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"You're holding it wrong."
I was flat on my back against wet stone, the line still twisted through my ribs like barbed wire, and Mina was leaning over me with that clipped medic voice like I'd failed a pop quiz.
"I'm holding it at all," I said. "That's the miracle."
"It's not a miracle. It's technique." She pressed two fingers under my collarbone, right where the line hooked in. The pressure sent a white spike through my chest. "You're clenching. Let it settle."
"Let it settle. Sure. I'll just relax while I've got a power cable running through my lungs."
"It's not in your lungs. It's mapped to your second rib meridian. If you keep fighting it, you'll snap the line or your sternum. Pick one."
I tried to breathe shallow. The line pulsed under my skin, hot and alive, like it was looking for an exit. Mina's hand stayed where it was, firm and cold through my shirt. Her face was close enough that I could see the smudge of ash on her jaw and the way her pupils tightened every time the line flickered.
"How long do I have to hold this?"
"Until the scan passes. Another two minutes."
"And if I drop it?"
"They'll see us. Then they'll see Kai. Then Gideon gets what he came for."
I turned my head. The kid was still slumped against the tunnel wall, chest barely moving, the mess of lines around him glowing faint gold in the dark. He looked about sixteen. Same sharp cheekbones as Mina, same black hair, but his face was gray and his lips had gone blue at the edges.
"What did he do to himself?"
"He tried to open the tower." Mina's voice went flat. "He thought he was ready. He wasn't."
"And now you need me to finish the job."
"Now I need you to keep him alive long enough that I can fix what he broke."
The line jerked inside me, and I bit down on a sound that wanted to come out as a scream. Mina's hand slid to my wrist, her thumb pressing hard against my pulse point.
"Breathe through it. Don't clench."
"Easy for you to say."
"I've done this. You haven't. So shut up and listen."
I shut up. The line settled, just a fraction, and the burn in my chest dropped from unbearable to merely bad. I could feel my heartbeat syncing to the pulse of the thing, like it was learning the rhythm of my body. That should have been reassuring. It wasn't.
"Why me?" I said. "You've got a whole order of medics who can see this stuff. Why drag a fixer off the street?"
"Because the tower marked you. Not them."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting right now."
Footsteps echoed from somewhere up the tunnel, sharp and deliberate. Mina's hand tightened on my wrist. She didn't move. Didn't breathe. I could feel the line inside me starting to twist again, responding to the spike of adrenaline, and I forced myself to stay still.
The steps passed overhead. A voice crackled through a radio, too muffled to make out words. Then silence.
Mina let go of my wrist. "You're clear. Let it go."
"How?"
"Same way you grabbed it. Just reverse the pull."
"I didn't pull anything. It jumped into me."
"Then push it out."
I closed my eyes and tried to find the edge of the line inside my chest, the place where it hooked in. It felt like trying to grab smoke. Every time I thought I had it, it slipped away or dug in deeper. Mina's fingers pressed against my sternum again, harder this time, and suddenly I could feel the shape of the thing, the way it coiled through the space between my ribs.
"There. Now push."
I pushed. The line resisted, clinging like it didn't want to leave, and then all at once it snapped free. The light whipped out of my chest and slammed back into the wall, leaving a cold hollow ache behind. I rolled onto my side and coughed until my throat burned.
Mina crouched next to Kai, checking his pulse, adjusting the thin silver nodes she'd stuck to his temples. She didn't look at me.
"You did fine."
"I feel like I got hit by a truck."
"You'll feel worse tomorrow. Get up. We're moving."
I got up. My legs didn't want to hold me, but I made them anyway. The tunnel stretched in both directions, low and damp, lined with old ceramic pipes and rusted brackets. The air smelled like metal and stagnant water. Somewhere far off, I could hear the hum of the city above us, muffled and distant.
"Where are we?"
"Under Floodmarket. Old drainage line. It hasn't been used in twenty years."
"And you just happened to know about it."
