“This shouldn’t exist,” Jamie said, and scrolled with one finger. “It wasn’t in the mirrored architecture we built.”
“Fuck,” Lyric cursed, and I stepped over the dead guy to stand at his side, ready to be there if he needed me. “Either the sandbox pulled it in through a buried hook… or something reachedin.”
Buried hooks? Sandboxes? My brow furrowed. I might not understand the words, but the imperative was clear—everyone was in danger.
“It’s not the system, but fuck, if something in the original code is still active. This isn’t just a bot or a ghost signal, it’s intelligent routing.”
Jamie swore under his breath. “Which means the Cave could be compromised.”
“Caleb is already looped in,” Killian murmured. “We should leave.”
“What’s happening?” I asked, but everyone was focused on that screen.
Lyric grabbed it, and his fingers flew so fast it was a blur. “I’ve got it. Isolating now. Cutting off everyoutbound signal.” I couldn’t follow every word, but the tension crawling up my spine didn’t need a translation. I understood the killing and the dead man here, but all of this was frustrating as fuck to listen to. I watched the lines of code flash by. I must have had a thing for competence, because watching him move like that—focused and in control—was doing things to me I didn’t want to think too hard about. So fucking sexy it almost made me forget something shitty was going down.
“What’s wrong?” I asked again, shaking my head to get back in focus.
“We need to?—”
“Jesus Christ! Will someone answer me?” I shouted, and Jamie blinked at me. “Enzo’s gone with Robbie—we have a body to get rid of, and we need to be out of here. Now.” I wanted my family to be safe.
“It’s okay, Rio,” Jamie reassured, even though it was clear that it wasn’t freaking okay.
Lyric hadn’t stopped tapping keys, talking under his breath. “This is my fault. My fault.”
I didn’t have an answer. Just a building knot of helpless rage. Because I didn’t get it. Because they were speaking in riddles. Because whatever this was—it was back, and I didn’t know how to stop it.
“Okay,” Lyric said eventually, exhaling hard. “I’ve shut it down.”
“So, now we go, right?” I asked, and my voice cracked with temper. “Are you safe, Lyric?” I motioned around me to my family. “Are any of us safe here?”
Jamie touched my arm. “There’s no contract out onus, Rio; it’s on Lyric.”
That didn’t make it better! I rounded on Jamie, gripped him, and shook him a little. “Is Lyric fucking safe?”
Lyric moved between us, easing my hands away from Jamie. “How this guy found me, and whatever this glitch in the code is, we can handle it. The clock is pushed forward. I don’t have time to be pretty with this—I need to get inside and direct to Kessler.” He pulled a small memory stick out of his pocket as if he was checking it, then slipped it back in. “I’ll leave now, and no one will know I was here.”
Not on my watch. I grabbed Lyric. “You’re not fucking leaving on your own!”
He shook me off. “I can’t do this from the outside, I need root access. I won’t stay here and put any of you in danger if someone or something is tracking me down.”
“You’re not going anywhere!” I snapped, myvoice louder than I meant it to be. “You think you can just walk out of here and fix this alone? After everything? No fucking way.”
Jamie stepped forward, chin lifted. “It’s the only way, Rio. You know it. If we don’t give Lyric a way in, he’ll never get close to the core—never bring the system down.”
I rounded on him, fury boiling over. “I don’t fucking understand any of that, so don’t give me that shit.”
Jamie tried for calm. “Rio, listen, Kessler is in an impenetrable fortress protected by a rogue AI that will do anything to protect him. Once Lyric’s inside, he opens the real doors, and we get in and kill Kessler.”
I was apoplectic. My fists were clenched so tight they ached, nails biting into skin. I could feel the burn of my pulse in my jaw, my ears, my fucking teeth. “You want to set him up as bait and hope he survives? That’s your grand plan?”
“It’s the only way,” Lyric said.
“No.” I shoved a hand through my hair, pacing, feeling as if I was going to explode. My heart was racing so hard it hurt. “Fuck, Jamie. You think this is easy for him? For any of us? I want to hit something—I want to hityou.”
“Then do it!” Jamie shouted back. “Maybe if you stop pretending you can protect everyone all the damn time, we’d actually get somewhere.”
“You don’t get it?—”
