Chapter 22 · Erased Echoes

"Stop looking at me like I'm a piece of hardware, Mara."

Kane slammed his back against the damp concrete wall of the safehouse, his chest heaving. He didn't just look tired; he looked frayed, like a wire stripped of its insulation. The blue light from the stolen data pad cast sharp, jagged shadows across his face, making the engineered lines of his jaw look like a sculpture of something not quite human.

"I'm not," Mara lied, stepping closer. She could smell the ozone and old blood clinging to him. "I'm looking at a guy who's about to have a panic attack in a basement. Sit down before you fall down."

"I don't do panic attacks," he snapped, but his hand trembled as he reached for the collar of his shirt, ripping the top buttons open. He looked down at his chest—not at the skin, but at the invisible pulse that connected him to her. "Do you feel it? The lag? It’s getting worse."

Mara stopped two inches from him. The air between them was thick, charged with that suffocating tension that always happened when they were forced into the same square meter of space.