Chapter 26 · Forbidden Resonance

"Don't you flatline on me, Kane! Don't you fucking do it!"

Lyra's palms slam into my chest and my back bows off the metal slab. Her hands are cold. Shaking. The device under me is screaming, this high-pitched whine that vibrates straight through my teeth.

"Come on! Breathe, you stubborn asshole! Breathe!"

I can't. I can't get air. I'm not in that room anymore. I'm somewhere white. Too white. Cold light burning my eyes and straps biting into my wrists.

"Subject Zero, look at me," a voice says. Not Lyra. A man in a white coat. Clean hands. Dead eyes. "Do you understand what happens now?"

"Yeah," I hear myself say. My voice is younger. Raw. "You wipe me. You take her and you wipe me."

"We are correcting a defect," he says. "Empathy is a malfunction. You will be clean again. Efficient."

"Bullshit," I snarl, and I yank against the straps. The metal cuts. "You just don't want me to remember what you did to her."

The white room flickers. Lyra's voice punches through it, desperate and close.

"Kane! Kane, if you can hear me, you fight it! You hear me?