Chapter 30 · The Key Is Breathing

Kade's vision cleared just in time to see Mira's dad's face flicker inside the extraction node.

Not a memory. Not a recording.

Him. Right now. Eyes open. Mouth moving like he was trying to scream through glass.

"No," Mira said. Her voice came out flat. Dead.

Kade's wrists were still burning where the suppression chain had been. Mira had cut it loose thirty seconds ago, right before Drake triggered phase two. The black rune in his chest was awake now. Hungry. It wanted the entire city grid lighting him up like a target, wanted to pull all that power in and eat it.

But the node was different.

It wasn't trying to kill him. It was trying to keep something alive.

"Kade." Mira's hand closed on his arm. Her fingers were cold. "Can you pull him out?"

He looked at the machine. Runes crawling up the glass cylinder, feeding into a brass core the size of a fist. Her dad's body was suspended inside, hooked into the network like a battery. Like bait.

"I don't know," Kade said.

Her grip tightened. "Try."

He could feel the rune in his chest pulling at the edges of the node, testing it.