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"Kael. Sweetheart. Come here."
The voice drifted through the trees at full dark, soft and wrong, and every hair on Cyrus's neck stood up.
Kael went stiff beside the fire. Her hand dropped from the canteen she'd been passing to Lien. The metal hit the dirt with a dull thunk.
Cyrus grabbed her wrist. "Don't."
She didn't look at him. Her eyes were locked on the treeline, pupils blown wide. The firelight caught the edge of her jaw, the way her mouth had gone slack.
"That's—" Her voice cracked. "That's my mother."
"No it's not."
"Kael," the voice called again, sweet and warm and hungry underneath. "I've been waiting. Come here, baby. Let me see you."
Kael took a step forward.
Cyrus yanked her back hard enough that she stumbled. "It's not her. It's the Road."
She rounded on him, and for half a second he thought she'd put him through a tree. Her eyes were wild. The command chain mark on her throat pulsed, dark red bleeding into black.
"Let go."
"Listen to me." He kept his voice low, steady, the way he used to talk to soldiers going into shock. "Your mother's dead. You told me that yourself. Three years ago. This is something else."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"I know the Scar Roads eat memories and spit them back out. I know things out here wear the dead like masks." He didn't let go of her wrist. Her pulse hammered against his palm. "I know your mom wouldn't call you from the dark and ask you to walk into it."
Kael's breathing was ragged. The glow from her tattoos lit up the bones of her face, made her look half-ghost herself.
"Kael." The voice again, and this time it had an edge. Impatient. Hungry. "Don't make me wait. Bring the key."
Kael blinked. Her head snapped toward the treeline, and the wildness in her eyes shifted into something sharper.
"The key," she said.
"Yeah." Cyrus felt his stomach drop. "The checkpoint key. That's what it wants."
Behind them, Lien had gone pale. She was standing now, one hand on the younger kids, the other wrapped around a piece of firewood like a club.
"What is that?" Her voice came out small and tight.
"Something that knows we have a way through the next gate." Cyrus didn't take his eyes off the treeline. The shadows there were too deep, too still. Nothing moved, but he could feel it watching.
"Kael, please." The voice cracked now, wavering between sweet and something else. Something that scraped. "I'm so cold out here. Just bring me the key and come closer. I want to hold you."
Kael's hand went to her belt. To the key ring clipped there.
Cyrus stepped in front of her. "Don't you dare."
"She's—"
"She's dead. And whatever that is, it'll kill all of us the second you hand it over."
Kael's jaw worked. Her fingers stayed on the key ring, white-knuckled. The tattoos on her arms writhed, ink-black serpents coiling tighter.
"How do you know?" Her voice was barely a whisper.
"Because I've seen what lives out here. Because the Scar Roads don't give anything back without taking more." He held her gaze. "And because your mother wouldn't ask you to bring her a piece of metal. She'd ask if you were okay."
For a long moment, Kael just stared at him.
Then her hand dropped.
The voice in the dark changed.
It didn't crack or waver this time. It split, doubled, tripled, until it was a chorus of the same voice layered over itself, sweet and rotten and furious.
"Kael Thorne. Sergeant. Fourth Shock Battalion. Authorization Theta-Seven-Red."
Cyrus's blood went to ice.
Command code.
Kael's whole body locked up. Her eyes went glassy. The tattoos flared so bright he had to squint, and when she spoke her voice was flat. Dead.
"Responding."
"No—" Cyrus lunged, but she was already moving, walking toward the treeline like a puppet on strings.
He didn't think. He just shouted the first thing that came to him, the one code he'd sworn he'd never use again.
"Epsilon-Nine-Black! Override! Stand down!"
Kael stopped.
The clearing went silent.
Even the fire seemed to hold its breath.
Kael stood three feet from the treeline, one hand outstretched, her body trembling. The tattoos flickered, pulsing in and out of sync. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps.
"What—" Her voice was her own again, but barely. "What did you—"
"Death code," Cyrus said. His throat was dry. "Medic override. It drops you out of active command for sixty seconds."
She turned to look at him. Slow. Her eyes were back, but they were full of something he couldn't name.
"How do you know that."
It wasn't a question.
Before he could answer, the thing in the dark laughed.
It was a wet, choking sound, nothing like Kael's mother anymore. The shadows peeled back, and for just a second Cyrus saw it—something tall and wrong, body bent at angles that didn't line up, face pale and eyeless and smiling.
Then it was gone.
The silence that followed was worse.
Kael swayed. Cyrus caught her before she hit the ground, and she was heavier than she should've been, like the tattoos were dragging her down.
"Hey. Stay with me."
She blinked up at him. Her pupils were uneven. "I don't—" She stopped. Frowned. "What was I—"
"You were walking toward the trees."
"Why?"
His stomach turned over. "You don't remember?"
"I remember—" She stopped again. Her hand went to her head, pressing hard against her temple. "There was a voice. It said—" Her face went blank. "I don't remember."
Another piece, gone.
Cyrus looked down at her belt. At the key ring still clipped there, metal glinting in the firelight.
The checkpoint key was still there.
But it wasn't alone.
There was another key on the ring. Smaller. Older. The kind of key that opened lockers, gear cases, personal safeguards.
It had a tag.
Stamped metal, scratched and dented but still legible.
Unit Four. Reclamation Corps.
Cyrus stared at it.
He knew that unit.
He knew that key.
And he knew exactly who it used to belong to.