"I know a lot of things." She pulled a small glass vial from her coat pocket, shook it once, and held it up to the light. The liquid inside glowed faint green. "Kai's got maybe three days before the line damage kills him. Less if Gideon finds us first."
"So what's the play?"
"We get to the tower. You open it. I go in and pull the core alignment he needs."
"And if I say no?"
"Then Kai dies, Gideon takes the tower anyway, and you spend the rest of your very short life running from the Wardens and every fixer crew in Copperfall who wants to sell you for parts." She stoppered the vial and tucked it away. "Or you help me, and I make sure you walk out of this alive."
"That's not a deal. That's a gun to my head."
"Yes." She met my eyes. "It is."
Something moved at the far end of the tunnel. A shape, low and fast, coming our way. Mina's hand went to her belt, and I saw the flicker of a blade, the edge lined with the same gold light that wrapped around Kai.
"Stay behind me."
"What is that?"
"Gideon's hound. He sent it to track the disruption you made."
The thing stepped into the light, and I realized it wasn't a dog. It was a man, or had been once. His skin was gray, his eyes burned gold, and the lines that wrapped his arms and chest pulsed in time with his breath. He moved wrong, joints bending at angles that shouldn't work, and when he opened his mouth, the sound that came out was wet and mechanical.
"Mina Wen. Gideon Ro requests your immediate return."
"Tell Gideon he can request whatever he wants. I'm not coming."
"The boy will be retrieved. You will be detained. Cooperation is optional."
Mina stepped forward, the blade in her hand now, the gold light bleeding up her forearm. "You want him? Go through me."
The hound moved. Fast. Faster than anything that size should move. Mina met him halfway, the blade coming up in a clean arc, and the sound when they collided was like metal on metal. Sparks flew. The line-light flared. The hound's clawed hand came around and Mina twisted, but not fast enough.
The blow caught her across the ribs and threw her into the wall. She hit hard, slid down, and didn't get up.
The hound turned toward Kai.
I didn't think. I grabbed the nearest line, the fat one that ran along the ceiling, and I pulled.
It came. All of it. The whole tunnel lit up gold, every line snapping free of the brackets and whipping toward me like I'd called them by name. The hound staggered, the light wrapping his legs, his chest, his throat, and I pulled harder. The lines obeyed. They coiled around him, dragged him down, pinned him to the stone.
"Stop," he said, and his voice was different now, thinner, human. "Stop, please, I can't—"
I stopped. The lines hung in the air, trembling, waiting. The hound was on his knees, gasping, the gold light flickering in his eyes.
Mina pushed herself up, one hand pressed to her side, blood seeping between her fingers. She looked at me. Then at the lines. Then at the hound.
"Let him go."
I let him go. The lines snapped back into place, and the hound collapsed forward, coughing, human again. Mina stepped over him, grabbed Kai under the arms, and started dragging him deeper into the tunnel.
"Move. Now."
I moved. Behind us, the hound rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling, his chest heaving. He didn't follow.
We walked for ten minutes, maybe more, until the tunnel opened into a wider chamber. Old storage, by the look of it, with rusted shelves and broken crates. Mina set Kai down against the wall, checked his pulse again, and then turned to me.
"What did you just do?"
"I don't know."
"You pulled six live lines at once. Without a focus. Without training."
"I told you. I don't know."
She stared at me, and for the first time since she'd cornered me in that alley, she looked genuinely rattled.
"The tower didn't just mark you," she said quietly. "It gave you the keys."
Before I could answer, her pocket buzzed. She pulled out a small black device, cracked the case, and her face went white.
"What?"
"Gideon just moved on the detention block. He's pulling every ward prisoner flagged for line-touch."
"So?"
"So three hours ago, you were in that block." She turned the screen toward me. On it was a photo of a cell, empty, the cot shoved against the wall. Burned into the metal frame, still glowing faint gold, was a mark I hadn't seen in fifteen years.
My mark. The one I'd carved into my palm the night I ran.
"He knows," Mina said. "He knows who you are."
The device in her hand started to beep. Once. Twice. Then a third time, steady and insistent, like a countdown.
"And he's coming