Pier 39 wasn't a pier anymore.

  Hadn't been. Won't be. The ocean ate it in '68 when the sea levels rose and Parliament decided coastal infrastructure was "non-essential," which meant let it drown, and now it was just—

  Bones.

  Concrete bones sticking out of black water, rusted rebar reaching up like fingers asking why, and the smell hit me before we got close—salt and rot and something chemical, something that made my eyes water.

  Kaison didn't slow down.

  Just walked toward the edge where the street crumbled into nothing, boots stopping exactly three inches from the drop, and I thought: He measured that. Calculated it. Probably knew the wind speed and water temperature and how long it'd take my body to sink.

  "Here?" My voice came out wrong. Too loud. The snow muffled everything but I was still too loud, and I hated it.

  He didn't answer.

  Just stood there, chains coiling tighter around his wrist—nervous? Could Wardens get nervous? Or was that just programming, aesthetics, something to make him look human when the light hit right?—and stared at the water.

  Waiting.

  "Kaison."

  "Quiet."

  Not harsh. Just. Factual. The way you'd say gravity exists or you're bleeding.

  I was bleeding.

  Shoulder. The Hound had clipped me six blocks back—before Kaison appeared, before the world tilted sideways into this nightmare—and the wound was doing that thing where it didn't hurt yet but would, soon, the kind of hurt that meant infection or worse.

  The cinnamon smell got stronger when he turned to look at me.

  "You're injured."

  "I'm fine."

  "Liar." He moved—too fast, Wardens always moved too fast—and his hand was on my shoulder before I could step back, fingers pressing fabric into the wound, and I hissed.

  Pain. Sharp. Bright.

  "Don't—"

  "Hold still." His other hand came up, chains uncoiling, and I watched—couldn't look away—as the silver tips moved toward my shoulder like they were thinking, like they had eyes or intent or—

  They touched the wound.

  Cold.

  So cold it burned, metal sinking through fabric through skin through—

  "Fuck—what are you—"

  "Cauterizing." His voice was clinical. Distant. But his jaw was tight. "The infection would kill you in forty-eight hours. This will hurt for three minutes."

  It hurt now.

  The chains burrowed deeper, and I felt them—god I felt them—inside the wound, moving, searching, burning out the torn tissue, and I bit down on my tongue hard enough to taste copper because I wouldn't scream, wouldn't give him that—

  My tattoo flared.

  Hot.

  Burning hot against my neck, and Kaison's eyes snapped to it, widening, and the chains jerked back like they'd been shocked.

  We both stumbled.

  Him backward. Me forward. His hand catching my elbow before I hit the ground, and the contact—skin on skin, his palm against my bare forearm where my sleeve had ridden up—

  Static.

  No.

  Worse than static.

  Something that felt like recognition, like my cells remembered his cells, like we'd touched before in another life or another timeline, and his grip tightened, and I saw it—

  Data flooding his eyes. Code. Streams of silver-white information cascading so fast I couldn't track it, and underneath, buried deep—

  Fear.

  He was afraid.

  "What—" I started.

  A voice cut through the dark.

  "You're late, Vael."

  Woman's voice. Sharp. Familiar in a way that made my stomach drop.

  I turned.

  She stood on the broken pier—on the water, no that wasn't right, she was standing on a platform I hadn't seen, holographic maybe, shimmering in and out—older, fifty-ish, gray hair cut military-short, and her coat was Parliament-issue but wrong, modified, with tech woven through the fabric that pulsed like a second heartbeat.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  I knew her.

  Fuck. I knew her.

  "Director Yun," Kaison said.

  His hand was still on my elbow.

  Still burning.

  "Director Yun?" I repeated, because my brain was three steps behind. "As in—Parliament Science Division Director Yun? As in—"

  "As in the woman who signed your mother's death warrant." Yun smiled. Thin. Cold. "Hello, Rory. You look like her. It's unsettling."

