Emma held Zach’s unconscious body, his warm blood seeping through her shirt, and a rage unlike anything she’d ever experienced burned in her chest.
She didn’t know how any of this worked: what she was capable of, what the rules were, or what the consequences might be.
But she knew one thing with absolute certainty.
She would not let Zach die.
“Hold on,” she whispered against his hair, pressing her forehead to his. “I’m going to fix this. I’m going to save you.”
Zach’s breathing hitched and grew shallower.
Chapter 35
Wind’s Assault
(Nick’s POV)
Nick Ivory stoodat the only clear panel in his office watching the palm trees bend nearly horizontal under the wind’s assault. The translucent hurricane shutter distorted the view, turning the world outside into something both familiar and alien—a watercolor painting of violence rendered in grays and greens.
The rest of the windows had been shuttered that morning, making his office feel like a bunker. Which it essentially was.
Something’s wrong.
The thought arrived without preamble, settling into his bones with the certainty of experience. But this felt... different. Wrong in a way he couldn’t articulate.
He pressed his fingertips against the shutter panel, feeling the building vibrate under the hurricane’s assault. The compound hummed with contained energy—backup generators online, systems at heightened alert, every failsafe activated. They’d done everything right. Followed every protocol. David had personally overseen the power grid integration. Zach had checked every physical security measure twice.
So why did Nick’s skin crawl with warning?
He reached out reflexively with his telepathic sense, that constant low-level awareness he maintained of the mindsaround him. The storm team in the staff building—calm, focused, concerned but not panicking. David somewhere below, probably in the server room or near the main electrical systems.
And underneath it all, a vague static.
Nick frowned, tilting his head as if trying to hear a distant sound. There was something else, something sharp and insistent pushing at the edges of his perception. Not a voice. Not even really a thought. Just… noise. Pressure.
His phone rang, the sound jarring in the quiet office.
“Yeah.” Nick answered without looking at the screen. He knew David’s ring pattern.
“Need you down here.” David’s voice was clipped, tight with something that wasn’t quite tension but was close. “Electrical control room. Now.”
Nick was moving before David disconnected. He grabbed his tablet from the desk—force of habit, he never went anywhere without it—and headed for the door. The corridor outside was empty, emergency lighting casting everything in harsh white. The storm crew had been sent to their designated safe bunker an hour ago.
One elevator was still operational, though Nick took the stairs anyway. Power could fail at any moment, and being trapped in an elevator during a hurricane wasn’t on his agenda. His boots echoed on the concrete steps, the sound swallowed by the building’s groan under the wind’s assault.
David was waiting in the sub-level corridor, tablet in hand, his usual casual demeanor replaced by something harder. More focused.
“Show me,” Nick said, and opened the telepathic channel between them.
The shift was immediate and familiar—David’s presence blooming in Nick’s mind like a second consciousness, all quick calculation and system architecture, thinking in flow charts andprobability matrices. Nick had been managing these connections since they were kids. It was as natural as breathing.
Main electrical panel,David sent, already moving back through the door.Found something. Thought it was a relay issue at first.
They entered the control room, the space alive with mechanical sound—the primary generators thrumming steadily, supporting the load while the storm raged outside. The main electrical panel dominated one wall, a maze of circuits and breakers and color-coded wiring that made sense to David in ways Nick had never bothered to fully understand.
David was already pulling up diagnostic screens on his tablet, but his attention was somewhere else—that peculiar unfocused look he got when he was reading systems directly through his tech-mage abilities.
“Talk to me,” Nick said aloud, though he could have sent the thought. Sometimes saying things helped ground the moment, make it real.
