Chapter 29 · Deadline Countdown

"If you touch that console, I break your hand." Jax caught my wrist before my fingers reached the cracked black panel.

His grip was hot. Too hot against the cold metal floor. His thumb pressed over my pulse like he was checking whether I was alive or deciding how hard to squeeze.

"Let go."

"Not until you tell me what you saw."

"A door."

"Kaelen."

"A door with a lock. I opened it. Congratulations, hacker. Your mystery gets less mysterious."

His jaw tightened. The blue light from the console cut across his face, catching the dark circles under his eyes. He looked like he had been awake for three days and trusted me even less than he trusted sleep.

That made two of us.

The console clicked behind him. A red line crawled across the screen.

NEURAL RESET RIG: OFFLINE. ACCESS WINDOW: 72:00:00.

Jax glanced at it, then back at me. "You didn't open a door. You found the reset rig."

"Then why are you blocking it?"

"Because the rig is bait."

"Everything in your life is bait. Move."

I twisted hard. He yanked me forward instead of letting me pull away, and my shoulder struck his chest.