Chapter 24 · Neon Zero - Chapter 24: Zero Awakening

"Mara, drop the core!" Knox shouted as the first purge drone punched through the ceiling.

I looked at the black shard locked inside my palm. It had stopped being a package ten minutes ago. Now it was hot, bright, and answering every scream in the district.

"You want it?" I yelled. "Come take it!"

The drone fired.

Knox slammed into me before the bolt hit. His coat snapped across my face, his arm locked around my ribs, and we hit the floor hard enough to crack the old tile. Heat tore through the space above us. The wall behind my head melted in a line of white light.

"Get off me!"

"Not until you stop trying to kill everyone!"

"I’m not trying!"

That was the problem.

The core pulsed in my hand.

Every dead sign in the station flashed on at once. Red letters crawled across the walls. The city’s emergency voice came through broken speakers, calm and bloodless.

"Unauthorized zero-tier awakening detected. All units, terminate host. Enforcer Knox Arden is compromised. Secondary termination approved."

Knox’s arm tightened around me.

"Hear that?" he said against my ear. "It just marked both of us for execution.