Chapter 19 · Made the List

The fake pass in my pocket feels like a grenade.

I'm standing outside the Core District gate—twenty feet of riveted steel, flanked by guard towers with rifles pointed down. The checkpoint line's short. Most people don't have clearance to get near this place. The ones who do? They walk through like they own the air.

I don't.

But Nova's inside. Echo's message said she got dragged in two hours ago. No charges listed. No hearing. Just a name on Steelhook's personal detention log.

That's not arrest. That's leverage.

And the only thing I've got to trade is the proof sitting in my pocket—the forged military pass Ashmark scored me, and the data chip I lifted from the Archive. The chip that shows Steelhook knew the shelters were breaking before the collapse. That he let it happen.

Burn him, or save her.

I can't do both.

"Next."

The guard's voice cuts through the wind. I move forward. My boots scrape sand off the metal grating. The guard's a woman, mid-thirties, scar running down her jaw. Her eyes flick to my face, then my hands.

"Pass," she says.

I pull out the fake. It's good work—