Chapter 52 · What Hums Below

“Get your hand off that seal.”

Mira’s boot pinned my wrist to the concrete before my fingers could touch the gold line under the broken floor.

Her other hand held a pistol against my ribs. Close enough that I felt the heat from the barrel through my shirt.

“Move the gun,” I said.

“Move your hand.”

“Your team is thirty seconds from turning this whole block into a crater.”

“Twenty-two.” Her jaw tightened. “And they won’t leave a crater. They’ll erase everything inside it.”

“Then stop wasting time.”

She pressed harder. Her knee locked my arm down, and the sole of her boot dragged against my sleeve. The concrete beneath us gave a low, steady hum.

Not sound. Not exactly.

It crawled through my bones.

The gold line pulsed once.

Mira’s pistol shifted against my side. “You said you could control it.”

“I said I could hear it.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“It is where I come from.”

“This isn’t your dead world.”

“No.” I looked past her shoulder at the black ceiling, the cracked support beams, and the red emergency lights stuttering above us. “That’s why it’s louder.”

Her eyes narrowed.