Chapter 23 · Redline

"Move your hand." My voice comes out flat, but the panel under our palms is still bleeding red light, and Milo doesn't twitch a single tendon.

"Your hand's on top," he says. "You move it."

Neither of us does. The screen keeps cycling the same string: JOINT AUTH ACCEPTED — LOCK OVERRIDE DENIED — RELAY: DOCK 7. Under that, smaller, worse: GLAND FILE LOADED. SYNC PENDING.

That's when the vents change pitch.

I've heard every sound this bio-lock makes in eleven months of running this wing — the hum, the click, the little shudder when the scrubbers cycle. This is none of those. This is a low mechanical groan, air shoving through ducts that were never built to move this fast.

"That's not the scrubber," Milo says, and for once he's not arguing with me, he's agreeing, which is somehow worse.

I pull my hand off the panel. He lets go a half-second late, like he has to remind his fingers how.

"Somebody's rerouting the quarantine path," I say, already moving to the wall vent, already feeling the air shift from cool recycled nothing to something with heat behind it. "That's a full-loop reroute. That's not automated.