Chapter 26 · Freefall Hack

"Hold your breath or we both turn into a red smear on the pavement!" Lyra screamed over the roar of the wind.

I didn't have time to answer. The safety clamps had sheared off a second ago, and now we were plummeting. Not just falling—we were accelerating, two human stones dropped from the gut of a dying sky-lift. The wind ripped at my clothes, screaming in my ears, while the ground rushed up to meet us with terrifying speed.

"The reactor!" I yelled, my voice barely a wheeze. "I can't stabilize the output if we're bouncing like pinballs!"

Lyra didn't look at me. She was locked into her harness, her body stiff as a board, eyes scanning the horizon. "Stop whining about the hardware and find us a landing spot that isn't a concrete slab!"

I looked down. We weren't hitting a street. We were heading straight for the Lower Ward’s waste-processing sector—a nightmare of rusted vats and steaming vents. But it wasn't the height that made my stomach flip. It was the movement below.

Thousands of them. A shimmering, twitching sea of gray flesh and chrome. Flesh-borgs.