Chapter 30 · Switch 30

"Don't." My hand closed over his wrist before his thumb hit the toggle. Marco didn't pull back. He just looked at where my fingers dug into his skin like that was the interesting part.

"You want the door open or you want to give orders, Crowe. Pick one." The cold room breathed frost at us. Emergency amber light buzzed overhead, weak, the kind that makes everything look already dead.

My lungs hurt from the air — thin, metal-tasting, the compressor screaming somewhere behind the wall like it knew it was losing. The panel between us had thirty-one toggles in four crooked rows, hand-labeled in grease pencil forty years ago. Somebody had scratched CROWE ONLY next to number thirty and never bothered to explain why.

Above the row, a red digital readout ticked down. 30:14. Then 30:13. Minutes of backup air, not tides. Not anymore.

"Flip it," I said.

"Say please."

"Marco."

"That's not please." He turned his wrist inside my grip — slow, no force, just enough that my hand slid off the bone and landed flat against his chest instead. His heart was going faster than his voice let on.