Chapter 28 · The Inner Seal

"Jace, don't you dare touch that line." Mina's hand closed around my wrist before I could reach the exposed copper.

I shook her off. "The whole eastern grid just went dark. You got a better plan?"

"Yeah. Let Gideon's tower burn out on its own."

"And take half the city with it?" I turned back to the makeshift terminal Theo had rigged in the old transit hub. The screen showed Copperfall's grid like a dying nervous system, red spreading through the veins. "People start dying in three minutes."

"People die all the time." Mina's voice went flat. "You want to know how many I've lost trying to keep that tower sealed?"

Gideon's voice crackled through the speaker, smooth even through the static. "Still debating, Cheng? The clock's not stopping for your moral crisis."

"Shut up," I said.

"Make me." He laughed. "Oh, wait. You can't. I'm sitting in the one place in this city that still has power, and you're standing in the dark with a medic who wants you dead."

Mina stepped between me and the terminal. "He's baiting you."

"He's right." I met her eyes. The scar across her cheekbone looked white under the emergency lights.