I check my watch. 21:55.
Eight minutes ago.
We’ve been broadcasting our location since we entered this office. Since we started photographing Julianna’s files. Since we found the evidence that could bring down the entire Nexus operation.
Phoenix may be wounded. Phoenix may be operating at diminished capacity, running on borrowed processing power and fragmented algorithms.
But Phoenix isn’t dead.
And we just told it exactly where to find us.
“Cassie.” My voice is calm. The operator taking over, suppressing the spike of fear. “We need to move.”
“What—”
“Silent alarm. Eight minutes ago.” I grab her arm, pull her toward the door. “Phoenix is sending a response.”
Her eyes widen. But she doesn’t freeze. Doesn’t panic.
She moves.
We’re through the door and into the corridor in seconds. I’m already running scenarios—exit routes, defensive positions, vehicle location. The facility is a maze, but I memorized the layout on the way in.
“The loading dock,” I say. “Fastest route to the perimeter.”
“How long do we have?”
I don’t know. Eight minutes since the alarm triggered. Phoenix is wounded, slower than it used to be. Response time that used to be minutes is now … What? Hours? We boughtourselves breathing room by surviving Chicago, by making Phoenix rebuild instead of hunt.
But a wounded animal can still bite.
“Not long enough,” I say. “Run.”
We burst through the main building and into the night air. The cold hits different now—sharp, alive, carrying the sound of?—
Rotors.
High-pitched. Mechanical. Getting closer.
“Drone,” I say. “Surveillance. Keep moving.”
We sprint toward the fence line, toward the gap I cut on the way in. The tree line is fifty meters ahead. Cover. Concealment. A chance.
The drone sound shifts. Changes pitch.
Not surveillance.
Armed.
“DOWN!”
I tackle Cassie into the frozen mud a half-second before the world explodes.
Machine gun fire rips through the space where she was standing—a stuttering burst of automatic rounds that chews into the concrete behind us, spraying chips of debris into the night. The sound is deafening, the muzzle flash strobing from somewhere above, and Cassie is screaming beneath me?—
No. Not screaming. Breathing. Fast and panicked, but breathing.
The firing stops.
