Chapter 25 · Untitled Chapter

"Shoot me."

Zero's voice crackled like a broken radio. His bone-white blade scraped across the concrete as he stepped toward me.

I kept the gun trained on his chest. Marcus lay behind me, bleeding where I'd slammed the pistol into his skull. The freezer room stank of cold meat, burnt flesh, and something sour leaking from Zero's split skin.

"Ivy," Zero said. "Before it gets out."

His right arm wasn't an arm anymore. Bone had pushed through his shoulder, long and sharp, still changing at the edges. His eyes had gone milk-white, but his face was the same one that had taught me to hot-wire a Civic when I was nineteen.

"What the hell are you?"

"The next version of you."

"Try again."

His head snapped left. A second later, it jerked back. His human hand closed around his throat.

"I'm further along," he forced out. "It knows you're here."

The rune on my shoulder burned. Lyra stirred under my skin, quiet but awake.

"It?" I asked.

"The thing they grew us from." Zero's jaw clenched. "The first sample. The one they dug out of that tomb in Prague."

"Marcus said the samples were destroyed."

"Marcus lies.