Chapter 6 · Ghost Link Burns

"Don't touch it without me and I will break your fingers."

Cael's hand locks around my wrist before I can even get my palm on the core. Hard. Cold chrome biting into skin.

"Get off," I snap. "We don't have time for your control freak thing."

"And we don't have time for you flatlining us both," he says. His voice is right against my ear. Too close. "You go in alone, you burn out. You take me with you. Remember?"

The core is screaming. Not like an alarm. Like an actual throat. The whole burial chamber is coming down around us.

We are twenty floors under Kestrel's central spine. No windows. No exit. Just this pulsing black pillar in the middle of the room that Milo called the ghost-core. The thing that flagged me dead in the first place. Concrete dust raining from the ceiling. Red lockdown lights strobing. And the walls? The walls are literally closing in.

Hydraulic plates grinding shut. Inch by inch.

"Thirty seconds till this room compacts," I yell. "You wanna debate consent or you wanna link?"

Cael shoves me forward, chest to my back, his other hand slamming over mine. "We link. On my count.