Chapter 20 · The Key Is Upstairs

"Move your hand."

My voice came out wrecked, my own gland still burning under his thumb. He didn't move it. Not right away. His eyes did that thing where he weighs a room before he walks into it, except the room was my throat.

"Two minutes fifty," he said, not even looking at the readout, like he already had the number memorized. "You want to keep arguing with me or you want air."

I shoved his wrist off. Actually shoved it, my palm hitting bone, a hard little gravity pin of my own that made him blink. He let it happen, and that told me more than the mark he'd almost pressed into my skin.

"Console. Now."

He went. Six feet in a room this size feels like a mile when the air's already thin and sour, tasting like hot copper and my own sweat. Dean's shoulder hit the panel frame, and he was already keying in the manual override, the one he'd set himself, the one that had trapped us here in the first place.

"You set this lock," I said. "You cancel it."

"Working on it, Ward."

His fingers moved fast, a nine-digit string, then his badge number, then a hard press on ENTER that made the panel light stutter green.

LOCKDOWN —