Chapter 9 · All at Once

The first gate opened inside the wall.

Not on a screen. Not in some old map Carson had dragged out of a locked cabinet.

Inside the damn wall.

The concrete behind Jonah's chair split with a sound like ice cracking on a lake. Black light pushed through the seam. It crawled over the floor in thin, twitching lines and wrapped around the legs of his chair.

Jonah jerked hard enough to make the restraints rattle.

"Mia."

"I see it."

"That wasn't me."

"Cool. Great. Love that for us."

Every monitor in the control room flashed white.

Then the city appeared.

Not one feed. Hundreds.

A subway platform. A hotel basement. The back room of a butcher shop on Sixth. A storm drain under the river. The alley behind my locksmith stall. Places I knew. Places I didn't.

Moon gates.

All of them waking up at once.

Black circles burned into brick, tile, steel, concrete. Gold eyes opened inside each one.

Carson made a rough sound behind me.

I looked over my shoulder.

He was on one knee, one hand braced against the metal console. Blood ran down his forearm where the silver had cut him earlier.