Chapter 33 · The Code and the Fire

I bite down on his palm and he doesn't even flinch.

"Say it again," I hiss when he finally lets go, "and I bite through bone."

The speaker overhead keeps screaming it for me. RHEA VOSS. RHEA VOSS. Looping now, flat and mechanical, like the vault's trying to swallow my name whole.

Knox's jaw is tight enough to crack stone. "That's not for you to answer."

"Then who's it for?" I'm already moving, already at the keypad bolted beside the wash corridor door, the one his crew is hammering from the other side of the inner grille. Metal on metal. Someone yelling his name now — Hale, Hale, open up.

I know six digits of his code. He gave me the first three weeks ago without meaning to, tapping them out while he thought I was reading a manifest instead of his hands. I've had the last three since the sprinkler override, since I watched him punch it half-blind with blood on his knuckles.

"Rhea—"

I enter it before he can stop me. The corridor bolt slams so hard the frame shudders. On the other side, the hammering breaks rhythm —