I scanned the room below frantically. I couldn’t fight them all; there were too many guards, too many scientists. I needed a distraction. I needed chaos.
A red box stood out on the wall next to me on the gantry. Old. Rusted.
Emergency Fire Suppression.
I didn’t know if it still worked, but I clenched my fist, wrapping my fingers in the hem of my jacket, and smashed it into the glass cover.
It shattered. I slammed my palm onto the button.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
A bell, deafening and mechanical, screamed through the facility.
Then the ceiling opened up.
The old, rusted sprinklers burst into life.
Water—brown with rust and age—hammered down into the sterile lab. It hit the hot machinery with a hiss of steam.
Screams tore through the lab. White coats scattered, boots slipping on wet tiles as the staff scrambled for the exit in a blind panic.
The guards pushed back. Weapons raised, they advanced against the flow, barking orders over the noise.
“Stand down! Get back to your stations! Move!”
They grabbed at the fleeing scientists, trying to hold the line, but the stampede crushed them against the double doors. Fear drowned out authority. The mob surged, forcing the soldiers backward into the corridor until the shouting faded into the distance.
I watched from my vantage point on the gantry until the scrum spilled out, taking the security team with it.
The floor cleared. Only the hiss of falling water and the pulsing flash of alarms remained.
I vaulted the railing.
I dropped, boots slamming into slick concrete. Landing in a crouch, I bolted, keeping the containment cube's shadow between me and the main doors.
The door to the glass cube remained sealed. The modern magnetic locks ignored the obsolete alarm system, refusing to release. I ran to the partition, adrenaline screaming in my blood, and hammered my fists against the surface.
Eamon turned his head.
His eyes found mine through the glass and the steam. He looked devastated seeing me.
His lips moved, forming a shape I couldn’t hear over the alarm, but I knew it intimately.
Run.
I ignored him. I wouldn’t leave him.
I slammed my body against the unyielding glass, screaming his name, bathed in the blinding silver light of the machine.
TWENTY-THREE
Riven
I returned to the cage.
Highspire felt brittle and cold today, the glass towers reflecting a pale, judgemental sky. I walked through the front doors of Quinn Enterprises, adopting the arrogant gait of a man who belonged there.
My coat was buttoned to the chin, concealing the spare shirt I’d pulled from the boot. It smelled of stale storage, a poor substitute for the one lying on the floorboards in the Old Quarter. Stripped of its buttons, it was useless. I left it where it had fallen, abandoning the ruined fabric just as I had abandoned the sleeping woman.
