Chapter 35 · Don't touch me

He fought her hand. "Don't touch me."

"Look at me!"

His gaze found hers.

For a moment, he was there. The real Kade. Angry, pale, shaking, still trying to stand between her and something he couldn't even name.

"Tell me what it wants," she said.

"It wants a path."

"To where?"

"Through me."

"That's not an answer."

"It wants to get out."

"And if it does?"

His silence answered first.

Ayla stepped closer. "If it gets out, what happens?"

"The city loses power."

"That's all?"

"No."

The word scraped out of him.

"The seal under the city breaks. The old grid comes back online. Every locked core wakes with it."

"How many?"

"I don't know."

"You keep saying that."

"Because they took my memories!"

His shout punched through the tunnel. The last working light above them flickered back on, then dimmed.

Kade seized his hair with both hands. "I don't know what they put in me. I don't know what I did. I don't know why your name was in that ledger. But I know this thing is using your mark to pull itself out."

Ayla glanced down at her palm. The skin around the symbol had split.