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The recording kept playing.
Mara couldn't move. Her sister's voice filled the clinic like she was standing right there, like she'd just walked in through the back door with that half-smile she always wore when she knew something Mara didn't.
"Don't look for me, Mara. I mean it. You won't find anything good."
Juno hit pause. The silence after was worse than the static.
Mara's hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against the metal exam table, felt the cold bite into her palms. Eight months. Elise had been gone eight months and this was the first time Mara had heard her voice since the night she didn't come home from her shift at Helios.
"Play it again," Mara said.
Juno didn't move. "You sure?"
"Play it."
Juno tapped the screen. The waveform jumped back to the start.
"Mara, if you're hearing this, something went wrong. Don't look for me, Mara. I mean it. You won't find anything good. Just—"
Static crackled through the speakers. Elise's voice cut in and out, like the file had been corrupted or recorded in a hurry.
"—the regulator in his chest—fuck, they're coming—listen, your pulse is—"
More static. Then her sister's voice again, quieter now. Scared.
"If you find him, don't let them take him back. And don't let go. Your pulse is the—"
The recording ended.
Mara stared at the screen. The waveform sat there, flat and done. No more words. No explanation. Just Elise's voice telling her to hold on to a man she didn't know eight months ago.
She turned to look at Kade.
He was still sitting on the exam table, shoulders locked, hands braced on either side of his legs like he was waiting for something to hit him. His eyes were on the floor. He hadn't moved since the recording started.
"You knew her," Mara said.
Kade didn't answer.
"You knew my sister."
"I don't know," he said. His voice was flat. "I don't remember."
"Bullshit."
He looked up. For a second she thought he was going to lie again, but then his jaw tightened and he shook his head. "I don't remember most of it. They wipe you every time they update the code. I get pieces. Faces. Voices. But I can't—"
He stopped. Looked at the monitor still showing his chest scan, the regulator sitting there like a second heart.
"I think she worked on me," he said. "Before."
Mara felt something cold slide down her spine. "Before what?"
"Before I left."
Juno cleared her throat. She was standing by the door now, arms crossed, watching them both like she was calculating how fast this was about to go bad. "Mara, we need to talk about what happens next."
"What happens next is I find out what Elise meant."
"What happens next," Juno said, "is Helios traces that scan I just ran and sends another team. A bigger one. We've got maybe two hours before this place is crawling with security drones."
Mara turned on her. "You said this was off-grid."
"It is. But that scan lit him up like a flare. Military-grade tech pings back to the manufacturer unless you strip the transponder, and I didn't have time to do that before you made me run the damn scan."
Kade stood up. The movement was too smooth, too controlled. Mara saw Juno's hand drift toward the shock baton hanging on her belt.
"I'll leave," Kade said. "You kept me stable. That's enough."
Mara stepped in front of him. "No."
"Mara—"
"No. You're not leaving until I know what my sister did to you."
His eyes locked on hers. Up close she could see the edge of the implant under his skin, a thin line of silver tracing up from his collarbone. She could see the way his chest still wasn't moving the way it should, the rhythm off by half a beat.
"She tried to break the code," he said quietly. "I think that's what the file means. Your pulse—when you touch me, it resets the regulator. Stops the kill sequence before it finishes."
"So I'm your off switch."
"Yeah."
Mara looked at Juno. "Can you pull the regulator out?"
Juno laughed. It wasn't a nice sound. "Sure. If you want him dead in about thirty seconds. That thing's wired into his autonomic system. You pull it, his heart stops for real."
"Then we reprogram it."
"With what, exactly? I run a clinic, Mara. I'm not a Helios engineer. That code's proprietary, encrypted, and probably has a dozen failsafes I don't even know about."
Mara's mind was racing. She looked back at the monitor, at the activation log still open on the screen. Eight months ago. The same night Elise disappeared.
"There's more," she said. "Elise wouldn't leave a partial file. She's too careful."
Juno frowned. She stepped back to the console, started pulling up directories. "If there's more, it's not in the standard partition. Give me a minute."
Mara heard it before Juno did. A low hum, distant but getting closer. She knew that sound. Emergency response drones. Helios used them for medical transport, but they doubled as security when they needed to.
Kade heard it too. His whole body went tense.
"Juno," Mara said.
"I know. I hear it." Juno's hands moved faster across the screen. "Come on, come on—"
The hum got louder. Mara counted three, maybe four drones. They were sweeping the sector.
"We need to go," Kade said. He was already moving toward the door.
Mara grabbed his arm. His skin was cold under her hand, and she felt it again—that flicker of response, like something inside him recognized her touch and pulled back from whatever edge it had been standing on.
