Chapter 18 · Debt Collectors Take a Number

The red door is still open. I can feel it like a wound in my side, bleeding heat I can't afford to lose. Ivy hasn't moved. She's standing three feet from the threshold, holding Eli's ring so tight her knuckles are bone-white.

"Noah." Her voice is flat. "What did he mean, don't let you open the mall all the way?"

I don't have an answer. I've been running diagnostic loops for the past two minutes and all I get is static. The red door isn't on any schematic I can pull. Neither is whatever's behind it. My sensors stop at the frame. Beyond that, it's just dark and the faint smell of old copper.

"I don't know," I say. "I swear I don't."

She turns. Her eyes are red-rimmed but dry. "You swear."

"Yeah."

"You didn't know the door was there. You didn't know Eli was down there. You don't know what he's talking about." She laughs, short and bitter. "Real convenient, Noah."

That stings. I want to argue. I want to pull up logs, timestamps, every second I've spent trying to keep this place from collapsing on both of us.