Chapter 52 · The Voice in the Static

"Give me the key, Lucas, or move."

I slapped his bloody hand away from the transmitter panel.

"You don't get to bleed all over my evidence and call that a plan."

His fingers closed around my wrist before I could reach the final switch. Heat burned through his glove. Blood had soaked the side of his uniform, dark and wet beneath my palm.

"You have ninety seconds," he said. "Then Command finds this room."

"Then stop holding me back."

"I'm not holding you back. I'm stopping you from sending your real name across every tower in Rookhaven."

The dead console clicked beneath my free hand. Nora's buried transmitter had coughed back to life, but the signal light stayed red.

One bar.

Then half a bar.

Nora smacked the side of the machine. "Come on, you ugly piece of junk. Give me one clean channel. Just one."

Lucas pulled me closer. His breath brushed my cheek, hot and rough. "If you say that name on the recording, there's no taking it back."

"Good. I'm tired of taking things back."

His jaw tightened. "You don't know what happens when the city hears it."

"I know what happens when it doesn't.