I’ve been seen.
A trace is already running, pulling at the thread I tried to burn behind me. The question isn’t whether they’ll find me.
The question is how much time the burned nodes bought me.
I settle Percy on the bed and start packing.
He goes into the reinforced case I keep beneath the workstation, cushioned in shock-absorbent foam I stole from a shipping container my first week in the Splits. Backup drives disappear into the innerpocket of my jacket, flat against my body where I can track them by pressure and temperature. Secondary devices slide into the pockets sewn into the lining of my trousers, each one returning to its designated place.
The trembling starts in my chest. I don’t let it reach my hands. The window on the far wall is twenty-two inches wide. I measured it the day I moved in. Thanks to my less-than-ideal diet, I’ll fit.
The maintenance shaft beyond it leads to a ventilation junction four levels down, and from there into the lower warrens where the Splits dissolve into unmapped service tunnels.
Everything I own fits into minutes.
Percy in his case.
Backup drives in my jacket.
Devices in my pockets.
The ceramic mug stays on the workstation.
It won’t fit, and leaving it behind costs less than the half-second it would take to decide otherwise. I reach for the window latch, and the proximity alert on the secondary screen spikes from green to red.
Shit. Someone is in the corridor. Moving toward my door. I hear the single set of footsteps, steady and unhurried, carrying the confidence of someone who isn’t searching for the right apartment.
They already know which one they want.
I grab the emergency beacon from Percy’s case and wrap my other hand around the window latch. I wrench the latch sideways and shove Percy’s case through first, the reinforced corners scraping against the frame, and I’m halfway through the opening when the magnetic seal to my one and only door disengages.
I try to dive down the vent but an iron grip on my waist stops me.
Searing warmth radiates through the fabric of my shirt and into the skin beneath. The grip lifts me clean off the windowsill and draws meback against a chest so broad it blocks out the corridor beyond. The arm holding me is scaled, bronze in the dim light, and the strength in it feels effortless.
He’s holding me the way someone holds a glass they don’t intend to break. Not squeezing.
Containing.
Percy’s case is on the other side of the window, balanced on the maintenance shaft ledge, and the sight of it sends a spike of panic through my chest so sharp I can’t think past it.
“Let me go.” My words come out strangled, and not surprisingly, the male doesn’t let go. He tightens his hold.
His heat spreads along my shoulder blades, the curve of my spine, the small of my back. Every point where he touches me feels impossibly warm. Sethrai run hot. I’ve read it in cultural databases and intelligence briefings. Reading about it and being pressed against one are entirely different experiences.
“So you can continue with your escape? I don’t think so.”
The voice comes from above and behind me, low and rough-edged. The sound vibrates through me from where I’m pinned against him, each word settling somewhere behind my ribs.
I twist in his hold and get exactly as far as he allows, which is far enough to look up and confirm what the bronze scales, the heat pouring off him, and the override code already told me.
Sethrai.
House Sethrak.
The house whose network I was inside twenty minutes ago. The house whose encryption I peeled apart layer by layer before everything went catastrophically wrong.
Bronze scales catch the blue glow of my screens and fracture the light into copper and gold. He tilts his head, the movement smoothenough that something primitive in my hindbrain immediately labels it dangerous. Amber eyes with vertical pupils find mine.
