Then something else bleeds through the bond.
Defiance.
Cold.
Clear.
She is preparing for execution without bargaining.
I drop to my knees in the middle of the ops room.
My hands are shaking.
My vision blurs.
“I’m coming,” I whisper. “I don’t care what I have to burn to get to you.”
The bond flares again.
Faint.
Achingly alive.
A match in the dark.
She’s still there.
So am I.
And the Nine just made the worst possible mistake of their entire fucking lives.
CHAPTER 21
KIMBERLY
The world doesn't end with a bang. It ends with the smell of stale laundry detergent and a sudden, blinding absence of light.
The hood is thick—a heavy poly-weave that scratches against my cheeks and tastes like dust when I try to gasp. One second, I’m looking at Tur’s steady silhouette, ready to fight; the next, I am submerged in a hot, fabric-scented nightmare.
Then, the shock baton hits my ribs.
It isn't a "zap." It’s a physical invasion—a white-hot spike that detonates inside my chest and turns my nervous system into screaming static. My knees don't just buckle; they vanish. My lungs seize, and for a terrifying heartbeat, I can’t remember how to trigger a breath. I hear a roar—Tur—but it sounds like he’s shouting from the bottom of a deep well.
“Get her up—now!” a voice barks.
Hands—too many of them—grab my arms. I’m hoisted off the floor, my feet dangling. I try to fight, managed to drive my heel into someone's shin and hearing a satisfying grunt of pain, but then a second shock hits my thigh. Everything goes gray.
I am being dragged. My boots scrape against polished ferroglass, then the texture changes. Concrete. Rough, cold, and damp. I count the turns because it's the only weapon I have left.
Left. Right. Thirty paces. Another right.
A door shrieks on its hinges—not the smooth hiss of modern hydraulics, but the heavy, grinding protest of old steel. The air pressure shifts, growing heavy and metallic. Even through the hood, I know where we are. We’ve plunged downward into the legacy infrastructure—the pre-Alliance bones of the city sitting directly above the Node.
They shove me through a steel door that shrieks on its hinges and into a room that smells damp and metallic and faintly electric, like old wiring sweating inside concrete.
They rip the hood off.
Light slams into my eyes.
