Chapter 24 · The Forbidden Gate

"Don't you dare flatline on me, Mara."

Kane's palm slammed against my sternum and shoved me back into the gate console. The metal was ice. His other hand locked around my wrist so hard my fingers went numb.

"Get off," I snapped. "I'm not flatlining. You're crushing me."

"You're at forty-two beats," he said. "I'm at a hundred and ten. We're out of sync. You feel that?"

I felt it. Like a wire pulled too tight inside my chest. His heart hammering against my palm where I'd grabbed his shirt, mine stuttering like it couldn't decide if it wanted to keep going.

The gate in front of us was still dead. A solid slab of sealed alloy, twenty feet high, no handle, no seam except the bio-lock in the middle pulsing red. FORBIDDEN ACCESS - LEVEL ZERO. And behind us the service tunnel was already hissing.

"They're venting the tunnel," Kane said.

"No shit," I said. "So open it."

"It needs two pulses," he said. "Synced. Perfect match. The contract has to read as one heart."

"We tried that. It didn't work."

"We didn't try hard enough."

He yanked me closer. Chest to chest. His forehead almost hit mine.