warning tone shrieked. The pod seal cracked with a hiss, and mist spilled around their boots. The green line on the monitor jumped.
His eyes opened.
They were her eyes. Same shape. Same color. Sunken deep into a face that hadn't seen daylight in years. They found her at once.
"Mika," he rasped.
Then his gaze cut past her to Cade. His body went rigid against the restraints.
"Don't touch her." His voice scraped through the room. "She's the second Anchor."
Alarms detonated. Red light strobed across the wet glass.
The pod door began sliding open, grinding to a halt halfway with a shriek of metal.
"You are not getting out," Anna said through the ceiling speaker, calm and amused. "Not with him. Not like this."
Mika grabbed the jammed edge with both hands and pulled. The metal screamed. Behind her, the restraints around her father's wrists snapped open, and his hand shot toward Cade's throat, fingers closing around—