Chapter 32 · The Vessel War

"Get out of my head, Kael!" Vera’s voice didn't come from her lips. It screamed inside my skull, a jagged blade of sound that made my vision flicker like a dying lightbulb.

I didn't move. I couldn't. Her hand was still clamped onto my wrist, pinning me against the console, but the real fight was happening in the static between our minds. The air around us hummed, vibrating with a frequency that tasted like ozone and old blood.

"I'm not the one who invited you in," I spat, my teeth gritted. I tried to wrench my arm away, but her grip was like a vice. "You're the one who opened the door. Now you're just mad I'm walking through it."

"You're a parasite," she hissed. Her eyes weren't human anymore. The pupils had bled into the iris, turning her gaze into two bottomless pits of void. "You think stealing a few tricks makes you a god? You're just a glitch in a dying system."

She shoved me backward, not with her hand, but with a psychic pulse that felt like a physical blow to the chest.