“Shit,” I whisper.
My feet are already carrying me across the room.
The cot blurs past my peripheral vision.
The door iris slides open with a soft pneumatic sigh that sounds obscenely calm given what my nervous system is doing.
The corridor outside smells like coolant and damp concrete.
I pause for exactly one heartbeat in the threshold, the old Alliance conditioning screaming through my skull in a dozen remembered voices.
Stay hidden.
Stay small.
Intervention equals exposure.
Exposure equals containment.
Containment equals erasure.
I think of the convoy.
Of the incendiaries.
Of the restaurant district.
Of the pressure in my ribs pointing me like a compass needle toward something I am not supposed to touch.
“I have no right to do this,” I murmur.
Then I step into the corridor anyway.
The door slides shut behind me.
By the time the second emergency alarm hits the public channels, I am running.
Fast.
Silent.
Furious.
Straight toward a danger I keep telling myself does not belong to me.
CHAPTER 3
KIMBERLY
The impact knocks the breath out of me so hard my lungs forget what they’re for.
I slam into the stainless-steel prep counter with my right hip and shoulder at the same time, the metal ringing like a bell struck too close to my skull. For half a second the world goes white, then orange, then a sick, swimming gray that makes the floor tilt under my feet.
Pain detonates up my side, hot and electric.
I look down and see red spreading fast across the sleeve of my T-shirt, darkening the fabric like ink dropped into water.
“Oh—fuck,” I gasp.
