Chapter 34 · Traceless - Chapter 34: The Null Fights Back

The lights came back on.

Layla blinked hard. Her mother was gone. Just empty concrete and the echo of that name still hanging in the air—Maya. Her sister. A sister she didn't remember having.

The HQ soldiers stepped closer, rifles up. Six of them in a half-circle, blocking the tunnel exit. The one in front had a scar across his jaw and a scanner clipped to his vest. He tapped it twice.

"Subject Null-7," he said. Not a question. "You're coming with us."

Layla's hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs. "Where's my mother?"

"Detained. Pending investigation." Scar-jaw gestured with the rifle. "Turn around. Hands behind your back."

She didn't move. Her brain was screaming at her to run, but there was nowhere to go. The tunnel stretched behind her into darkness, and she knew from the blueprints Cole showed her that it dead-ended half a mile in. She was boxed.

Then she felt it.

A flicker. Not a scent, not a pull—something else. Like static across her skin. She'd felt it before, three years ago in the hospital when they tried to scan her and the machine went haywire. The nurse said it was a malfunction.