Chapter 25 · Untitled Chapter

"Get your hand off the altar!" Kane shouted.

Leia tried. The black surface clung to her palm, and the second heartbeat under her boots slammed through her bones.

Thump. Thump.

Every screen in the core flashed at once.

THE FOUNDER IS WAKING.

The words broke apart into street cameras, traffic grids, contract signatures, and blue lines linking them all to the altar. Leia saw a courier running through Level Eight. A woman whispering to her dying mother. A patrol officer lifting his rifle beneath a magenta billboard.

Then an elevator cable snapped.

Three hundred screams detonated inside Leia's skull.

She tore her hand free. The city stayed hooked into her nerves.

"Leia!" Nolan grabbed for her, but his knees buckled.

Kane caught him with one arm. Blood soaked through the shirt beneath his ribs, dark and wet in the cold blue light. His pistol stayed trained on Sevlyn Voss.

Sevlyn stood beyond the circular platform, one hand pressed to her neck. Red warning marks crawled over her skin where her private override had burned out.

"You did this," Sevlyn said.

Her voice came from the chamber speakers too, magnified until it sounded like a sentence being read at an execution.