Chapter 24 · Someone Else's Clock

"Move." Cade already had his shoulder against the panel wall, badge case wedged between two fingers like it could pry steel. "Before this thing cooks us both."

"Cooks you first." Milo didn't move an inch. "You're standing in the hot column."

He was right. Cade felt it now, the air shoving down off the vent above his head, thick and wrong, like breathing through a towel someone left on a radiator. The readout over the scrubber grate blinked from 91 to 94 while he watched it, red digits stuttering like they were laughing at him.

"Manual override's on the far side," Cade said. "Behind the grate. I go, I reroute, we're fine."

"You go, you're fine for eleven seconds, then the grate seals on you and I'm listening to you scream through two inches of steel." Milo's jaw ticked. "I go."

"You don't know the reroute sequence."

"You don't know how to fit through an eighteen-inch gap without your badge case snagging."

That landed somewhere ugly. Cade shoved off the wall and got in his space, close enough that he caught the smell under the sweat —