Chapter 22 · Memories of the Dawn Key

The train doors opened without a sound.

Beyond them waited a platform that had never appeared on any city map.

Eve stood at the threshold, one hand clamped around the black box, the other pressed against her ribs. Something beneath her skin pulsed in time with the station lights. Blue. Dim. Blue again.

Seven minutes and forty-one seconds.

The number burned across the inside of her skull.

Around the platform, the connected people watched her.

There were hundreds of them. Men, women, children. Some wore the remnants of work uniforms. Others had been wrapped in plastic sheeting or stitched into rubber harnesses. Tubes ran from their necks, wrists, and spines into the walls. Their eyes glowed the same electric blue as the veins of light crawling through the station floor.

No one moved.

Then every head turned toward Cain.

Cain’s pistol came up, though his injured arm trembled with the effort. Blood had soaked through the bandage beneath his coat and dripped between the train tracks.

“Don’t,” Eve whispered.

His jaw flexed. “I wasn’t planning to shoot all of them.”

“You were thinking about shooting one.”

“I was thinking about shooting whatever reaches for you.