I coughed violently as the smoke thickened. People ran past me, frantic and desperate, pushing for the exits.
Something struck me in the back. A syringe. Cold liquid flooded my spine. Darkness surged, immediate and familiar.
“Echo…” I mumbled as I fell to the ground.
Hands grabbed at me, latching onto my covered skin. I tried to fight them off, but I was too weak. I kicked. I lashed out.
“Take her,” Marr snapped. “She’s destabilising.”
I dug my nails into the floor as if I could claw through the tiles. They dragged me anyway.
Below me, blood smeared across the ground. My blood—dripping from my face, my nose. Red streaked and distorted the white.
We passed a doorway. I grabbed for it, fingers slipping. No one dared touch my bare skin to pry me loose. They just kept pulling.
Until—
Someone moved around me with inhuman speed.
I saw a guard hurled into a wall. Another’s head was torn clean from his body.
More screaming. Gunfire.
I took the opportunity and scrabbled away. I could barely see. Bodies hit the floor around me. From the corner of my eye, I saw Marr’s men dragging him down the corridor, away from me.
Beside me lay a guard. In his hand was a pass.
I stared at it, unblinking.
Then I grabbed it.
I pulled myself upright against the wall. In front of me was a keypad beside a window. I looked through the glass and saw her.
Amelia Ambrose.
She watched me with blank eyes on the other side of the glass.
Worse—she had no aura.
No glow. No presence.
Only darkness. Like her light had been stripped bare — and something else was wearing her skin.
I don’t know why I did it. The pull came from somewhere deep and cold — not my thoughts, but my power.
I pressed the card to the reader.
The door opened.
Amelia stepped out slowly, drawn to me like a moth to a flame.
For a moment I felt a tug on my flesh, like I had inadvertently summoned her.
Black tendrils of darkness floated around her — not hers, but answering me.
I stumbled back. She looked at me once—then smiled, silent and unsettlingly blank—and turned toward the guards.
She raised her hands.
