Chapter 12 · Trial on Twelve

"Choose."

Noah's voice crackles through every speaker on twelve. The word echoes off glass, steel, the kind of silence that comes right before someone bleeds out.

I'm ten feet from Iris. She's backed against the server wall, blue light crawling up her neck like frost. Her pupils are blown wide, locked on something I can't see.

Vera's got her sidearm aimed at the floor now, but her finger's still on the guard. She's three yards to my left, between me and the reinforced door Noah said leads to her people.

"Three options, Cade." Noah sounds calm. Almost bored. "One: put a round through the server core behind Iris. Kills the protocol. Kills her too, probably. All that voltage, nowhere to go. Two: crack Vera's safe room. Get her crew out. They've got maybe ninety seconds of air left, and the room's on a separate fail-safe. I'm not stopping you. Three: walk away. Let the countdown hit zero. See what happens when the loop runs out of rope."

Iris blinks. Her lips move, but no sound comes.

"You're lying," I say. "There's no safe room crew. You already gassed them or never locked them in the first place.