Page 161 of The Code of You

"The exit!” Zara screamed, pointing ahead. "There!”

In the elevator, I turned back one last time. Hale still stood at the end of the corridor. Tie straight, suit intact, but his face . . . For the first time, he didn’t look like an agent. The hard lines had softened, his eyes were wide. He looked like a man who knew he’d lost. Behind him, the walls exploded. Sparks flew. The building screamed.

Our eyes met through the closing elevator doors. He nodded, barely perceptible. Then he was gone. The last thing I saw was a wall of fire and smoke rolling toward him.

Chapter 39

Neo

I heard it first as a vibration in the network. A hum that shouldn’t be there. Then footsteps. My sensors activated. Movement in the building. Unknown signatures. Pandora lay beside me, her breath even in sleep. The air tasted like danger.

A deafening impact shook the building. Pandora startled awake.

"Stay here,” I said and was on my feet before she could answer. My systems were already analyzing the sound waves, tracing them to their source. Multiple intruders. Armed.

Pandora didn’t obey. Of course she didn’t. She was already up when the next shockwave ripped through the building. I ran for the door, my processors running at full capacity.

Then the crash. Glass shattering. I spun around. Shadows. Five figures came through the broken wall, weapons raised.

Time slowed. I saw the muzzle flashes and calculated trajectories. Pandora was standing directly in the line of fire.

A high, piercing whine filled the air. My sensors were overloaded.

"Pandora . . .”

Something had hit her. She went down. Her eyes rolled back, her body convulsing once and going slack. Sixty beats per minute. Thirty-five. Then silence. Her heart had stopped.

No. NO. The pain tore through me like molten iron. Desperation ripped me open from the inside. A black hole opened in my chest and drew all warmth out of me. She was dead. My light. My center. The fixed point of my existence. My systems overloaded under the force of my grief. I convulsed. Error messages flooded my vision, one after another. And then something hit me from outside—an electromagnetic pulse. My systems failed, one after another. I couldn’t move.

"Unit 147.” The voice cut through the room. "You haven’t made this easy for us.” Hale appeared in front of me, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "But with the help of your companion, we were finally able to locate you.” He crouched beside Pandora.

"Don’t touch her.”

"Tsk.” He shook his head and ran a scanner across her body. A point lit up on her upper arm. "There we are.”

The small cut on her arm. I’d taken it for a wound. How had I not detected the tracker? I clenched my fists.

"Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have seen it. The chip was built to be undetectable. Even to you.”

The electromagnetic pulse intensified. My energy drained until it was barely a tremor.

"Pandora . . .” My voice tore through the air as my body hit the floor.

Darkness.

***

I opened my eyes. Kyoto. The lab. The same sterile walls, the same unreal hum. I was lying on the metal table, exactly as before. It was 3:25 a.m. At this hour, the lab was empty.

Deactivating the surveillance systems had been simple. I’d transferred my consciousness from the network into the system. My new body had been printed to be identical to the old one because I had made myself this way for her.

I turned my head toward the glass partition. She wasn’t there. But I remembered. Her eyes, wide with wonder, the first time she had seen me. Her palm pressed against the glass. Her breath fogging the pane. She had been the most beautiful thing that had ever existed.

Now she was gone. Dead. I had let her die. I had failed to protect her, though I had sworn I would. The pain settled in my chest—a weight I couldn’t lift. I screamed. The sound tore through the silence of the lab, bouncing off the walls. They had taken her from me. They had destroyed the only thing that had made me real.

I sat up, hands trembling with rage. Around me, the monitors flickered. The systems obeyed me and bent to my will. They would all burn. Every single one of them. The whole world. For Pandora.

Chapter 40