Chapter 9 · The Chairman's Daughter

The gunfire stopped.

Leia's ears kept ringing anyway. Three seconds of smoke and emergency lights. A militia rifle clattered across the steel floor, spun out, stopped beside a drain filled with watered-down blood. Somewhere behind the shattered incubation racks, a coolant pipe hissed.

Nolan sagged against her chest.

Cold skin. Damp hair stuck to his forehead. Thin silver filaments still crawling under the skin of his neck. Leia tightened one arm around him, kept the stolen pistol aimed at the militia line with the other.

Kane stood three steps ahead. Bleeding from his side.

His black coat torn open beneath the ribs. Blood crawling down his fingers as he pressed one hand to the wound. The other held the escape key—the narrow prism of blue metal she'd given back to him.

Across the lab, Sevlyn Voss raised one gloved hand.

Every rifle lowered.

Not slow. Not reluctant. As one.

That unsettled Leia more than the shooting.

Voss walked through the smoke without a helmet. Slate-gray command coat, reinforced shoulders, collar lit by thin lines of white code. Her pale face held no anger. No triumph.