Chapter 64 · Down the Rift

"Take your hand off the control panel, Evelyn." Kade caught her wrist before she could slam the emergency release.

The console had locked her there up to the elbow. Black metal bands hugged her skin, pulsing with every beat in her chest. Her heartbeat. His heartbeat. One rhythm, two bodies, and a rift opening under their boots.

"Let go."

"If I let go, the system takes you with it."

"Then break the system."

"It won't break. Not while it's reading you as the anchor."

Evelyn twisted hard. Kade's grip tightened. Heat from his palm pressed through her sleeve, annoyingly steady against the wild pulse racing under her skin.

He had given her his neural core. He had put the thing that kept him alive into her hand and told her to lock it into the bond. Now the core sat beneath her ribs, beating in time with him like it had always belonged there.

She hated that it felt right.

"You said you could shut it down," she snapped.

"I said I could stop it from killing you."

"That's not the same thing."

"No. It isn't."

The floor kicked sideways.

Evelyn's shoulder struck the console.