Chapter 8 · Glitchy Bond

"Don't you fucking touch me!" Elara slammed her palm into my chest and shoved me back against the rusted wall of the train car.

My hand was still smoking. Like, literally smoking. Black veins crawling up my forearm, chrome dust flaking off my skin.

"You think I wanted to?" I snarled. "You saw what happened at Vex's table. That arm just — it just sank into me!"

"Yeah, and now you're glitching like a busted reactor!" she snapped. "Sit down before you blow us both up!"

The dead train car stank like old oil and hot wires. We'd run three blocks after Vex's place went dark, ducked into this gutted mag-lev carriage in the boneyard. Doors welded shut. Windows blacked out. Just us and the emergency light flickering red.

My blood was buzzing. Too loud. Too hot.

I could feel every implant in this carcass of a train trying to wake up and then dying when my pulse hit it.

"Kyle, breathe," she said, but her voice was tight. Scared. "You're spiking again."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine! Your eyes are bleeding chrome!"

I grabbed the overhead rail to steady myself and the whole fucking rail rotted under my fingers.