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"Run. That wasn't me."
Nia pressed one hand to her bleeding shoulder and stared at the black-market room. Every lock had clicked open at once.
"Which way?" she snapped.
Tavi's voice crackled through the stolen terminal. "Left hall. No, wait—right. Left just filled with uniforms."
"You're doing great."
"I'm under pressure."
"You're always under pressure."
"And yet I keep being right."
A round punched through the terminal screen.
Glass burst across Nia's face. She ducked behind the worktable as three more shots chewed through the metal frame. Her bad ankle folded. Pain shot up her leg, hot and sharp, and she bit down hard.
The screen flickered.
Elias Rook appeared in the broken display, one side of his face washed in blue static. Blood ran from his hairline to his jaw. His collar was torn. Something dark had soaked through his shirt beneath the ribs.
"Calder," he said. "Get to the east gate."
Nia stared at him. "You opened every door."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because the people shooting at you are about to enter the room."
"That answer sucked."
"It was also accurate."
The far entrance slammed inward.
Nia saw the black helmet first. Then the white strip of an enforcement visor. The officer raised a shock rifle.
She kicked the worktable over.
The rifle cracked. Blue current snapped across the room and struck the fallen table. Metal flashed orange. The smell of burned wiring filled her mouth.
She ran.
Not well. Not fast. Her ankle dragged, and every step sent a nasty little pulse through her shoulder. But she ran past the open service door and into the narrow corridor beyond.
"East gate," Elias said in her ear. "Two levels down."
"You're coming with me?"
"That was the plan."
"You're a voice on a dead terminal."
"Give me ten seconds."
"You have five."
"Then try not to die before I get there."
Nia shoved through another door. The corridor outside was packed with old market stalls and dangling cables. Vendors had bailed. A woman in a yellow coat crawled beneath a table while an enforcement drone buzzed over her head.
Nia grabbed a hanging chain and swung around a stack of rusted crates. The move pulled her shoulder hard. Her vision blinked white.
A drone turned toward her.
She threw the black glass key.
It struck the drone's lens. The machine spasmed, slammed into a wall, and dropped into a pile of rotten fruit.
Nia caught the key as it bounced off the floor.
"That was expensive," Tavi said.
"Send me the bill."
"You don't have the money."
"Then send me a thank-you note."
The enforcement team poured into the market behind her.
"There!" someone yelled. "Calder! Stop!"
Nia kept moving.
She reached the end of the market and found a stairwell dropping into darkness. A red sign above it read DISTRICT ACCESS—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
"This isn't the east gate," she said.
"It leads there."
"You said two levels down."
"It's technically three."
"Tavi."
"Fine. Four. But the first landing has a maintenance lift."
"Does it work?"
A pause.
"Define work."
Nia jumped down the first three steps. Her ankle gave out. She hit the railing with her hip, grabbed it, and stayed upright by pure spite.
The officers reached the stairwell above her. Someone fired. The bolt burned a bright line across the wall beside her head.
Nia dropped lower.
The stairwell lights came on one by one as she passed. Every bulb buzzed. Every shadow moved half a second late.
Then something whispered her name.
"Nia."
She stopped.
The voice came from the wall.
"Nia, wait."
Her stomach turned.
It sounded like Kellan.
Not the broken version from the terminal. Not the warning voice. This was Kellan at sixteen, laughing through a mouthful of noodles because he'd stolen the last dumpling from her bowl.
"Nia, come on. You promised."
She pressed her palm against the wall. The concrete felt warm. A tiny red line appeared beneath her fingers and crawled across the surface. It shaped itself into an eye.
"Nia," Kellan whispered. "I'm cold."
Her breath caught.
"Kellan?"
"Don't leave me here."
Tavi's voice came hard through the tiny receiver in her ear. "Do not answer it."
"That's my brother."
"No, it's not."
"You don't know that."
"I know memory-born echoes. They use voices you trust. They pull you off the route."
The eye in the wall opened.
Inside it, Nia saw Kellan curled on a metal floor. His wrists were locked above his head. Black cables ran into the base of his skull. His face was pale. His lips moved.
"Nia, please."
She reached for the wall.
"Don't!" Tavi shouted.
A hand burst through the concrete.
Nia jerked back as gray fingers closed around empty air where her throat had been. The wall cracked. A body dragged itself out of the cement, thin and twisted, with a face made from half-finished memories.
Kellan's eyes sat above a stranger's mouth.
The creature smiled with three rows of teeth.
Nia fired the compact pistol she'd stolen from the market guard. The first shot blew away its shoulder. The thing didn't slow down. The second shot tore open its chest. Beneath the skin, there was no heart. Only strips of glowing film, clicking and rewinding.
It lunged.
Nia tried to dodge, but her ankle buckled. She hit the stairs on her back. The creature landed on top of her, claws scraping against her jacket. Its mouth opened wide.
"Nia," it said in Kellan's voice. "You left me."
She shoved the pistol under its jaw.
The creature bit down on her wrist before she could fire. Pain ripped through her arm.
Then Elias slammed into it from the side.
The creature's teeth tore free from Nia's sleeve and sank into Elias's shoulder instead. He made a short, ugly sound. Not a yell. More like his lungs had forgotten how to work.
