"Sign it."
The warrant hit the steel table so hard it bounced. Sloane's palm stayed flat on it, pinning it under my nose.
"Sign it or you don't see sunrise, Kael. Your choice. Takes ten seconds."
I couldn't move my hands. Cuffs. Cold. Bolted to the table. The ink on that paper was still wet and it said EXECUTION PENDING - RESONANCE HERESY in big ugly letters. My name right under it.
"That's a hell of an opener," I said. My voice sounded like shit. Dry. "No hello? No water?"
"You get water when you sign." She leaned in. Close enough I could smell gun oil on her gloves and something sharper, like cold metal. "You triggered a forbidden core in the lower gearworks. Half the city heard it scream. I should have shot you in that alley."
"But you didn't." I tipped my chin up at her. "So you want something."
Her eyes didn't even flicker. Grey. Flat. Like she was deciding where to put the bullet.
"Smart boy." She dragged a second paper out and slapped it over the first. Different paper. Older. Handwritten. "This is a binding pact. Soul-pact. Old law. You fix what I tell you to fix, I keep your neck off the rope. You run, you resonate without permission, you die. I pull the trigger myself."
"Soul-pact?" I laughed and it hurt my ribs. "You're an Inquisitor. You're supposed to burn that stuff, not use it."
"I burn people who waste my time." She uncapped a pen and dropped it. It clattered against my cuffed hand. "Sign."
"Nah." I stared at the pen. Didn't touch it. "If I'm gonna sell my soul, I wanna know what I'm fixing."
She went still. For a second I thought she was gonna hit me.
Then she stepped back and pulled the long case off the wall. Click. Click. Latches.
She opened it.
Inside, on black velvet, was a rifle. Not a normal one. Old. Like, really old. Brass and black iron, gears exposed along the barrel, a core chamber in the middle that was dark and dead. The whole thing hummed wrong. Like it was sick.
My fingers twitched without me telling them to. Even cuffed, they wanted to touch it.
"Whoa," I breathed. "That's a first-gen resonance rifle. Those were banned before I was born."
"It's my family's," she said. Flat. But her jaw tightened. "It's been dead for eight years. No gear-genius in Augusta can make it sing again. The Archon inspects it tomorrow at dawn. If it doesn't fire, my house loses its seat. I lose my cloak. And you lose your head anyway because Victor wants a heretic to hang for the crowds."
There it was. The crack.
I looked up at her. Really looked. Her cloak was perfect, her gloves spotless, but there was a fray on her cuff. And her hand on that case? It was shaking. Just a little.
"So that's it," I said. "You don't need a prisoner. You need a mechanic."
"I need a miracle," she snapped. "And you lit up the entire undercity like a beacon. That kind of resonance doesn't happen by accident. So you can fix it."
"Maybe." I leaned back as far as the cuffs let me. "Or maybe I blow us both up trying. What's in it for me besides not dying tonight?"
"You live till morning. That's more than anyone else is offering you."
"Not enough." I kicked the table leg. The cuffs rattled. "I want the warrant ripped. Not paused. Ripped. I want a workshop, tools, and you keep Victor's dogs off me while I work. And I want that pact to cut both ways."
She laughed. Short. No humor in it.
"You are cuffed to a table waiting to be hanged and you're negotiating?"
"Yeah," I said. "Because you're desperate. And desperate people pay more."
Her eyes narrowed. She came around the table. Slow. Boots quiet on the concrete.
She stopped right behind my chair. I felt the heat off her before she touched me. Then her gloved hand closed around the back of my neck. Not hard. Just... there. Possessive. Her thumb pressed against the skin under my ear where my pulse was going crazy.
"You think you have leverage?" she whispered, right by my ear. Her breath was warm. "I can sign that execution order right now and watch them drag you out."
"You could," I said. My throat was dry but I didn't pull away. "But then tomorrow you stand in front of the Archon with a dead rifle and you lose everything. Your house, your name, that pretty cloak. So who's really got the leverage, Inquisitor?"
Her fingers tightened. Just a fraction.
"Careful," she said. Soft. Dangerous.
"I am being careful," I said. "I'm being so careful I'm not signing a one-way leash. You want my hands on your gun? You put your neck on the line too."