Chapter 25 · The Door He Left

The station entrance exploded inward.

Not metaphorically. The old glass doors came off their tracks and slammed across the tile hard enough to spit gray dust into the air.

“Down!” Carson barked.

He hit me around the waist and drove me behind the dead ticket booth just as something silver punched through the space where my head had been.

The bolt buried itself in the wall.

The concrete hissed.

I smelled burned stone. Then blood.

Carson’s blood.

“Carson.”

“I’m fine.”

He was not fine. He had one hand pressed against his side, and black veins crawled up his wrist from under his shirt cuff. The mark on his chest was going wild. I could feel it through the oath.

Heat. Hunger. Pain so sharp it made my own ribs lock up.

Jonah crouched beside me with his laptop clutched against his chest like it could stop a bullet.

“I did not mean to do that,” he said.

“No kidding.” I grabbed the back of his hoodie before he could stand. “You stay down.”

“I’m trying to shut it off.”

“Shut what off?”

“The whole network. Maybe. I don’t know. Dad’s code is—