Chapter 30 · Eleven Minutes

"Iris, stay with me!"

Vera's hands slammed against my shoulders and shook hard enough to rattle my teeth. My body lay beneath me—or I thought it did—while smoke rolled across the server room and red firelight flashed through the broken ceiling.

"Reyes! Where the hell is that medic?"

"Still two floors down!" Reyes shouted into his comm. "The stairwell's blocked!"

My chest panel hung open. The core beneath it was dark metal, scorched circuits, no pulse, no glow. Vera dropped onto her knees and started compressions.

"Come on," she said. "Come on, Iris. Don't you dare leave me now."

Her palms struck my chest again and again. The blows came through the fog, sharp enough to drag me closer to my body.

"Vera." Reyes caught her wrist. "Stop."

"Get off me."

"If the core's fried, compressions won't—"

"Then tell me what will!"

She shoved him back. The perfect daughter. The quiet one. The one who'd spent years swallowing every insult our father handed her.

Now she was screaming at a Defense Commander with ash streaked across her face.

Reyes stared at her for half a second, then reached into his vest.