Chapter 7 · Rift Protocol - Chapter 7: The Council Offers a Rope

"Kess Marin." The voice came through the cracked terminal speaker like silk wrapped around a knife. "We can help you."

I didn't move. Dalen did. He was across the relay room in two strides, gun aimed at the speaker mounted above the console.

"Who the hell is this?"

The voice didn't answer him. It answered me.

"You've seen the archive. You know what you built. You know what it's doing." A pause, deliberate. "You know you can't stop it alone."

My hands were still shaking from what I'd seen in the archive. The code. The bodies. The clean white room with twenty-three people who stopped breathing because I wrote a line of script that decided they weren't worth the oxygen.

"Talk to me," Dalen said, voice low, dangerous. "Right now."

I looked at him. His jaw was locked, shoulders tight. He'd found my name in the file. He'd seen the Council's execution order with my face printed next to it. He knew exactly who I was now.

And he hadn't pulled the trigger yet.

"It's the Council," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "The people who sent you here.