Chapter 5

"It was!" He was already dragging me down, one hand fisted in my jacket, the other hammering his deck. His screen screamed red. "It's not a trace. It's a city-wide ping! Olympus just lit up every grid in Sector Nine!"

Outside the blown doorway, the sky turned wrong. Every billboard, every ad-screen on the block, every neon sign flickered and died and then snapped back on with the same thing.

WANTED. OLYMPUS ASSET KAELEN. CLASS-S. LETHAL RETRIEVAL AUTHORIZED.

My face. My goddamn face, ten feet tall, staring down at me.

"Oh, that's new," I said. My voice sounded weirdly calm. "That's really, really new."

"Yeah, no shit!" Jax yanked a metal shutter down over the doorway. It screeched, half-melted. "They just put a bounty on you that could buy this whole district! Every merc, every cop drone, every junkie with a knife is gonna come running!"

The shutters shook as something heavy hit them from outside. Boots. A lot of them.

"We gotta move!" I shoved off the rack, knife already in my hand. I didn't remember grabbing it.

"Where?" He grabbed my wrist and pulled me back. Hard. His fingers were hot, sweaty, tight. "Look out there! That's a killbox! We go out that door, we're dead in ten seconds!"

His face was inches from mine. I could feel his breath, fast and ragged. Smell ozone and cheap coffee on him. The little room was suddenly way too small. One cot, one desk, one flickering light. Forced proximity didn't cover it. We were trapped in a box and the whole city wanted to open it.

"So what's your plan, hacker?" I snapped, trying to pull my wrist free. He didn't let go. "Hide under the bed till they get bored?"

"My plan is you stop acting like a solo assassin and let me in your head!" He shoved his deck at me. Wires spilled out like guts. "That fortress in your mind? It's broadcasting! That's how they pinged us! It's a beacon, Kaelen!"

"Don't touch me," I hissed.

"You want privacy or you want to live?" He got right in my face, eyes blazing. "Pick one! I can jack in, I can cage that signal, I can start cracking those locks. But I need a hard link. Direct neural. Right now."

"And if you fry my brain?"

"Then we both fry!" He laughed, but it wasn't funny. "You think this is safe? Nothing about this is safe! I link to you, my consciousness is tied to yours. If Olympus triggers your kill-switch, I go down with you. If you panic and snap my neck — which, given your muscle memory, is like, super likely — I die. It's a binding. A contract. You and me, same circuit. You get me?"

That was the power thing. Clear as day. He held the only key to shutting up the beacon in my skull. I held the ability to kill him before he finished typing. We each had a gun to the other's head.

Outside, someone started cutting the shutter. Sparks rained through the gap. A drone whined overhead.

"What's the price?" I said. "Say it straight."

"Price is you don't get to hide anymore," he said, low and fast. "I see everything they locked away. No walls. No secrets. And you don't get to pull the plug halfway. You yank that cable while I'm inside, you could flatline us both. You in or you out? Because that shutter has maybe thirty seconds!"

I stared at his hand. The cable. Thin, black, with a needle tip that glinted. My neck port throbbed like it remembered being stabbed before.

I hated him. I hated that he was right.

"Do it," I said. "But you try anything cute, I will rip that deck out of your hands and shove it down your throat. Understood?"

"Loud and clear, princess," he muttered, and his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. "Turn around. And try not to kill me."

He spun me. His chest hit my back. One hand shoved my hair aside, fingers brushing the cold metal ring at the base of my skull. I flinched. Hard.

"Hey. Hey, breathe," he said, voice dropping. Suddenly close. Too close. His breath hit the back of my neck and I felt every hair stand up. "I know it sucks. I got you. Just breathe for me, okay?"

"Don't do the soft voice thing," I snapped, but my hands were shaking.

"Yeah, well, don't be so tense or you'll bend the needle," he shot back. His other hand landed on my shoulder, holding me steady. His palm was warm through my thin shirt. Solid. "On three. One —"

He didn't wait for three. The needle punched in.

White. Noise. Pain like ice water poured straight into my spine.

"Ah — god!" I arched, but his arm locked around my waist, holding me up. Holding me against him.

"I know, I know, I got you!" He was talking right against my ear now, his body braced behind mine so I didn't collapse. I could feel his heartbeat hammering against my back, fast as mine. "Don't fight it! Let me in!"

Data flooded. Not images. Sensation. Cold. The smell of antiseptic. Hands holding me down. A voice, calm, saying "Again."

Then Jax was there, inside. Not physically. But I felt him. A pressure, a heat, pushing against walls in my head that I didn't know I had.

"Jesus," he breathed, and I felt his grip tighten on my shoulder. "Kaelen, what the hell did they do to you? These locks... they're not just encryption. They're fucking booby-trapped. Layer after layer. Whoever built this didn't want you to remember. Ever."

"Get it open," I gritted out. My knees were buckling. His arm was the only thing keeping me standing. The shutter screamed as the cutters got halfway through.

"I'm trying! Hold still!" His fingers flexed on my waist. "There's a core lock. Big one. If I pop it, the beacon dies. But it's wired to your pain receptors. It's gonna hurt like hell. You ready?"

"Just do it!"

He pushed.

The world exploded.

Not the room. My head. A sensory overload so bright I couldn't see, couldn't hear Jax yelling my name. Smell of burning plastic. Taste of copper. A flash of a white room, a table, straps on my wrists —

And then — a spark. Not pain. Something else. Jax's presence brushed against something raw and locked away and for half a second it wasn't code. It was heat. It was his hand on my waist and my back against his chest and the stupid, insane thought that I didn't want him to let go.

"Kaelen! Stay with me!" His voice cracked. His forehead thumped against the back of my head. He was shaking too. "Don't you check out on me!"

The lock cracked.

A floodgate burst. A memory, sharp and fast like a bullet.

A man in a perfect Olympus suit. Dark hair. Handsome in that expensive, cruel way. He was leaning over me where I lay strapped down, smiling. Not a nice smile. A proprietary smile. Like I was a thing he'd just bought.

"There she is," he said, soft, intimate. "My perfect weapon."

The name ripped through the static, clear as the bounty on the billboard outside.

Victor.

And he was smiling right at me when he said, "You ready to come home, Kael—"