Chapter 20 · The Price of Remembering

"Don't you touch her head."

Dax's hand locked around my wrist before the drone could drop.

His blood was still wet on my fingers. Hot. Slick.

"Let go," I said. "Dax, you're bleeding out."

"Don't care." His voice scraped raw. He didn't look at me. He stared at the thing hovering over my forehead. "You don't get to take her."

The protocol drone hummed two inches off my skin. White light. No heat. Just that dentist-drill whine drilling straight into my teeth.

The Tribunal seal spun in the middle of it.

Leo stood behind it.

Older Leo. Taller. Wrong.

"It's the only way it holds," he said. "Mara, listen to me."

"No." My throat clamped shut. "No, you don't get to do the calm voice. You vanished for eight years and now you show up looking thirty?"

"I didn't vanish. They held me." His eyes cut to Dax, then back to me. "And this is how we keep the city standing. The thirteenth reset has to stall. To stall, the anchor has to be clean."

"What anchor?" Dax snapped. His grip tightened. Blood soaked through his shirt where I'd shot the Tribunal link out. He swayed on his feet.