Nia stared at the blood spreading across his shirt.
"You idiot."
Elias drove an elbow into the creature's throat. It barely moved. Its claws dug into his back, and its mouth clamped deeper into his shoulder.
"Shoot it," he gasped.
"You're in the way."
"Then shoot better."
Nia rolled onto her side, pressed the pistol against the creature's temple, and pulled the trigger. The blast filled the stairwell. The creature flew across the steps. Its head struck the railing and burst into strips of red light. The pieces twitched, then crawled toward one another.
Elias grabbed Nia by the jacket and hauled her up.
"Move."
Blood ran down his arm.
"You're bitten."
"Noticed that."
"It got into you."
"Still noticed."
"You could be infected."
"Then keep me moving before I start asking you for emotional support."
He shoved open the maintenance door at the bottom of the stairs. The lift waited behind it, a square metal cage with one flickering button. Tavi had been right. It looked like it might work if threatened.
Nia pushed Elias inside.
He leaned against the wall, breathing through his teeth. The bite had punched through his shirt and left four deep holes in his shoulder. Dark veins spread out from the wound.
Nia saw them.
So did he.
"That looks bad," she said.
"You always this comforting?"
"Only with men who throw themselves in front of monsters."
The lift groaned and began to drop. Above them, boots thundered into the stairwell.
Nia kept her pistol trained on Elias.
"Tell me why you're helping me."
"Because Kellan is alive."
"That's not enough."
"It should be."
"Not when you hacked a Crownstack terminal, opened every lock in a sealed district, and somehow knew exactly where I'd run."
Elias looked at the gun first. Then at her face.
"You want the clean answer?"
"No. I want the true one."
"The true one's never clean."
"Try me."
The lift shuddered. Elias gripped the rail with his good hand. His face had gone gray, but his voice stayed flat.
"I have a lockdown key."
Nia's eyes dropped to his belt. A metal disk hung beneath his coat. It was no bigger than a coin, but the symbol cut into it matched the mark burned into her palm.
"That?" she asked.
"One of them."
"How many are there?"
"Enough to open the first sealed district. Not enough to reach the summit."
"Who gave it to you?"
"My family."
That answer landed wrong.
Nia tightened her grip on the pistol. "Your family works for Sloane."
"My family owns half the city."
"Rook Industries owns the power grid, the transit locks, and the memory network."
"Not the whole memory network."
"You expect me to care about the distinction?"
"You should. It's the reason your brother can still be saved."
The lift stopped hard enough to throw them both forward. Elias caught the rail. Nia hit his chest. His hand closed around her waist for one second, steadying her.
Then he let go.
Too quickly.
Nia stepped away and hated that she noticed the heat of his palm through her jacket.
"Get off me," she said.
"I already did."
"You know what I mean."
"Not really."
She raised the pistol higher. "Give me the key."
"No."
"You're bleeding all over the floor."
"And you're limping. We all have problems."
"Give me the damn key."
"You don't know how to use it."
"Then show me."
Elias studied her for a long beat. Above the lift, the officers began cutting through the maintenance door. A hot line of light appeared around the frame.
"You have about twenty seconds," he said.
"Then stop wasting them."
He pulled the disk from his belt. It wasn't metal after all. The surface flexed under his fingers, black and glossy, with a thin red line pulsing through its center.
"The lock reads blood, heat, and intent," he said.
"Intent?"
"You have to tell it what you're opening."
"Out loud?"
"No."
"That's helpful."
"Put your hand over mine."
"Absolutely not."
"Then the gate stays closed."
The maintenance door buckled.
Nia swore and grabbed his wrist. His skin was burning hot. Fever-hot. The creature's bite had turned the veins around his wound almost black.
"If you turn into one of those things," she said, "I'm shooting you first."
"Fair."
"No, it isn't."
"It's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all week."
He pressed the disk against the lift's dead control panel. Nia covered his hand with hers. The black surface opened like an eye. A red symbol spilled across the panel.
Nia felt the mark in her palm answer.
Heat raced up her arm. Her shoulder wound vanished beneath a wave of fire, and the entire lift filled with the smell of hot metal and burned hair.
Elias sucked in a breath.
"Think of the gate," he said.
"I am thinking about the gate."
"No. Think about what's behind it."
Nia thought about Kellan. His crooked grin. His cheap blue jacket. The way he slept with one sock on because he always kicked the other off. The blank section in the terminal where his medical record should have been. She thought about seventy-one hours and fifty-seven minutes.
The symbol flared.
The lift doors opened.
They faced a wall of black steel stretching from floor to ceiling. The first sealed district gate. No handles. No windows. Just a narrow slot glowing red at its center.
Elias lifted the disk toward it.
The gate spoke in a calm female voice. "State authorized lineage."
Elias went still.
Nia turned to him. "What?"
"It needs my name."
"So say it."
"You might want to step back."
"Why?"
"Because once it hears me, the district knows I'm here."
The officers behind them ripped the maintenance door open.
Elias looked at Nia. Blood dripped from his fingertips.
"My name is Elias Rook," he said.
The gate unlocked with a deep mechanical boom.
Every light in the district came on.
A dozen surveillance lenses