"Z?" Alfie mumbled against my stomach. He shifted, heavy and warm, his nose nuzzling the soft skin he’d been kissing minutes ago. "Whats’it? Did we forget a patch note?"
I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. The cortisol spike hit my system with the violence of a blown amp, turning the cozy, indigo-lit sanctuary into a trap. The air, thick with the scent of sex and safety, suddenly felt cloying. Suffocating.
Real names.
Previous jobs.
Seattle address.
They found me. The noise floor had risen up and swallowed the signal.
"Zia." Euan’s voice cut through the haze. Sharp. Alert. He wasn't waking up slowly; he was booting online instantly. He sat up from where he’d been draped over the foot of the bed, his eyes locking onto my face. "Your respiration is irregular. Heart rate escalating."
"Can't," I choked out, clawing at the collar of the t-shirt I was wearing. It felt like a noose. "Can't..."
Kit moved then. He didn't ask questions. He launched himself from behind me, his massive frame creating a shield between me and the rest of the room, though there was no threat inside the walls. He grabbed my shoulders, his grip firm, grounding.
"Look at me," Kit commanded, his voice dropping into that narcotic, instructional register. "Eyes here. Lock on."
I stared at him. The tattoos on his chest were blurring.
"Breathe," Kit ordered. "In. One, two, three."
I tried. A shallow gasp rattled in my throat.
"She’s panicking," Alfie realized, scrambling up, the golden lethargy of the afterglow vanishing instantly. The scent of burnt sugar flared in the room, acrid and sharp, scorching the ozone. "What happened? Is it a spike?"
"No," Euan said. He reached for the tablet I’d dropped.
I tried to lunge for it, to hide it, to shove the genie back in the bottle. "Don't?—"
Euan looked at the screen. His face went absolutely blank. It was the terrifying, dead-eyed calm of a machine analyzing a catastrophic failure.
"Doxxed," Euan said. The word fractured the air.
Alfie froze. "What?"
"Full profile exposure," Euan listed, his voice devoid of inflection, though his hand was gripping the tablet hard enough to warp the casing. "Legal name. Internship history. The incident at SoundGarden. Photos from"—he squinted—"high school."
"No," I whispered, wrapping my arms around my knees, physically trying to hold myself together. "No, no, no."
The fortress kept out Alphas. It kept out industry creeps. But it couldn’t keep out data.
"Gareth," Kit snarled, the sound vibrating through the mattress. "I’m going to kill him. I’m going to drive to London and pull his head off."
"Not Gareth," Euan corrected, his fingers flying across the screen now. "Technique is different. This is brute force, sloppy aggregation. Someone paid a crawler."
"They know who I am," I said, the reality crashing down on me. "They know I'm Zia. They know I ran. They’ll find the Rider history. They’ll twist it. They’ll say I was difficult. Unhirable. Broken."
I looked at the door. The Exit Card was in the drawer.
Run.
The command was primal. It screamed in my blood.Pack your bag. Verify the suppressants. Disappear before they can turn you into a headline.
I started to scramble toward the edge of the nest. "I need to go. I need to clear the cache. I need?—"
"Stop."
