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Nina's scream goes through my skull like a drill bit.
I can't look at her. Can't look away from my wrist. The skin there is moving. Not like muscle or tendon. Like something else is deciding what my arm gets to be. The black shape under the surface is sharp. Geometric. A key. A whole goddamn key, trying to claw its way out.
Elias is staring at it. Not at me. At the thing in my wrist.
"Don't." His voice comes out wrong. Thin. "Don't touch it."
I'm already touching it. My other hand is locked around my forearm, nails digging in hard enough to hurt. The pain doesn't help. Doesn't make it less real. The key shifts under my grip. I feel the teeth. I feel the spine of it, ridged and cold, like it's made of something that was never alive.
"What the hell is this?" My voice cracks. I hate that. Hate the shake in it.
Elias takes a step forward. I jerk the crowbar up between us.
"Stay there."
He stops. Hands up. The chain around his wrist is slack now, coiled on the stone like a dead snake. He looks at me the way you look at someone standing on a ledge. Careful. Too careful.
"Mara. Listen to me. You opened the network. You didn't just touch it. You answered it."
"I didn't answer shit. I was saving her." I don't look back at Nina. Can't. If I do I'll see the black veins, the way her mouth was open, the sound she made.
"You used the threshold mark. That's not a door. It's a contract."
I squeeze my wrist harder. The key pushes back. Not fast. Not violent. Just steady. Patient. Like it knows I can't stop it.
"Then break the contract."
"I can't." He takes another step. Slower this time. "It's not mine to break."
The crowbar is shaking in my hand. I tighten my grip. "You knew this would happen."
"I knew it was possible."
"That's not the same thing."
"No. It's not."
Behind me, Nina's breathing changes. Faster. Shallow. I risk a glance. Her eyes are still closed, but her head is turning side to side, like she's trying to wake up and can't. The black veins have reached her collarbone. They're branching out. Spreading.
I look back at Elias. "What happens when it comes out?"
He doesn't answer right away. That tells me everything.
"You're going to lie to me," I say. "Or you're going to tell me it's complicated. Or you're going to say you don't know. Pick one so I can stop waiting."
His jaw tightens. "When the key surfaces, you're bound to the network. Permanently. Every door that's marked, you'll feel it. Every threshold that opens, you'll know. And the Wardens will know you."
"They already know me. Silas said my name."
"He said your sister's name."
The air goes out of my lungs.
Elias's expression doesn't change, but something in his eyes does. He knew I'd catch that. He wanted me to.
"June." I say it slowly. Testing the shape of it. "You knew her."
He doesn't move. Doesn't blink.
"You knew her," I say again. Louder this time. "You knew June, and you didn't tell me."
"I didn't know her." His voice is flat. Empty. "I knew what she did."
The key twists. I gasp. My knees almost buckle. It's not pain, exactly. It's pressure. Like something is trying to tear its way out from the inside, but the inside is also me, and I don't know where I stop and it starts.
Elias moves fast. He's next to me before I can swing. His hand closes around my wrist. Not rough. Gentle. Too gentle.
"Let go," I say.
"You're making it worse."
"I said let go."
He doesn't. His thumb presses against the inside of my wrist, right over my pulse. The pressure shifts. The key slows. Stops pushing.
I yank my arm back. He lets me.
"What did you just do?"
"Bought you time." He's breathing harder than he should be. "Maybe an hour. Maybe less."
"Time for what?"
"To decide what you're going to do when it finishes."
I look down at my wrist. The shape is still there. Clearer now. I can see the teeth. The bow. The long throat of it. It's beautiful, in a sick kind of way. Symmetrical. Deliberate.
"This was in June," I say.
Elias goes still.
"That's what you're not saying. She had one of these. Didn't she."
He looks at me for a long time. Then he nods. Once.
"Where is it now?"
"I don't know."
"Liar."
"I don't know," he says again. Slower. "She didn't have it when she died."
My throat closes up. I don't ask how he knows. I don't want to hear the answer.
Nina makes a sound. Low. Wet. I drop next to her. Her skin is cold. Too cold. I grab her hand. The black veins pulse under my fingers.
"She's running out of time," Elias says.
"Then tell me how to fix it."
"You can't. Not here. The mark is already anchored."
"Then where?"
He hesitates. I see it. The split second where he decides whether to say it.
"Where it started," he says finally.
"The hospital," I say. "The night June died."
He doesn't confirm it. He doesn't have to.
The key burns. Not in my wrist. In my head. Behind my eyes. I see it before I feel it. White light, sharp and cold, carving itself into my vision. Numbers. A street name. I know that intersection. I know that building.
When the light fades, my wrist is on fire.
I look down. The skin over the key is blistering. Black. The mark is writing itself over the metal, burning through layers, and I can read it now. I can read every line.
2247 Harrow Avenue. City General Hospital. Sublevel 3.
I look up at Elias. He's staring at my wrist. At the address.
"You know that place," I say.
He doesn't answer. But his face does.
"That's where she died," I say. "Isn't it."
Nina's hand twitches in mine. Her eyes snap open. But they're not hers anymore. They're black. All the way through.
And she smiles.