"Wait," she said.
Juno swore. "Got it. There's a partition locked behind her employee code. I can't crack it here."
"Copy it," Mara said.
"Mara, we don't have—"
"Copy it. Now."
Juno pulled a data stick from her pocket, jammed it into the console. The screen flickered. Ten seconds. Fifteen.
The hum outside turned into a whine. Searchlights cut through the gaps in the boarded windows.
"Done." Juno yanked the stick out, tossed it to Mara. "Back exit. Go."
Mara caught the stick, shoved it in her pocket. Kade was already at the door, but he stopped. Turned back.
"You helped me," he said to Juno.
"Yeah, well." Juno hefted the shock baton. "Don't make me regret it."
Mara followed Kade into the narrow hallway that led to the alley door. Behind them she heard the front entrance blow open, heard Juno start yelling about warrants and private property. Buying them time.
The alley was dark, lit only by the red glow of a malfunctioning street lamp three blocks down. Kade moved fast, and Mara had to run to keep up. Her boots splashed through something she didn't want to think about.
They were two blocks away when she heard the explosion.
Not big. Controlled. The kind of shaped charge Helios used to breach reinforced doors. Juno's clinic had reinforced doors.
"She'll be fine," Kade said, but he didn't slow down.
Mara wanted to believe him. Juno was smart. Juno knew how to handle Helios security. Juno had been doing this longer than Mara had been a paramedic.
But Elise had been smart too.
They stopped in the shadow of an old transit station, the kind that hadn't run a train in ten years. Kade leaned against the wall, breathing hard. Mara pulled out the data stick, turned it over in her hand.
"Your sister locked this," Kade said. "You know her access code?"
Mara thought about it. Elise's codes were always the same. Birthdays, old addresses, the name of the street they grew up on before the city swallowed it.
"Maybe," she said.
Kade's eyes were on her. "If there's something in that file—if it tells you how to pull this thing out of me—"
"I'm not letting them turn you into a weapon," Mara said. "That's not happening."
"You don't know what I've done."
"I know you didn't tear my throat out when you could have. I know you're running instead of killing. That's enough for now."
He looked at her for a long moment. Then he reached out, and she thought he was going to take the data stick, but instead he touched her wrist. Just two fingers, resting against the inside of her wrist where her pulse jumped under the skin.
"I can feel it," he said quietly. "When you're close. It's like—like something inside me remembers it's supposed to stop."
Mara didn't move. His fingers were cold but steady, and she could feel her own heartbeat under his touch, too fast, too loud.
"Elise did this," she said. "She made you remember."
"Maybe."
"I'm going to finish it."
Kade let go of her wrist. "We should keep moving. They'll sweep the sector."
Mara plugged the data stick into her phone. The screen flickered, threw up a password prompt. She tried Elise's birthday. Wrong. The street name. Wrong.
Then she tried her own birthday.
The file opened.
Audio only. No video. Just a waveform and a timestamp from eight months ago, two hours before Elise's shift was supposed to end.
Mara hit play.
Static first. Then Elise's voice, clearer this time. Steady.
"Mara, if you're hearing this, I'm already gone. They found out what I did. I don't have much time, so listen. The regulator in Kade's chest—it's not just a kill switch. It's a control system. They built him to hunt, but I reprogrammed the reset protocol. Your biometrics. Your pulse. It's keyed to you now."
Mara's breath caught.
"I'm sorry," Elise said. "I didn't have anyone else I could trust. You're the only person in this city who'd try to save him instead of using him. Don't let them take him back, Mara. And whatever you do—"
A door slammed in the background of the recording. Voices. Shouting.
Elise's voice dropped to a whisper. "Whatever you do, don't let go. Your pulse is the key. As long as you're close, he's still—"
The recording cut off.
Mara stared at the phone. Her hand was shaking again.
Kade was watching her. "What did she say?"
Mara opened her mouth to answer.
Then Kade grabbed her hand.
His grip was tight, almost painful. His eyes weren't on her anymore. They were locked on something behind her, down the alley, and his whole body had gone rigid.
Mara turned.
A man stood at the mouth of the alley. Tall, sharp suit, the kind of posture that came from military training. He wasn't alone. Two drones flanked him, hovering at shoulder height, their scanners painting red dots across Kade's chest.
The man smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.
"Kade," he said. His voice was calm. Friendly. "Time to come home."
Kade's hand tightened on Mara's. She felt his pulse—faint, wrong, but there—kick up against her palm.
The man's eyes shifted to Mara. "And you must be the paramedic. Mara Vale. Your sister talked about you."