Chapter 15 · Someone Else's Finger On The Trigger

"It's not sending." Dean's voice cracked flat against my ear, too close, his jaw against my temple where he'd shoved in beside me at the dead switch. "Ellis. Look. It's not sending."

The countdown hit zero and just sat there. Red zeros. No flash. No confirmation chime. My hand was still locked around the burned lever, knuckles white, metal fused where the relay had cooked itself into slag two seconds before the clock ran out.

"That's not good news," I said. "That's worse news wearing a good-news costume."

"Explain."

"Zero doesn't mean stopped. Zero means queued." I let go of the lever. My palm had a burn line across it, pink and already swelling. "Faraday seal's still up. Nothing gets out of this cage on RF until the uplink window opens at shift change. My file's sitting in a buffer. Waiting for a door."

Dean's chest was against my shoulder blade, his weight pressing me into the console edge, and for one full second neither of us moved to fix that. Bone against bone, his sternum flat to my spine, breath coming down the back of my neck hot enough that I felt it before I heard it.

"So we've got until shift change," he said.

"To do what? The relay's dead. There's no manual kill left.