Jorak
Beside me, Asa is a shadow in the dim emergency lighting, his breathing rhythmic and intentional. He is counting. I know he’s counting because his fingers are tapping a sequence against the strap of his bag.
I reach out, my hand finding the small of his back. Through the thin fabric of his jacket, he radiates heat. He leans into the touch for a fraction of a second before straightening. He doesn't look at me, but I feel the shift in him, the way his pulse steadies just because I’m close.
"We’re three minutes behind Silas’s diversion," Asa whispers. His voice is dry, brittle as old parchment, but it doesn't shake. "Mercer will have the internal sensors bypassed by now. He’ll be looking for the drop in the node pressure, not us."
"Let him look," I say, my voice a low rumble that vibrates in my own chest. "If he finds us, he finds me first. You stay behind the line, Asa. No matter what happens, you don't step into the suppression radius until I’ve cleared the primary discharge."
Asa finally looks at me, his eyes sharp and bright in the gloom. "Jorak, if I stay behind the line, you’ll burn through your nervous system in ten minutes. We’re doing this together. That wasn't a suggestion; it’s the math."
"The math doesn't account for what I’ll do if they touch you," I growl. The Black Current stirs under my skin, a thousand needles of entropic power looking for a way out. I can feel the suppression network ahead of us, a massive, failing heart of corrupted energy that wants to swallow everything.
He reaches up, his palm cupping my jaw. His skin is soft, a jarring contrast to the jagged edges of my own life. "Then make sure they don't get the chance. Focus, Enigma. I need you focused."
The first security door is a thick slab of reinforced steel, humming with a low-grade suppression field designed to keep assets like me in their place.
To a normal person, it’s an impenetrable wall.
To me, it’s a knot of bad energy waiting to be unraveled.
I don't use a keycard. I don't use a code.
I simply reach out and place my palm against the cold metal, letting the Black Current bleed from my fingertips.
The power isn't a scream; it’s a hungry, silent erasure.
I watch the localized suppression field flicker and die, the electronics inside the door groaning as I dismantle their atomic structure.
The lock thuds open, the heavy steel swinging wide as if the building itself is exhaling in relief.
I step through first, my body a shield, my eyes scanning the corridor for the gray uniforms of Mercer’s tactical teams.
They’re waiting for us at the end of the hall. Four of them, armed with high-frequency pulse rifles. They don't give a warning. They don't ask for a surrender. They know what I am. They fire simultaneously, the blue bolts of energy streaking toward us.
I don't think. I don't strategize. I simply move. I am a blur of shadow and static, my hand coming up to catch the first bolt, the energy dissolving into nothingness against my palm. I am upon them before they can recalibrate. I don't use the Current; I use my hands.
I catch the first guard by the throat, the armor of his gorget crumpling like tin foil under my grip.
I slam him into the wall, the sound of breaking bone muffled by the sudden, violent roar of the building’s alarms. The second guard tries to swing his rifle butt at my head, but I catch the weapon, snapping the barrel with a single twist before driving my elbow into his solar plexus. He drops, gasping.
"Jorak!" Asa’s voice cuts through the red haze in my mind. "Left! High!"
I spin, the Black Current erupting from my shoulders in a jagged arc of obsidian light.
It catches a third guard who was leveling a secondary sidearm from a balcony above, the power shearing through the railing and the man’s leg in a single, surgical strike.
He falls, screaming, but I’m already moving toward the fourth.
My fingers are curled into claws, the hunger to end them, to remove every obstacle in Asa’s path, burning like acid in my veins.
I have the fourth guard pinned against the floor, my hand raised for a killing blow, when I feel a cool, firm hand wrap around my wrist. It shouldn't be possible. No one touches me when the Current is active. No one survives the friction of my power when I’m this close to the edge.
"Leave him," Asa says. He is standing right over me, his face pale, his scent of pear and vanilla cutting through the ozone. "He’s not a threat anymore, Jorak. Look at him. He’s done.
We have to move. The central node is cycling up.
If we don't reach the access port in the next ninety seconds, the sequence will lock. "
I look down at the man beneath me. He’s weeping, his face a mask of blood and snot, his hands shaking as he tries to push himself away from me. I let him go, the Black Current receding slightly, though it still hums with frustrated energy.
"You’re too close," I rasp, my throat feeling like I’ve swallowed glass. "Asa, get back. If I lose control—"
"You won't," he says, and the sheer, arrogant certainty in his voice does more to ground me than any suppression drug Mercer ever forced down my throat. "You won't lose control because I’m the one holding the map. Now, get up. We have a city to save, and I’m fairly certain I’m going to throw up if we stay in this hallway much longer. "
I stand, my hand automatically finding his. Our fingers lock, and the sensation is like a circuit being completed. The static under my skin doesn't vanish, but it aligns. His voice doesn't pull like a chain. It gives me somewhere to put the violence.
We run, our boots thudding against the metal grates as we descend deeper into the bowels of the facility, past smoking servers and flickering lights.
Above us, I can feel the chaos Silas is causing.
The building shudders as a remote explosion rocks the upper levels, the Unbound keeping the perimeter busy exactly the way their maps said they would.
Mira will be pushing the records now, the Anchor files and the distance-testing logs flooding every news outlet in Redbrook.
We reach the central chamber, a vast, circular space dominated by a pulsing column of violet light.
It’s the heart of the suppression network, the place where all the city’s stray power is buried and left to rot.
The air here is heavy, thick with the smell of scorched earth and old lightning.
It’s a pressure that makes my teeth ache.
Asa steps into the radius beside me before I can tell him not to. His face is pale, his hand cold when it locks with mine, but he doesn't move back.
Behind us, boots slam against the corridor grates. Mercer’s teams are still coming. Above us, the Unbound are tearing holes in the perimeter, and somewhere in the city, Mira is putting the truth where Mercer can’t bury it again.
I snarl at the first guard who lifts a weapon toward Asa.
"Aim at him," I say, "and I’ll cut the hand off first."
Then I turn back to the corrupted heart of Redbrook with Asa’s hand locked in mine.