Chapter 16 · Don't Follow Me

The alarms start before I make it out of the server room.

Not the fire kind. The lockdown kind. Red strips flush the hallway, and every door I passed two minutes ago is sealing itself with a hydraulic hiss that sounds like breathing. Rowan is ten steps ahead of me, moving too fast, shoulders tight, and she won't look back.

"Rowan, wait—"

"Don't." She cuts me off without turning. Her voice is flat. Empty. The way it was the first night, when she didn't have a name yet.

I catch up anyway. Grab her wrist. She stops, but she still won't look at me.

"We need to go," I say. "Together. Right now. Jessa's got the server logs, we can—"

"No."

"What do you mean, no?"

She finally turns. Her eyes are silver and wrong. Not the battle-mode wrong. The decided wrong.

"I mean you leave," Rowan says. "I go back."

My hand drops. "You're not serious."

"Knox sent the recall. I have forty minutes before the gate closes." She says it like she's reading a weather report. "If I don't board, they'll escalate. They'll come for you."

"Let them."

"Nia." She steps closer.