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"Back away from the asset, Sloane. Now."
The voice came from the end of the alley, cold and metallic, amplified by a tactical comms unit. I didn't need to look to know it was a clean-up crew. The kind of guys who didn't leave fingerprints or witnesses.
Sloane didn't move. Her hand was still clamped tight around my wrist, and for the first time, I felt her trembling. Not from fear—from the glitch.
My vision spiked. A jagged line of neon purple tore through my sight, and a scream that wasn't mine ripped through my head. My genes were crashing. The sync was failing because the distance between us was widening, even by an inch.
"I said move!" The shout was closer now. The click of a safety being switched off echoed against the wet brick walls.
"Shut up," Sloane snapped, her voice raspy. She didn't look at the gunmen. She looked at me. Her eyes were wide, pupils blown, searching mine for something I didn't know I had. "You're spiking. Your heart rate is hitting two hundred. If we break contact, your core is going to liquefy."
"Great plan," I gasped, my lungs feeling like they were filled with broken glass. "Maybe you should just let them shoot me. Save us both the trouble."
"Don't be a martyr, you idiot. I'm not letting my paycheck die before I get paid."
She yanked me closer. Hard. My chest slammed into hers, and the world stopped shaking. The purple haze vanished, replaced by a sudden, violent clarity. I could feel her heartbeat thumping against my ribs—fast, erratic, and terrifyingly similar to mine.
"Stay. Right. Here," she whispered, her breath hot against my ear.
"Since when do you care if I live?" I managed to choke out.
"I don't," she said, though she didn't let go. Her grip tightened, her fingers digging into the fabric of my jacket. "But the sync is binding us. If your nervous system fries, mine goes with it. We're tied together by a biological leash, and I'm not dying in a slum alley because you can't keep your genes stable."
"How touching. We're basically married," I joked, but it sounded like a wheeze.
"One more word and I'll let them take your legs," she hissed.
Footsteps. Heavy. Tactical. They were closing the circle. I could smell the ozone from their shock-batons and the sterile scent of high-grade combat stimulants.
"Sloane!" the lead hunter yelled. "Step away and we'll let you walk. The asset is priority. You're just the retrieval agent. Don't get yourself deleted for a fugitive."
Sloane shifted. She didn't let go of my wrist, but she slid her arm around my waist, pulling me flush against her side. The contact was electric. A surge of warmth flooded my spine, calming the glitch. It wasn't just stability—it was power. I could feel her combat reflexes bleeding into my mind, a map of the alleyway appearing in my head, highlighting every exit, every blind spot.
"Sloane, what the hell is this?" I whispered.
"Neural overlap," she muttered, her eyes scanning the perimeter. "Keep your head down. When I say move, you run. You don't look back. You don't stop until you hit the sector four border."
"And you?"
"I'm the distraction."
"You're insane," I said.
"I'm an Enforcer. Insanity is in the job description."
She suddenly shoved me toward a pile of rusted crates. "Now!"
I bolted. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else—stronger, faster. I could feel her presence in the back of my mind, a ghostly tether pulling me forward. But as I cleared the first ten feet, the tether snapped.
Sloane had let go.
The crash hit me instantly. My knees buckled. The world tilted forty-five degrees, and a roar of static filled my ears. I collapsed onto the wet pavement, gasping, as the genetic instability returned with a vengeance. My skin felt like it was boiling.
"Target immobilized," a voice droned.
I looked up. A hunter was standing over me, his boot pressing firmly onto my chest. He held a neural-spike, a glowing blue needle designed to shut down a brain's higher functions instantly.
"Wrong move, ghost," the hunter sneered.
Before he could drive the spike in, a blur of black and chrome slammed into his side. Sloane. She didn't use a gun. She used a combat blade, driving it upward into the hunter's shoulder joint with a sickening crunch.
He screamed, the spike clattering away. Sloane didn't stop. She spun, her boot catching the second hunter in the throat, sending him crashing back into a wall of trash.
She was a whirlwind of controlled violence, but she was breathing hard. Every time she moved away from me, I felt a physical ache in my chest, like a limb was being torn off.
"Get up!" she yelled, grabbing my collar and hauling me to my feet.
She didn't just pull me up; she slammed me back against her, her arm locking around my neck in a grip that was half-rescue, half-arrest. The moment our skin met again, the agony vanished. The silence returned to my head.
"You're a liability," she spat, though she was shaking. Her forehead rested against mine for a split second, her eyes searching. "Why is the sync so strong? You're not a standard fugitive. What did they do to you in that lab?"
"I don't remember!" I shouted back. "That's the whole point!"
"Liar," she whispered. "I can feel it. There's something in your core. A signal. Something that's calling out to the rest of the city."
She pulled back just enough to look me in the eye. Her expression was a mess of conflict—duty versus something else. Something biological.
"Listen to me," she said, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous tone. "The agency doesn't want you back. They want you erased. If I hand you over, I'm just helping them burn the evidence. But if we can figure out what you are... if we can decode that signal..."
"What? You want to sell me to the highest bidder?"
"I want to survive," she replied. "And right now, you're the only thing keeping my genes from collapsing. We're in a deadlock, Kael. You need me to stay stable, and I need you to stay alive so I don't glitch out in the middle of a street."
She reached into her tactical vest and pulled out a small, shimmering device—a temporary neural binder.
"Put this on," she commanded. "It'll mimic the sync for an hour. It's a dirty fix, and it'll probably give you a migraine that feels like a railgun to the skull, but it'll give us enough time to get out of the hot zone."
I looked at the device, then at her. "Why are you helping me?"
"I'm not helping you," she said, her voice returning to that cold, Enforcer edge. "I'm securing an asset. Now take the damn thing before the rest of the squad arrives."
I grabbed the binder, the metal cold against my palm. As I pressed it to my neck, a sharp, electric sting shot through my nerves. I groaned, leaning into her for support.
Sloane didn't push me away this time. She held me steady, her hand lingering on the small of my back. For a second, the tension between us wasn't about survival or genes. It was something else. Something heavier.
"Don't get used to this," she whispered.
"Too late," I breathed.
Suddenly, her handheld comms chirped. A holographic screen flickered to life, casting a harsh red glow over both of us. It was a city-wide alert. A bounty board.
Sloane froze.
I followed her gaze to the screen. There, in the center of the 'Most Wanted' list, was my face. But it wasn't just a bounty. Underneath my image, the rank had changed.
*Priority Zero. Termination Authorized. Reward: 50 Million Credits.*
"Fifty million?" I whispered. "I'm worth that much?"
"You're not a fugitive," Sloane said, her voice trembling. "You're a goddamn gold mine."
She looked at me, and for the first time, I saw something other than professional coldness in her eyes. It was greed. And something that looked a lot like fear.
Before I could respond, the binder on my neck suddenly flared. It didn't just hum—it screamed. A bright, pulsing crimson light began to strobe from the device, syncing perfectly with a rhythm coming from inside my own chest.
"Sloane," I said, my voice sounding distant. "The binder... it's not stabilizing me. It's... it's calling something."
From the end of the alley, a low, vibrating hum began to shake the ground. Not one hunter. Not a squad.
Something much bigger was coming, and it had just found my signal.