SYSTEM CRITICAL.
HARD FAULT.
HARD FAULT.
The screaming fans begin to die. The lights strobe wildly—red, then white, then nothing.
The hum drops in pitch, a dying groan of machinery grinding to a halt.
Jackson drops the axe. He stumbles back, crashing into a rack. He slides down, disappearing into the fog.
The room plunges into absolute, suffocating darkness.
The screens are dead. The LEDs are dead. The voice is dead.
Jackson? Where is he?
There’s just the sound of gas hissing into the dark, and the wet, ragged sound of someone fighting for air.
I try to stand, but my legs are weak. I fall forward, hitting the freezing floor. My vision is gone—just gray static.
My hand sweeps the darkness. Cold metal. Wet tiles.
Then, warmth.
My fingers brush his hand. It’s still.
I crawl toward him, dragging my body through the freezing fog. I lace my fingers through his, gripping hard.
Don’t leave me.
The silence of the room is heavier than the noise ever was.
Did we win?
Or did I bury us in the dark?
TWENTY
Jackson
BROKEN ARROW
Darkness.
Absolute. Weighty. A physical substance pressing against my eyes.
The cold is worse than the dark. It isn’t the biting wind of a Chicago winter; it’s a chemical void. The liquid nitrogen dump dropped the ambient temperature well below freezing in seconds. The floor tiles leech the heat straight out of my skin, sucking the energy from my core. My sweat freezes on my face, a tight, cracking mask.
My lungs seize. They spasm, trying to drag oxygen out of the air, but there is nothing to find. The atmosphere is thick with Halon and nitrogen fog—a metallic, suffocating soup that tastes like scorched circuitry and old pennies.
Talia’s hand falls into mine.
Her knuckles tremble against my palm, fluttering against my skin—fast, uneven, frantic. Like a bird hitting a windowpane.
She’s alive.
That’s the only data point that matters. The rest is noise.
