The library at Chicago Central was a cathedral of silence and suppressed sneezes.

  It smelled like ozone, floor wax, and the desperate sweat of seniors trying to finish their thesis papers before the final bell. Rows of holographic terminals glowed soft blue, casting long, flickering shadows against the acoustic tiles. It was the kind of quiet that made your own heartbeat sound like a drum solo.

  I sat at a corner terminal, watching a 3D model of the Lower Sectors rotate in the air above the desk. The wireframe buildings glowed neon green, jagged and broken.

  “Structural decay in Sector 4 is at sixty percent,” Danny said.

  He was sitting too close.

  He leaned in to tap a specific crumbling factory on the hologram, his arm brushing against the sleeve of my cheer uniform. The contact sent a jolt of static through my nylon shell top that had nothing to do with physics and everything to do with the fact that my internal wolf was currently chewing on the bars of its cage.

  “Right,” I said, forcing my eyes to stick to the glowing green lines. “Sixty percent. That’s… bad. That’s ‘don’t sneeze or the building falls down’ bad.”

  “It’s catastrophic,” he corrected, his voice a low rumble that seemed to shake the table surface. “But look at the radiation clusters. They aren’t random. They’re pooling around the water filtration units.”

  “Maybe the filters are leaking.”

  “Or maybe someone is dumping something they shouldn’t be.”

  He looked at me then. The library lights reflected in his dark eyes, making them look like pools of oil. He wasn’t looking at the map anymore. He was looking at my mouth.

  My heart hammered against my ribs.

  Focus, Nova, I scolded myself. You are a mutated biological weapon, not a protagonist in a romance sim.

  “We should log it,” I said, my voice sounding a little too high, a little too breathless. “We need to correlate the radiation with the structural integrity data we got from the roof.”

  The roof.

  The memory of yesterday flashed in my mind—the smog, the sunset, the way he had looked at the Sliders and made them scatter like roaches with a single word. Street lingo. Yeah, right. And I was the Queen of England.

  Handy, I subvocalized, needing a distraction from the boy who smelled like mint and secrets. Status on the data packet? Are we done compiling the decay rates so I can go hit something at practice?

  “Compiling,” the AI drawled in my ear. “But we have a problem. And not the usual ‘your algebra grade is a tragedy’ kind of problem.”

  I stiffened. What kind?

  “I’ve been running a background process on the sensor logs from yesterday. You know, checking for anomalies, scrubbing the noise. I found a ghost.”

  My fingers froze over the holographic keyboard. “Define ghost.”

  Danny noticed the pause. He tilted his head, watching me. “Nikki? You okay?”

  “Fine,” I said quickly, flashing a plastic smile. “Just… forgot a variable. Calculating.”

  “A ghost,” Handy continued, his voice dropping to a serious, digitized whisper, “is a signal fragment buried under the ambient radiation. I almost missed it. It only appeared for three seconds during the confrontation with the Sliders.”

  And?

  “And it’s a Pandora signature. High-level. Encrypted. The same frequency key used by their retrieval squads.”

  The world stopped.

  The hum of the library servers vanished. The smell of floor wax disappeared, replaced by the sharp, metallic tang of adrenaline flooding my mouth.

  Pandora was there.

  Yesterday. In the alley.

  My mind raced, rewinding the tape of the fight. The Sliders. Bozo the Clown and his vibro-knife. The way they had circled us, taunting, stalling.

  I had thought they were just junkies looking for a quick score. Scavengers.

  Idiot, I thought, my nails digging into the edge of the desk. They weren’t scavengers. They were scouts.

  A proximity alert. That meant a tracker, or a drone, or a handler was within fifty feet of us. The Sliders must have been tagged. Or maybe one of them was the asset.

  My stomach plunged.

  If Pandora was watching the Sliders, and the Sliders were watching us… then Pandora had seen me.

  They had seen Nikki Nova, the girl who wasn't supposed to be in Sector 4. They had seen me standing next to Danny.

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  Danny.

  I looked at him. He was studying the hologram again, tracing a line of decay with a long, pale finger. He looked calm. oblivious. Just a transfer student with a sun allergy and a brooding complex.

  He was fragile. I’d seen him shaking under the awning. I’d seen him flinch at the sunlight.

  If Pandora came for me, they wouldn’t stop to ask for his ID. They’d process him. They’d tear him apart just to clear the playing field.

  Handy, I whispered internally. Certainty level?

  “99.8%. That signal is distinct. It’s the digital equivalent of a death warrant.”

  Panic, cold and sharp, sliced through the fog of attraction.

  I had to get him away from me. Now.

  I was radioactive. I was a walking target. Every second he spent in my orbit was a second the crosshairs were painting his chest.

  “Nikki?” Danny asked again. He touched my arm lightly.

  I jerked back as if he’d burned me.

  The chair screeched against the linoleum—a harsh, tearing sound that made half the library look up.

  “I have to go,” I blurted out.

  I grabbed my bag, shoving the tablet inside so hard I heard the screen protector crack.

