A blade kissed her neck as something brutal rose inside him.
Kill her. End it.The thought flashed—but then he buried it.
“You shouldn’t leave doors unlocked,” Audrey said, masking her fear under false bravado.
Ryker tilted his head. Then he smirked. His eyes were blown wide, storming with emotion. That same, low chittering rumbled inside his chest—too intimate, too like the hunger inside her. It felt like being recognized and devoured at once. Then he retreated, as if he thought better of it, and he rammed into her mind again without warning.
It wasn’t a jeer like before; this time, it was a war. “Get out of my head!”
But nothing could stop him. He blazed a path of destruction through her?—
Sophia’s face?—
the rope?—
the kitchen knife?—
the facts she hadn’t finished accepting?—
When he withdrew, it was with a harsh laugh. Audrey groaned.
He knew everything now. Everything about her.
“I understand everything now.”
“You understand nothing,” she spat, wiping tears away with unsteady fingers, hating the weakness.
He pushed the blade deeper. His face turned calculating. “You could be useful—if you choose to be.”
“Useful how?” Audrey asked, even though part of her already knew.
“As a replacement for a piece I lost before it had fully matured,” he said. “As bait, if necessary.” He said it as if naming tools laid out on a table. “But most importantly, as someone the system will misread. The Aggregate—what passes for government and surveillance here—trusts its bloodlines, its records, the logic of its records-keeping AIs. It cannot see people like you coming.”
That made her stop.
“The Aggregate understands bloodlines, records, and category compliance. It does not understand what survives outside its models. You do. You shouldn’t exist in this form—not here, not after Earth, not after Sophia’s failed containment. That makes you dangerous in a way even Mihail didn’t fully explain.”
Ryker watched her carefully. “If I can teach you control before they get their hands on you, you don’t just help me recover Mihail. You change what this war produces next.”
Hate flared so hot she bit the inside of her cheek. “And if I refuse?”
“Then I kill you—you already know too much—and try my luck with Cary.”
There it was—the clean and honest truth. Unavoidable. Audrey dragged him down to her face despite the dagger bitingdeeper. “Tell me the truth about that night,” she demanded. “All of it.”
“Done.” His stance went cold, unfeeling. “I went to your home to collect your mother and Cary. Sophia told me Cary was a gold triad. That was the agreement.”
A beat.
“But she lied.”
The room turned on its axis.
“She planned to flee with Cary,” he continued. “You were the distraction.”
The realizations didn’t hit together. They slid in—slow and poisonous.
“You’ve always known the truth,” Ryker said. “You just refuse to understand it.”
