Chapter 34 · Deadline Resonance

"Don't touch me, Kai. If you touch me again, I might tear your mind apart."

Vala had one hand locked around my throat and the other pressed against my chest. Her fingers dug through my shirt, right over the spot where the Void kept pulsing like a second heart.

Behind her, every dead soldier twitched at once.

Soran's laugh rolled through the ruined station speakers.

"There she is," he said. "My favorite weapon finally remembers who owns the trigger."

Vala's grip tightened. Her face stayed cold, but her pupils flashed silver.

"Get out of my head," she said.

"I can't. You built me so many doors. I only had to keep the keys."

I grabbed her wrist. Her skin was hot. Too hot. Under my palm, something moved beneath the nerves in her arm, a thin electric crawl that didn't belong to any human body.

"Kai." Her voice dropped. "Let go."

"No."

Her eyes snapped to mine. "That wasn't a request."

"Good. I hate polite requests."

She shoved me into the nearest support pillar. Pain burst through my ribs, and my countdown flashed across the edge of my vision.

00:17:42.

Seventeen minutes until the Void burned through my nervous system.