  Danny blinked, his hand still hovering in the air where my arm had been. “What? We’re not done. We still need to run the regression model.”

  “I can’t,” I said. I stood up, putting the chair between us. A barrier. A wall. “I… I forgot. Cheer practice. Mandatory. Coach Reynolds is on a warpath. If I’m late, she’ll turn me into a pom-pom.”

  He frowned. The confusion in his eyes shifted, sharpening into suspicion. He stood up too, unfolding his height until he loomed over the desk.

  “Practice isn’t for another hour,” he said slowly. “You told me your schedule.”

  Darn his memory.

  “Schedule changed,” I lied, my voice tight. “Emergency pep rally. School spirit crisis. You know how it is.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

  He stepped around the desk. He moved with that fluid, eerie grace that usually made my knees weak. Now, it just made me terrified for him.

  “Nikki, you’re shaking.”

  “Too much caffeine,” I snapped, backing away. “Look, Danny. This… this project. It’s too much.”

  “Too much work? We’re almost finished.”

  “No. Too much… everything.” I waved my hand vaguely between us, encompassing the map, the library, the air that felt too heavy to breathe. “I can’t do it. I can’t be your partner.”

  He stopped. His face went still, the mask sliding back into place. That unreadable, marble smoothness.

  “You’re quitting?”

  “I’m prioritizing,” I said, clutching my bag to my chest like a shield. “My grades are slipping. My squad needs me. I don’t have time to wander around the Rust Belt looking at moss.”

  “We were a good team,” he said. His voice was quiet, but it carried. “On the roof. You said it yourself. We’re magnetic.”

  “Magnets repel too,” I shot back.

  I saw the hurt flash in his eyes—a quick, dark flicker before he buried it. It felt like I’d just kicked a puppy. A very dangerous, very handsome puppy.

  Do it, the wolf growled. Protect the pack. Exile the weak.

  “Find a new partner,” I said, my throat burning. “Ask Perkins. He loves decay. He’ll go to the sewers with you.”

  “I don’t want Perkins,” Danny said.

  He took a step closer. The magnetic pull revved up, a low hum in my bones. He smelled of rain and iron, and I wanted to step into him so badly it hurt.

  “I want to know what just happened,” he said, searching my face. “One minute we’re mapping radiation, and the next you’re running for the door. Did I say something?”

  “No.”

  “Did I do something?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is it?”

  He leaned in, dropping his voice to a whisper that scraped against my nerves.

  “Are you afraid of the project, Nikki? Or are you afraid of me?”

  The question hung in the air, suspended in the silence of the library.

  Yes, I thought. I’m afraid of what you make me feel. I’m afraid of the way my blood sings when you’re close. But mostly, I’m afraid that if you stay with me, you’re going to end up on a slab in a Pandora lab.

  My face heated up. I could feel the blush rising from my neck, a betrayal of my physiology.

  He saw it. His eyes narrowed, tracking the flush.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I lied, forcing a scoff. “You catch lunch trays and wear too much sunscreen. You’re hardly terrifying.”

  “Then stay.”

  “I can’t.”

  I gripped the strap of my bag until my fingers went numb.

  “I’ll send you the notes,” I said, my voice trembling slightly. “Whatever data I have. You can finish the write-up. You’re smart. You don’t need me.”

  “I think I do,” he murmured.

  It broke me a little. Just a hairline fracture in the center of my chest.

  “Bye, Danny,” I whispered.

  I turned and walked away.

  I didn't run this time. Running showed fear. Running attracted predators.

  I walked. I kept my chin up, my steps measured and rhythmic on the carpet. Right, left, right, left.

  I passed the stacks of physical books. I passed the librarian shushing a group of freshmen. I passed the exit sensors.

  But I could feel him.

  It was a physical weight on my shoulder blades. A burn.

  He wasn't looking at the map. He wasn't packing up his bag.

  He was standing exactly where I left him, in the shadow of the data terminal, watching me go.

  “He’s staring,” Handy confirmed, his voice devoid of its usual snark. “Heart rate analysis suggests… disappointment. And elevated alertness. He knows you’re lying, Nikki.”

  “I know,” I muttered, pushing through the turnstile.

  “Pandora signature is fading from the buffer,” Handy added. “But the threat remains. You did the logical thing. Survival probability for Subject Danny Troy has increased by 15%.”

  “Great,” I said, stepping into the chaotic noise of the hallway. “So why do I feel like I just failed the test?”

  “Because logic sucks,” Handy said. “And apparently, so does being a hero.”

  I merged into the stream of students, letting the noise wash over me. I needed to get to my locker. I needed to check the Black Box. I needed to make sure the encrypted key was still safe.

  But all I could think about was the boy in the library, standing alone in the blue light, waiting for a partner who wasn't coming back.

  Safe, I told myself. He’s safe.

  But the wolf in my head paced in circles, whining at the loss of the pack, scratching at the door I had just slammed shut.

  And deep down, I had a terrible feeling that Danny Troy wasn't the kind of guy who stayed left behind.