Chapter 32 · The Last Bargain

"If you take one more step, I cut the cable and let the vault bury us both." Zero kept the blade against Kael's throat while the mining lift screamed beneath their boots.

Kael didn't look down. Smart man. Three hundred feet of empty shaft waited below the broken platform, and the lift's emergency cables were already snapping one by one.

He looked at the knife instead.

"You won't cut it."

"Try me."

"You need my hands on the vault console."

"I need you alive for thirty seconds. After that, I need you dead."

His mouth twitched. Not a smile. Not quite. "That plan keeps getting more complicated."

Zero pushed the blade harder. A thin line of blood appeared under his jaw.

"You made it complicated when you lied about the girl."

Kael's eyes finally lifted to hers. Gray. Tired. Too sharp for a man who had spent the last six hours running through a collapsing mine with a dying bio-weapon attached to him.

"I didn't lie. I left out the part that would make you kill me before we reached the vault."

"Same thing."

"No. Lying is when I tell you the vault holds a cure.