Chapter 9 · And after that?

She pressed two fingers against the center of my chest.

"The door has a biometric lock. My blood opens it. Your plugin can spoof the outer grid. We get through the maintenance shaft, cross under the transit spine, and reach the old server vault."

"And after that?"

"You give me the chip."

"Still don't have it."

"Then you give me whatever is hiding inside you."

The words landed harder than the knife had.

Outside, metal scraped over metal. Someone was cutting through the inner lock.

"You saw it," I said.

"I saw something."

"In the archive?"

"When you touched the console."

Her eyes finally met mine.

There was no disgust in them. No greed. Not even the sharp curiosity she usually wore like armor.

Just a careful kind of fear.

"Your face disappeared from the system," she said. "Not erased. Not corrupted. Gone. Every identity layer dropped at once."

"That's what happens when a person has no identity."

"No. A person leaves gaps. You left a hole."

"Pretty words for a killer."

"Don't call me that when you're standing in my hiding place."

"You sold people for contracts."

"And you killed people without remembering why.