"Drop the blade, Sera Venn, or I put a round through your knee."
The guard's boot slammed into the back of her leg before she could reach the service hatch. Her knee buckled. She caught herself on one palm, kept the knife in the other, and felt the execution collar bite down against her throat.
A hot needle punched under her jaw.
"You always this friendly?" she asked.
"Face down."
"Already tried that. Didn't love it."
The guard drove her shoulder into the metal floor. His armored knee pinned her spine. Three red dots trembled across the back of her coat, each one coming from a different rifle.
Sera tightened her fingers around the knife.
The collar pulsed again.
Her vision jumped. White sparks snapped across the edges of the corridor. The collar was not just tracking her. It was counting down.
A speaker crackled above them.
"Condemned subject V-17 has breached the lower transit deck," Commander Oren Vaal said. His voice carried through every speaker in the prison, calm and dry. "Return her to the platform. If she resists, activate the shackle."
The guard on her back laughed. "You heard him."
"I heard him," Sera said. "I also heard the part where you don't know how this works."
She drove the heel of her hand into the guard's visor.
The armor cracked against the floor. He swore and shifted his weight, just enough.
Sera twisted, rolled under the rifle barrel beside her, and kicked the guard's knee sideways. The joint popped. He screamed. She came up with the knife under his chin, but a pulse tore through her collar before she could finish the move.
Her muscles locked.
The blade dropped from her hand.
"That's better," Oren said over the speaker. "Now stay still."
Sera hit the floor hard enough to taste blood.
Boots pounded toward her from both ends of the passage. The transit deck had one exit, and the hatch was six feet away. Beyond it waited the old maintenance tunnels, the only place in the city where the guard's scanners failed.
Six feet might as well have been six miles with the shackle cooking her nerves.
"You should've killed me on the platform," she forced out.
"We wanted the crowd to watch."
"Touching."
"You were made to be useful, Venn. You don't get to decide when your usefulness ends."
Her fingers twitched against the floor.
That sentence hit something deeper than anger. Not a memory. Not quite. A flash of white lights. Straps across her wrists. Someone saying, Hold her still.
Then the image snapped away.
Sera sucked in a breath.
The guard with the ruined knee grabbed her hair and hauled her upright. His face shield reflected her own face back at her: split lip, shaved temple, eyes gone too bright from the collar's current.
"Walk," he said.
"You first."
She rammed her forehead into his visor.
His grip loosened. Sera caught the edge of the service hatch and dragged it open with one hand. The guard grabbed for her coat.
She slipped out of it.
The coat stayed in his fist. Sera dropped through the hatch as rifle fire chewed bright holes through the metal above her.
She hit a narrow maintenance rail, rolled, and landed on a grated platform two levels below. Her bare arms scraped against rusted steel. The collar kept pulsing.
One more surge. Then another.
The countdown display on the inside of her wrist flashed through the prison network's emergency link.
00:02:11.
Two minutes and eleven seconds until the collar entered execution mode.
"Run, Venn!" Oren shouted from above. "I want you conscious when it happens."
Sera pushed herself up.
"You want a lot of things."
She ran.
The rail shook under her boots as she sprinted through the maintenance level. Pipes crowded the ceiling. Steam hissed from a split valve. Behind her, guards dropped through the hatch one by one.
"Left corridor!" someone yelled.
"She can't get past the sealed gate!"
"Don't let her reach the old district!"
Sera cut right before the first guard rounded the bend. A rifle shot sparked against the wall beside her head. She ducked, grabbed a hanging cable, and swung across a gap in the platform.
Her boot landed on the far rail.
Pain flared through her ankle.
"That was close," she muttered.
"You sound disappointed," Oren said through a nearby intercom.
Sera kept moving. "Come down here and say that."
"I don't chase weapons into tunnels."
"Right. You send men with guns because your legs don't work."
A pause.
She smiled despite the blood in her mouth. Oren hated being mocked more than he hated losing prisoners. That was useful.
"You have one hundred and thirty seconds," he said. "The shackle will stop your heart before you reach the hatch."
"Then you better hurry. I might die before you get to enjoy it."
She vaulted a broken pipe and landed on the other side of a locked security gate. The guards reached the gate behind her and started firing through the bars.
Sera crouched low. Bullets snapped over her head.
The old district hatch waited at the far end of the tunnel. It was sealed with a manual wheel and a civic lock. She knew the lock. She had seen it on the way into the execution complex, when the guards dragged her from the transport cage.
No power. No override. No time.
"Open it," she said.
The gate did not answer.
"Come on. Open."
"Talking to doors now?" Oren asked.
"Talking to anything smarter than your guards."
The first guard forced his rifle through the bars. "Hands up!"
Sera looked from the rifle to the hatch.
The collar pulsed.
00:01:22.
Her fingers went numb. Her throat tightened until breathing felt like swallowing broken glass.
The rifleman stepped closer. "On your knees."
"No."
"I said—"
"I heard you. I said no."
He fired.
Sera moved before the muzzle flash finished blooming. The bullet cut through her sleeve. She slammed her palm against the security gate and felt the old metal vibrate.
Something inside her answered.
Not a thought. Not a choice.
A low pressure rolled from her bones into the gate. The bars groaned. Thin black lines spread across the metal under her hand, branching like cracks in glass.
The guard stared. "What the hell?"
Sera stared too.
The black lines pulsed once.
Then the gate folded inward with a scream of twisting steel.
The rifleman flew backward into the others. Their bodies crashed together. Sera ran through the opening as alarms burst to life behind her.
"Venn!" Oren's voice sharpened. "Stop!"
"You first!"
She reached the hatch and grabbed the wheel. It would not move.
The collar flashed red.
00:00:58.
Her knees dipped.
A guard stumbled through the crushed gate. He raised his rifle with both hands, blood running from his forehead.
"Don't make me shoot," he said.
Sera pressed her back against the hatch. "You already did."
"Drop down."
"You guys keep recycling that line."
The guard aimed at her chest.
The collar gave another violent jolt. Her vision narrowed. Her pulse stuttered under the metal ring.