Chapter 26 · The Cuff Doesn't Care Who's Right

"—still redlining. Both of you. That's the funny part."

The speaker crackled and I felt it more than heard it, vibrating up through the grate under my boots. My throat throbbed where Milo's teeth had been. His throbbed where mine had been. Neither of us had let go of the other's wrist.

"Turn it off," Milo said. Gravel and blood in it.

"I don't control the speaker." I flexed my hand against the cuff biting into both our forearms. "I control the lock. Which, by the way, isn't opening."

We both looked down at it — one steel bracket the size of a fist, welded to the scrubber's maintenance rail, reading two pulses off two wrist sensors and refusing to release until both dropped under ninety. Mine sat at one-forty. His wasn't better.

"Make it drop," he said.

"You first."

Bone hit bone when he shifted his weight — his knee against mine, both of us still down on the grate where we'd torn each other open five minutes ago. Amber light washed the blood on his collar dark, almost black. Mine was worse. We'd traded marks even.