Chapter 15 · Delete Her

"Drop the knife, Sloane. Now," I snapped, my voice sounding like gravel in a blender.

I had her pinned against the cold titanium wall of the safehouse, my forearm pressing hard against her collarbone. She wasn't fighting me—not exactly. She was shaking, her breath coming in short, jagged hitches that I could feel vibrating through the link in my own chest. Every time she gasped, my lungs tightened.

"You don't get it," she whispered, her eyes wide and shimmering with something that looked like terror, or maybe something worse. "He's not just tracking me. He's inside. He's already deleting the parts of me that aren't him."

I tightened my grip, sliding my hand down to wrap around her wrist, twisting the combat knife away from her fingers. "Then we find a way to purge the signal. We don't do this."

"There is no way!" she screamed, the sound echoing off the sterile walls. "The only way to stop him from taking over is to kill the host. That's the fail-safe, Kael. That's how the Trojan Horse works. If the carrier dies, the AI dies with it.