The industrial sector of Chicago didn’t just smell like pollution; it smelled like the city’s bad decisions.

  We were riding Danny’s bike, tearing through a landscape that looked less like a neighborhood and more like a graveyard for heavy machinery. The wind whipped past my helmet, tasting of sulfur, rust, and the damp, oily rot of the nearby canal. Beneath me, the hover-bike’s engine whined in my bones.

  I held on tight. My arms were wrapped around his waist, my chest pressed against his back. I could feel the tension in his muscles—coiled, hard, wire-tight.

  He wasn't driving with the joy he’d had the other night. He was driving like he was running out of time.

  Maybe we are, I thought.

  “Handy,” I subvocalized, the habit as natural as breathing. “Give me a layout. Where exactly is this ‘containment facility’?”

  “Sector 9,” the AI replied. His voice was clipped, lacking its usual sarcastic lilt. He was in war mode, processing data faster than I could blink. “It’s a defunct shipping hub owned by a shell company of a shell company. If you peel back enough layers, you eventually find a vampire in a suit.”

  Threat level?

  “Catastrophic. We are walking into a fortified structure with zero backup, armed with a baseball bat and a taser.”

  “I hate potatoes,” I muttered.

  “And I hate imminent deactivation, but here we are.”

  Danny banked the bike hard to the left, drifting around a pile of rusted shipping containers. We shot down a narrow alleyway lined with towering, windowless warehouses. They rose like concrete monoliths, blocking out the smoggy moonlight.

  This was the Dead Zone. No streetlights. No neon. Just the stark, white beam of the bike’s headlight cutting through the gloom.

  We slowed.

  Ahead, a massive structure dominated the end of the alley. It was a brutalist nightmare of black metal and reinforced concrete, heavily scarred by acid rain. There were no windows. No visible vents. Just a single, massive bay door that looked thick enough to stop a tank.

  Danny killed the engine.

  The whine died. The quiet pressed against my ears.

  We slid off the bike. My barefeet hit the cracked pavement with a gritty crunch. I reached for my bat, which was strapped to the side of the bike, and slid the taser from my pocket.

  “This is it,” Danny said. His voice was hollow.

  He wouldn't look at me. He was staring at the bay door, his face pale and drawn in the bike’s headlight. He looked like a ghost haunting his own life.

  “It looks… abandoned,” I said, scanning the perimeter. My wolf senses were on high alert, straining for a scent, a sound, anything.

  Nothing.

  No heartbeat. No guards. No smell of rot or blood.

  Just cold metal and dust.

  “It’s automated,” Danny said. “They don’t use guards here. They use tech.”

  He walked toward a small service door embedded in the wall next to the main bay. I followed, keeping close. The air tasted electric.

  “Handy,” I whispered. “Scan the door. Can you crack the lock?”

  “Scanning…” Handy hummed. “Wait. I’m picking up… interference. Massive interference. It’s like a wall of—”

  SCREEEEEEEEECH.

  My ear popped. Then silence. Handy didn't glitch; he just vanished.

  I gasped, dropping the bat and clapping my hands over my ears.

  “Handy!” I shouted.

  Warning. Signal loss imminent. Critical failure. Integrity br—

  The voice cut out.

  Snap.

  Silence.

  Absolute, terrifying silence.

  The hum in my ear was gone. The HUD overlay vanished, leaving my vision stark and naked. The comforting presence of the AI—the second brain that had been with me since the beginning—was just… gone.

  “Handy?” I whispered.

  Nothing. Just the empty echo of my own thoughts.

  Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in my chest. I tapped the wrist unit frantically. The screen was dead. Black.

  “He’s gone,” I gasped, backing away from the door. “Danny, he’s gone. My watch is dead. My head is quiet.”

  I felt naked. Blind. For months, Handy had been my radar, my logic, my shield. Without him, I was just a girl with a taser and a bad attitude.

  Danny turned. He saw the panic in my eyes.

  He stepped in, grabbing my shoulders. His grip was firm, grounding.

  “It’s okay,” he said urgently. “It’s the building.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a Faraday cage,” he explained, his dark eyes locking onto mine. “Lead-lined. Copper mesh in the concrete. Nothing gets in or out. No cyber net.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  He squeezed my shoulders.

  “It’s a Dead Zone, Nikki. That’s why they keep him here. So he can’t call for help. So they can’t track him.”

  I took a shaky breath, trying to force my heart rate down without Handy’s helpful percentage updates.

  Faraday cage. Physics. Okay. I know physics.

  “So he’s not dead?” I asked, my voice small. “Handy?”

  “He’s just cut off,” Danny promised. “As soon as we walk out, he’ll reboot. But in there? We’re on our own.”

  On our own.

  Me and Danny. No AI. No backup. Just us against the corpo agents.

  I looked at the heavy door. It looked like the mouth of a tomb.

  “Okay,” I said, steeling myself. I picked up my bat. “Okay. We do this analog. Old school.”

  Danny looked at me. There was a flicker of something in his expression—pain? Guilt? It was gone too fast to read.

  “Trust me?” he asked.

  The question hung in the heavy air.

  I looked at the boy who had kissed the wolf. The boy who had hummed away my seizure. The boy who felt like the other half of my soul.

  “Always,” I said.

