Chapter 18 · Nobody's Hand But Ours

"Nobody," I said. "Nobody touches that door but you and me. So either God's got a grudge or somebody's lying to my face."

Dean didn't let go of the wheel. His knuckles were white around it, veins standing up his forearm like he could will the steel to move. "Somebody's lying," he said. "And it isn't me."

"Didn't say it was."

"You thought it."

I didn't answer that. I turned back to the board instead, because the board was mine, the one thing in this concrete box that still listened when I told it what to do. Green lights, all twelve precincts breathing steady. Except the amber ring on the airlock schematic, ticking a fresh number now. Not the countdown from before. A new one. Shorter.

"Dean."

"What."

"That's not our clock anymore."

He came off the wheel in two steps, close enough I felt the heat coming off him before he even touched the console, a wall of body warmth pressing into the six inches of air I had left. "Show me."

"I am showing you." I tapped the screen. Override authorization: two-key. His badge, plus one more. "Somebody with clearance above yours dropped a second key into this lock. From outside the cage."

"That's not possible. Nobody's above me on this channel."

"Then explain the second key, Captain."