Chapter 21 · The City Wants Her Head

The first screen called me a terrorist before I made it three steps out of the wreckage.

My face filled the broken billboard above the alley. Bruised cheek. Blood in my hair. One eye half shut. Somebody had frozen the worst possible frame and blown it up forty feet high.

COMMANDER OF THE HALO REVOLT.

The words flashed red beneath my picture.

Rowan grabbed the back of my jacket and yanked me away just as a police drone dropped past the roofline. Its searchlight cut across the alley. White. Hard. Looking for movement.

“Down,” she said.

“I’m down.”

“You are standing.”

“I’m crouching.”

“Badly.”

“Rowan.”

She shoved me behind a stack of busted lighting cases. The cases smelled like wet dust, hot wires, and the chemical stink left over from the lab fire. My lungs still hurt from the smoke. Every breath scraped.

The drone rotated above us.

A speaker crackled. “Nia Vale. Step into the open. You are wanted for the murder of thirty-two security personnel, the destruction of Helix property, and unlawful control of a Class-A halo unit.”

My stomach dropped.

“Thirty-two?” I whispered.

Rowan’s silver hair was stuck to her face with blood.