Chapter 19 · No Way Off This Platform

The black lockdown bars slammed over the platform exits with a sound like a coffin lid closing.

I ran anyway.

My shoulder hit the gate at the east stairs hard enough to numb my arm. Steel rattled. Nothing moved. Beyond it, the stairwell climbed toward the street, toward buses and bad coffee and people complaining about dead phone batteries. Normal life was maybe thirty feet away.

Vera stood behind me, one hand still on the little black control box clipped to her belt.

"You can break your wrist if you want," she said. "It won't open."

I turned on her so fast my coat snapped around my legs. "Then open it."

"No."

The green mark under my skin burned from my collarbone down to my ribs. It wasn't heat exactly. More like someone had pushed a strip of live wire into my veins and kept turning the current up.

I pressed my palm over it. Bad idea. The mark answered.

Green-gold lines crawled across the back of my hand.

Elias caught my wrist before I could jerk away from myself. His fingers were cold. Too cold.