It didn’t matter that this was part of the plan. My body didn’t know the difference. All it saw was the man I loved, and the blood on his face looking too damn real.
We had no idea what to expect—Kessler had been missing for all these weeks, the system that wanted Lyric dead was manipulating fuck knows what—and I was scared for Lyric.
Fucking terrified.
“We shouldn’t be here,” I muttered, staring at the ground for a moment. I wanted him to hear me, I wanted him to say that we could go.
He didn’t answer.
The doors slid open without a sound. No reception desk. No buzzing lights. A sign for deliveries, and through that open door, a marble floor that stretched into a rear lobby, soaked in shadow, elevator doors gleaming at the far end.
I tightened my grip. Not because I needed to. Because I needed to feel he was real. Alive. I stopped and yanked Lyric to a stop under the first camera I saw, staring up at it, making sure the camera got a good view of my gun at Lyric’s side. This was all about stalling, getting loud, and making the focus on me bringing in Lyric for money. He needed a few seconds for Jamie and Caleb to locate the part of the room I needed to drag Lyric to.
“He’s here. Where’s my money?” I shouted.
Silence, and the door to the far elevator slid open. I dragged Lyric that way, and he let out a low, strainedgroan that cut straight through me. Fuck—was I hurting him? His knees buckled, body sagging into mine as if he couldn’t hold himself up anymore, and still, he didn’t say a word. Just kept moving forward. My chest ached with it—every step he took because I asked him to. Every inch closer to danger when all I wanted was to carry him the other way.
We stepped inside. No buttons to press. No ID scan. As if the building had been told to open its mouth and swallow us whole. What if this was the trap? The elevator rising to then drop us both—fast, brutal, final. One press of a button and it’s done. Problem solved for Kessler. Clean. Efficient. God, why was this hitting me now? I wanted to glance at Lyric, to say something, anything, but I couldn’t risk showing fear. Couldn’t risk him seeing it in me.
At least we’ll go together.
Thank fuck we headed down, and we rode in silence.
I watched our reflections in the mirror-polished walls. Lyric’s face was stone as he slumped, but I looked as if I’d aged ten years. The longer we stood there, the more my muscles screamed to act—to grab him, to drag him back to the car, to run.
But this wasn’t a job we could walk away from. Not now.
The elevator dinged. The doors opened.
We walked into the shadowed core of KessTech—the place Lyric and Jamie said was the digital heart of LyricNight, the AI that had learned how to protect itself. The one that had started killing to survive.
We stepped into a corridor lit by the glow of banks of computers behind glass, and the air was cold, sterile, blinking lights watching us.
There were no footsteps but ours. No alarms. No voices.
“Where the fuck are you?” I shouted into the silence. I knew the AI didn’t need people—just power. I wasn’t expecting wires or gears or some blinking, monstrous eye. But still, some part of me wanted something to face. Something to fight.
Kessler.
We came to a reinforced door—no handle, no keypad, nothing but smooth metal and tension humming in the air. For a beat, there was silence. Then, with a soft mechanicalclick, a seam appeared down the center. The door split open and rolled back, slow and deliberate, as if the building itself was making a decision to let us in.
Fucking creepy.
We stepped into a cavernous space lit by LED strips and the glow of computers stacked floor toceiling behind more glass walls. In the middle, sealed in a large secondary chamber, sat someone I hardly recognized. Kessler.
He looked like death.
He had a scrappy beard—patchy, thin—the kind that came from weeks without grooming. His eyes were sunken, haunted, his skin grey under the flicker of failing fluorescents. Not the man I’d seen in photos. This wasn’t a tech billionaire playing God. Bottled water. Open food containers. Torn paper. A haphazard pile of chemical toilets, one on its side spilling the contents. Had he barricaded himself in? Or was he a prisoner? Was that what his messages to Lyric meant? That this fucked up computer had somehow locked him in? He was breathing harshly, staring at us. It was fucking scary.
I jerked to a halt, arm snapping out to catch Lyric before he could take another step.Play the game, Rio, snap out of it.He stumbled into me, unsteady, and I felt the heat of his breath against my shoulder. We stood frozen, side by side, staring into the hollow eyes of the man sealed behind glass.
I braced for threats—gunfire, alarms, some show of power. Something violent. Something expected. But Kessler stood there, unmoving. As if he couldn’t believe we were real. Then, slowly, as though everystep hurt, he crossed the floor to the glass. His knees buckled, and he crumpled, hands splayed against the barrier as if it was the only thing holding him together, his voice cracked, echoing from speakers outside the room.
“Help me.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Lyric