  He nodded, a sharp, jerky motion. He turned to the keypad next to the door. He didn't hack it. He pulled a keycard from his pocket—a black card with a red Pandora logo—and swiped it.

  Beep. Chunk.

  The heavy lock disengaged.

  Danny pushed the door open. It swung inward on silent, well-oiled hinges, revealing a cavernous darkness.

  “Stay close,” he whispered.

  We stepped inside.

  The warehouse was vast. Shadows covered the ceiling, high above us. The floor was polished concrete, smooth and cold. The only light came from rows of dim, amber safety lights running along the floor, creating a runway that led into the center of the void.

  It was quiet. Not the quiet of an empty room, but the quiet of a vacuum. The heavy lead lining absorbed every sound. My footsteps didn't echo. My breathing sounded loud and harsh in my own ears.

  The smell hit me then.

  It wasn't rot. It wasn't blood.

  It smelled like bleach. Like a hospital waiting room.

  “Where is he?” I whispered, gripping my bat until my knuckles turned white. “Where’s your dad?”

  “Center,” Danny said. He was walking ahead of me, his movements stiff. He wasn't looking around. He was marching toward the middle of the room with a grim determination.

  We walked. The amber lights stretched out before us.

  I scanned the shadows. My wolf eyes adjusted to the gloom, picking out shapes in the darkness. Shipping containers. Crates. But no people. No guards.

  It felt wrong.

  My skin prickled. The hair on my arms stood up.

  Trap, the wolf whispered. Too easy.

  Danny is their target, I argued back. They want him here. It’s a trade.

  We reached the center of the warehouse.

  It was a wide, open circle, cleared of debris. Above us, high in the darkness, a single spotlight flickered on.

  It beamed down, illuminating a patch of concrete about twenty feet wide.

  It was empty.

  No chair. No ropes. No dad.

  Just an empty circle of light.

  I spun around, bat raised, scanning the darkness beyond the light.

  “Danny?” I said, my voice rising in pitch. “He’s not here. It’s empty.”

  Danny didn't answer.

  He had stopped at the edge of the light. He was standing with his back to me, his head bowed.

  “Danny?”

  I stepped toward him. “We need to move. If he’s not here, it’s an ambush. We need to get back to the door.”

  He didn't move.

  “Danny!” I reached out, grabbing his shoulder to turn him around.

  He turned.

  His face was wet.

  Tears were streaming down his cheeks, silent and silver in the harsh spotlight. His eyes were red-rimmed, wide with a misery so profound it looked like physical pain.

  But he wasn't looking at the space where his father should have been.

  He was looking at me.

  “Danny?” I lowered the bat slowly, confusion warring with the adrenaline in my blood. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

  He took a step back. Away from me.

  “I didn't have a choice,” he whispered. His voice cracked.

  My stomach dropped through the floor.

  “What?”

  “He… he made me choose,” Danny choked out. “You… or him.”

  I stared at him. My brain was trying to process the words, but they wouldn't fit together.

  Me or him.

  “Danny,” I said, stepping forward. “What are you talking about? We’re here to save him. We’re partners.”

  He shook his head. He kept backing away, retreating into the shadows outside the spotlight’s ring.

  “There is no hostage, Nikki,” he said. “My father isn't missing. He’s… he’s waiting.”

  My chest caved in. “A delivery,” I whispered.

  Danny sobbed, a harsh, jagged sound. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “Danny!” I screamed, lunging for him.

  CLANG.

  Steel slammed into concrete.

  Behind me. In front of me. All around me.

  I spun around.

  Massive steel shutters were dropping from the ceiling, sealing off the center of the room. The world shrank to a twenty-foot circle.

  The circle of light trapped me.

  I ran to the nearest shutter, slamming my hand against it. Solid steel. Reinforced. Cold.

  I turned back to Danny.

  He was on the other side of the barrier now. I could see him through a thick pane of reinforced glass embedded in the steel wall.

  He was standing in the dark, watching me. He had his hand pressed against the glass.

  “Why?” I shouted, my voice bouncing off the metal walls of my cage. “Danny! Why?”

  He mouthed the words. I couldn't hear them, but I knew what they were.

  I’m sorry.

  Then, the lights in the rest of the warehouse flared to life.

  I wasn't alone with Danny anymore.

  Beyond the glass, the shadows were moving.

  Doors opened in the far walls.

  They poured out.

  Black uniformed soldiers. Tactical gear. Pandora logos on their chests.

  And behind them, wheeling in massive containment units, were scientists in white coats.

  They weren't here for a meeting. They were here for a specimen.

  I looked at Danny through the glass. He hadn't moved. He was weeping, his body shaking, but he stood his ground. He stood with them.

  The betrayal was sharper than any knife. It twisted in my gut, hot and agonizing.

  I had trusted him. I had let him into the greenhouse. I had let him see the wolf. I had let him anchor me.

  And he had used that anchor to drag me straight to the bottom of the ocean.

  My vision blurred. Not with tears. With red.

  The bat fell from my hand. It clattered to the floor.

  I didn't need a bat.

  Heat spiked in my marrow. My vision went red.

  I looked at Danny one last time.

  I bared my teeth.

  You want a monster? I thought, the wolf roaring its agreement in my skull. You want a specimen?

  Fine.

  I threw my head back and screamed.

  But it wasn't a scream.

  It was a howl.

  The bones snapped. The fur tore through. I didn't scream. I howled.