The white light cleared to reveal a smoking crater where the wall used to be.

  The plasma bolt had missed. The core detonation in Deathlok’s chest had thrown his aim off by inches, sending the shot screaming past my ear to disintegrate three tons of concrete behind me. Heat washed over my face, instant and unbearable, singeing my eyebrows and blistering my cheek. The smell of seared meat—my meat—choked me.

  I fell back, hitting the floor hard. Concrete bit into my knees.

  In front of me, the monster swayed.

  Sparks fountained from the cavity in his back where I’d ripped the core free, white-hot and brilliant, painting crazy shadows across broken crates and rusted equipment. Electricity arced across Deathlok’s frame in branching patterns, racing along every joint and seam. The machine let out a sound—high-pitched, electronic, almost a shriek—and froze mid-step.

  The red light in its eye flickered. Once. Twice.

  Died.

  In the half-second before the chassis went dark completely, something changed. The tension left the green muscle. The snarl fell off his face.

  The expression wasn’t anger. Wasn’t pain.

  It was just… Brick.

  The monster died; the man remained. Buried under raw skin, circuits, combat protocols, and corporate programming, he had been there the whole time.

  Then the cyborg corpse collapsed. It went down hard, a half-ton of metal and nightmare hitting concrete with a crash loud enough to rattle the windows. Dust billowed up from the impact. One arm twitched—residual electricity, nerves firing without a brain to guide them—and went still.

  I dropped the power core. It rolled across the floor, trailing smoke, and I didn’t watch where it went. My legs moved on autopilot—pure adrenaline keeping me upright when everything else wanted to shut down. Blood dripped from my shoulder, leaving a trail across the concrete. Each step sent fresh agony shooting through my ribs.

  I scrambled toward the far wall, hands slipping on dust and debris.

  “Jackie.” My voice cracked as I slowly shifted back, the fur receding, leaving me shivering and naked in the cold air. “Jackie, come on.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She lay crumpled near the edge of the blast radius, blonde hair fanned across filthy concrete. I got my good arm under her shoulders, hauled her up. She was so light. Eight years old and barely fifty pounds. Her head lolled against my chest, breathing shallow but steady. A knot the size of an egg was already forming on her temple where she’d hit the ground.

  I dragged us both to the corner—away from Deathlok’s corpse, away from the sparking machinery and pooling coolant. Propped her against the wall as gently as I could with one working arm and ribs screaming protest at every movement.

  She didn’t wake up.

  My wristband buzzed. Handy’s voice came through static-laced and tinny. “Nikki. Nikki, you’re—oh god, your vitals are—”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You are objectively not fine. You’re—”

  “Later.” I sucked in a breath, tasted copper and burnt plastic. “Police. Need to get her to—”

  “Affirmative. Police units are en route. ETA three minutes to the ground floor.”

  Three minutes. I could last three minutes.

  My eyes drifted to Deathlok’s corpse. In the dim city light, something pulsed beneath the chassis. Faint. Blue. A secondary signal I hadn’t noticed before—buried deeper than the power core, protected by layers of shielding.

  “Handy.” I focused on the glow, willing my vision to clear. “You seeing this?”

  “…Yes. Analyzing now.” A pause. Processors churning through data I’d never understand. “It is a heartbeat signal. A hardline data stream. It wasn’t broadcasting location; it was maintaining a constant, encrypted handshake with a remote server. A kill-switch, or a command link.”

  “Where does it go?”

  “Tracing the handshake… It bypasses the standard Pandora security nodes. It goes straight to the top. Pandora Tower. Executive suite. The CEO. Moldark’s office.”

  The name hit me harder than the plasma bolt. Moldark Treznor. Corporate CEO. He must be the bastard who’d ordered this whole nightmare into existence—the engineered wolf that bit me, my uncle’s murder, and Brick’s resurrection.

  The thing at the top pulling strings while monsters like me danced.

  I stared at the pulsing signal. It throbbed in time with my heartbeat, steady and patient. A breadcrumb trail leading straight to the source. Straight to him.

  Jackie stirred against my side, her fingers twitching. Still out, but alive. Breathing. Safe for now.

  I touched Jackie’s hair with my good hand. Smoothed it away from the bump on her head.

  “Police will get you home,” I murmured. “Mom’ll be there. You’re gonna be okay.”

  I stood. Every muscle protested, bones grinding, but I stood. Deathlok’s corpse lay between me and the exit, chrome reflecting the approaching lights.

  I wasn’t going with her. I couldn’t go back to the Bergamot candles and the algebra homework. Not while that signal was pulsing. Not while the man who did this was sitting in an office, watching a screen go dark.

  The signal pulsed.

  Waiting.