"Execute Zero-Alpha. Kneel and present his throat."
Victor's voice didn't come through the air. It came through my spine.
My knees hit the rock before I told them to. My hand grabbed Kael's collar and yanked him down with me.
"Zero!" Kael choked out. "Zero, look at me, don't listen to him!"
"I can't—" My teeth locked so hard my jaw screamed. "He's in the code. He's in the—"
"Obedience is painless, Zero," Victor said, smooth as hell, right behind my eyes. "Resistance is not. You know this."
The pain hit. Not a shock. A full-body burn, like every nerve was dipped in acid and lit up at once. My vision whited out.
Kael's hands grabbed my wrists. Warm. Rough. Real.
"Hey, hey, stay with me," he hissed. "Breathe with me. In, out. Come on."
"Get off me," I snarled, but my fingers wouldn't let go of his shirt. They were shaking. "He'll make me kill you. He'll make me—"
"Then let him try." Kael pressed his forehead to mine. His breath was hot and fast against my mouth. "You don't get to check out like this. You hear me? You don't get to leave me to him."
Victor laughed. "So dramatic. Kael, darling, you built her to kneel. Don't act surprised when she does."
"I didn't build her to be your dog," Kael snapped, but he wasn't looking at the air. He was looking at me. At my eyes. "Zero, his code is just noise. My voice is right here. My heartbeat's right here. Listen to that instead."
He grabbed my hand and slammed it against his chest.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Hard. Fast. Alive.
"Feel that?" he said, voice low and rough. "That's not his. That's mine. And it's beating for you, you stubborn, murderous pain in my ass. So fight him."
The burn spiked. Victor was pissed.
"Enough," Victor said, and his voice went cold. "Zero, break his wrist. Now."
My hand twisted. I felt Kael's bones under my palm. My muscles locked to snap it.
"No!" I screamed. It ripped out of my throat.
"Do it," Victor said. "Or I will turn your pain-circuits to eleven and leave them there."
Kael didn't pull away. He pushed closer. His chest under my palm, his face inches from mine.
"Do it then," he whispered to me, not to Victor. "If you have to. Break it. I can take it. But you come back after. You understand me? You break me and you come right back."
"Are you insane?" I gasped. Sweat ran into my eyes. "I will shatter you!"
"Yeah?" His mouth twitched, even now. Asshole. "Try and stay with me while you do it, killer."
That did it. That stupid, cocky dare.
Something snapped. Not in my wrist. In my head.
The link — that forbidden wire he and I had tripped days ago — flared white-hot. Suddenly I wasn't just hearing his heartbeat. I was inside it. Thump-thump-thump, and every thump shoved Victor's code back an inch.
"Kael," I breathed. My hand stopped twisting. It flattened against his chest instead. "Your heart—"
"Yeah, it's loud, I know," he said, trying to joke, but his voice cracked.
A shadow moved behind him.
The Hunter.
Victor hadn't come alone. He'd sent his pet.
It dropped from the pit wall above us, all black armor and blades, landing without a sound. Its red eye locked on Kael's back.
"Kael, down!" I screamed.
I shoved him sideways and rolled. The Hunter's blade sliced where his throat had been, sparking off the rock.
Victor sighed in my head. "You were supposed to kill him for me, Zero. Now my Hunter has to clean up your mess."
"Get out of my head!" I roared, and lunged.
The Hunter was fast. Faster than me when the pain was still chewing my legs. It caught my arm, twisted, threw me into the pit wall. My back hit stone, air punched out of me.
"Zero!" Kael scrambled up, grabbing a broken pipe from the pit floor. He swung it. The Hunter caught it one-handed and snapped it in half.
"Kael, don't!" I shouted. "You'll get killed!"
"Yeah, well, he's not taking you," Kael spat, blood on his lip now. He'd hit his mouth on the rock. "Not without going through me."
The Hunter backhanded him. Kael flew three feet and hit the ground hard. He didn't get up right away.
And I saw the blood.
Red. Bright. Running from his temple down his cheek, dripping onto the gray dust.
Something in my chest ripped open.
"No," I whispered.
Victor's code was still buzzing — kneel, obey, present his throat — but Kael's blood was louder. His heartbeat stuttered. Thump — thump — thump, uneven now. Hurting.
The link between us, that stupid, forbidden leash, pulsed once, hard, like a second heart kicking on.
And suddenly Victor's voice was static.
"What—" Victor snarled. "What are you doing? Zero, I said kneel!"
"I don't kneel to you," I said, and my voice wasn't mine anymore. It was raw, shaking, furious.
I moved.
I didn't feel the pain-circuits. I didn't feel the code. I felt Kael's blood on my fingers when I touched his cheek for half a second.
"Stay down," I told him.
"Like hell," he muttered, trying to push up, eyes glassy. "Zero, watch the—"
The Hunter came at me. I met it halfway.
We hit like two trains. Its blade scraped my ribs — hot, sharp — but I got inside its guard, grabbed its helmet, and smashed its red eye into the rock wall over and over until the glass cracked and the light died.
It stabbed me. Low, in the side. I didn't care.
I twisted its arm until the joint popped and the blade clattered to the ground. Then I took that blade and drove it straight up through its throat.
Black fluid sprayed. The Hunter jerked, twitched, and went still.
Silence. Just my breathing. And Kael's heartbeat, still thumping against my palm even though I wasn't touching him anymore.
"Zero?" Kael's voice was hoarse. He was sitting up now, hand pressed to his bleeding temple, staring at me. At the Hunter at my feet. At the blood on my hands — his and mine and its.
"You bled," I said. My voice shook. I couldn't look away from the red on his face.
"Yeah, well," he said, and tried to smile. It wobbled. "You noticed, huh?"
"I felt it," I whispered. I crawled to him, knees scraping rock, and grabbed his face with both hands. Too hard. Too desperate. "When you hit the ground, I felt it here." I thumped my own chest. "Like it was my blood. Like it was—"
His eyes went wide. His hands came up to cover mine, holding them against his cheeks. His skin was warm, his breath shaky.
"I know," he said softly. "I felt you snap back. You came back for me."
Victor's voice crackled back, faint but venomous. "This isn't over, Zero. You can't block me forever. That link will kill you both."
"Then come down here and try to stop us yourself, coward," Kael shouted at the sky, at nothing, his arms still around my hands, his forehead dropping to mine again. His blood smeared between us. "You hear me, Victor? Come get us!"
No answer. Just the wind howling over the pit.
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. My side throbbed where the Hunter had stabbed me. Kael's blood was drying on my fingers.
"We did it," I said. "We killed it."
Kael didn't answer right away. He was looking past me. Over my shoulder.
At the walls of the pit.
We were at the bottom of a dead-end mining shaft. Sheer rock on all sides, thirty feet straight up. The only way out was the narrow crawl tunnel we'd come through — and it had collapsed when the Hunter landed. Rocks sealed it shut. A solid wall of rubble.
No exit. No climb without gear. And the Syndicate's drones would be scanning this moon in minutes.
"Zero," Kael said slowly, his heartbeat suddenly hammering again under my hands, fast and scared. "Tell me you see another way out."
I turned. Looked at the sealed tunnel. At the smooth, high walls. At the dead Hunter at our feet.
Trapped.
"Kael," I said, my fingers tightening on his jaw, "we're not—"
A low rumble started above us. Not wind. Engines. Many of them. The sky over the pit went dark as a swarm blocked the weak sun.
Kael's eyes locked on mine, and he said, "Hold onto me and don't let go no matter what I do next—"