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"You're lying."
Carson's blade is still in my shoulder. Blood's pooling under my collarbone, warm and sticky, soaking into the torn fabric. The screen's flashing red between us, City core requires blood sacrifice pulsing like a heartbeat, but he's not looking at it anymore. He's looking at me.
"I'm not," I say through my teeth. "Pull that out and let me show you."
"Show me what? How you rig another explosion?"
"How I stop the next one." I grab his wrist. His forearm goes rigid under my palm. "You saw the countdown. Seven days. You want to spend them bleeding me out, or you want to figure out what the hell that screen wants?"
He doesn't move. Doesn't pull the blade. Doesn't push it deeper. His jaw's tight, and there's a muscle ticking under his eye. He's running the numbers. I can see it.
"Six days, twenty-three hours now," I add. "Clock's loud."
He jerks the blade out.
I bite down on a yell. My shoulder flares hot, then cold, then hot again. Blood runs faster. The screen blinks twice and goes solid blue. New text rolls up: Initial sacrifice accepted. Core sync: 4%. User role: Administrator.
"Administrator," Carson reads. His voice is flat. "You."
"Yeah. Me. Surprised?"
"I'm deciding if I care." He wipes the blade on his thigh, slow, deliberate. There's still blood on it. Mine. "Four percent won't hold the wall."
"No kidding." I press my palm to my shoulder. It's already soaking through. "So we push it higher."
"We."
"You got another royal in your pocket?"
His hand moves fast. He's got my wrist before I can pull back, fingers tight enough to bruise. He twists my arm up, forces it into the light. There's a mark now, just under the pulse point. Black ink, geometric, sharp-edged. It wasn't there five minutes ago.
"What is that," he says. Not a question.
"System mark. Proof I'm synced."
"Proof you triggered something." He tightens his grip. "Royal bloodline confirmed. That's what it said. You want to explain that?"
"Not really."
His other hand goes to his belt. He pulls something out. Small, silver, hinged. It gleams under the emergency lights. A ring. No—a cuff. Thin, seamless, covered in the same geometric patterns as the mark on my wrist.
"Don't," I say.
"Hold still."
"Carson—"
He snaps it onto my wrist.
It clicks once. Then it hums. The sound's not loud, but I feel it in my teeth, in my ribs, down to the bone. The metal goes hot, then cold, then settles into something that feels like a low-grade burn. The screen flickers. New text: Control tether active. Administrative privileges limited. Override authority: Carson Rane.
"What the hell did you just do?"
"Insurance," Carson says. He lets go of my wrist. "You run, it triggers. You try to unlock anything I don't approve, it triggers. You so much as think about crashing this city to cover your tracks—"
"It triggers. I get it." I yank my arm back. The cuff doesn't budge. It's warm now, almost body temperature, sitting snug just above the mark. "You're a real people person, you know that?"
"I'm a realist." He sheathes the blade. "And you're a security risk until I know what you are."
"I'm the person keeping your wall from collapsing."
"For now."
The screen blinks again. A new line appears: Core integrity: 42%. Structural stress detected in Sector 7-North. Immediate intervention required.
"Sector 7," I say. "Where's that?"
"North wall. Near the lower wards." He's already moving toward the door. "Can you walk?"
"Can I—?" I push off the table. My legs hold. Barely. My shoulder's screaming, and the cuff's doing something weird to my pulse, but I'm upright. "Yeah. I can walk."
"Then move."
He doesn't wait. I follow, because the alternative is staying in this room with a countdown and no idea what happens when it hits zero.
The corridor outside is narrow, low-ceilinged, lit by strips of yellow emergency light. The air smells like rust and old smoke. We pass two side doors, both sealed, both marked with warning glyphs I don't recognize. Carson moves fast, shoulders squared, hand near his belt. He doesn't look back.
"Hey," I call. "You gonna tell me what Sector 7 is, or do I get to guess?"
"Residential. Three hundred people, maybe more. Wall breached there six months ago. We patched it."
"Patched."
"Poorly." He rounds a corner. "If it goes, the whole lower ward floods."
"Floods with what?"
He doesn't answer.
We hit a stairwell. Metal steps, steep, no railing. He takes them two at a time. I'm slower. My shoulder's gone stiff, and the cuff keeps humming every time I move my wrist. By the time I reach the top, he's already through the next door.
I step through and stop.
The room's huge. Circular. The walls are lined with screens, dozens of them, all flickering with maps, graphs, text I can't read fast enough. In the center, there's a raised platform, chest-high, covered in the same geometric patterns as the cuff. The air's thick here, charged, like right before a storm.
And standing by the platform, arms crossed, face locked in a scowl, is a woman I've never seen before.
She's short, maybe five-three, wiry, with close-cropped black hair and a jacket patched in four places. There's a knife on her belt. A big one. Her eyes flick from Carson to me, then down to my wrist.
"You brought her here," the woman says.
"I didn't have a choice, Mira," Carson says.
"You always have a choice."
Mira. The name sounds familiar, but I can't place it. She steps closer. Her eyes are dark, sharp, and locked on the cuff.
"Let me see that," she says.
I pull my arm back. "Not a chance."
"I wasn't asking." She moves fast—faster than Carson. Her hand clamps around my wrist, yanks it into the light. She freezes. Stares at the mark under the cuff, the black geometric lines still faintly glowing.
Her face goes white.
"No," she whispers.
"Mira—" Carson starts.
"No." She drops my wrist. Her hand goes to her knife. She pulls it, smooth, practiced. The blade's thin, serrated on one side. She puts the tip to the back of my neck. "You're the kid who should've—"
She stops.
Her fingers are on my pulse. Two of them, pressed just under my jaw. She's feeling the rhythm. Her eyes narrow.
"Should've what?" I say.
The sentence hangs.
Her blade doesn't move.