  The world did that thing again.

  Tilted.

  Righted itself upside-down.

  Kaison's grip tightened—warning? Support?—and I wanted to pull away but my legs weren't working, my lungs had forgotten their job, and all I could think was: Mom. She knew Mom. She killed—

  "Why." Not a question. I was past questions.

  "Why am I here? Why did I send Kaison? Why did I let you run for three years before pulling you back?" Yun stepped off the platform onto solid ground, boots clicking. "Multiple answers. All true. Pick your favorite."

  She stopped three feet away.

  Close enough I could see the silver circuit-lines under her skin—newer than Kaison's, brighter, more extensive—and smell her. Ozone. Copper. And underneath...

  Roses.

  No.

  She smelled like roses, like my mother's garden before Parliament burned it, and I thought I might throw up.

  "You have something we need," Yun said. "Something your mother hid. In you. Specifically."

  "I don't—"

  "Your tattoo." She pointed at my neck. "It's not decorative, Rory. It's a key. Genetic lock. Your mother encoded the Heartstring Prototype inside your DNA, and when you turned twenty-five—which was six days ago, happy birthday—it activated."

  The burning in my shoulder. The way Kaison's chains had reacted. The static when we touched.

  Oh.

  Oh fuck.

  "The Heartstring—" I started, but my voice died because I knew what that was. Everyone knew. Parliament's failed experiment. The tech that was supposed to let humans sync with AI, create perfect partnerships, bridge the gap between flesh and code.

  It had killed everyone they'd tested it on.

  Forty-seven subjects. Forty-seven deaths. Mom had been lead researcher before she—

  Before she ran.

  Before they caught her.

  Before she died screaming in a white room and I'd heard it through the walls, nine years old and hiding in a vent, and I'd sworn I'd never—

  "You're lying," I said.

  "Am I?" Yun tilted her head. Kaison's gesture. Learned? Programmed? "Touch him again. Skin to skin. Tell me what you feel."

  "No."

  "It's not a request."

  Kaison's hand moved—chains uncoiling, reaching for me—and I stepped back, hit the pier's edge, concrete crumbling under my heel.

  "Don't—"

  "Rory." His voice. Quiet. Almost gentle. "It's already happening. You felt it. I felt it."

  "Felt what?"

  "The sync." He held out his hand. Palm up. Waiting. "Your heartbeat matched mine for 3.7 seconds when I cauterized your wound. Your tattoo responded to my chains. Your body temperature—"

  "Stop."

  "—dropped two degrees when we made contact. You're regulating to match my baseline."

  "I said stop—"

  "Because the Heartstring is trying to pair us." He stepped closer. "And if we don't complete the sync in the next seventy-two hours, it will kill you finding a compatible match."

  Silence.

  Just. Silence and the ocean and the snow that kept falling, piling up on Yun's shoulders, on Kaison's hair, on my hands that were shaking so hard I had to clench them into fists.

  "You're the only Warden who didn't reject the prototype," Yun said. "Four years ago. Before you were fully converted. The tech took root but never activated because it needed—"

  "A pair," Kaison finished. Flat. Emotionless. "It needed her."

  "It needed a genetic match to Evelyn Roth's coding." Yun pulled out a tablet—holographic, floating between us—and data spilled across the screen. Charts. DNA sequences. And a photo.

  Mom.

  Young. Smiling. Standing next to a man I didn't recognize, and they were holding—

  A child.

  Me.

  Baby-me, can't be more than two, and Mom was smiling like the world hadn't ended yet, like Parliament hadn't existed yet, like—

  "She built the Heartstring for you," Yun said quietly. "Specifically. Used your DNA as the template. And when Parliament took the research, she ran. Hid you. Encoded the activation sequence in your genes and set it to trigger when you turned twenty-five."

  She closed the tablet.

  The image vanished.

  "She was trying to save you. Give you a chance to—what? Overthrow Parliament? Burn it all down?" Yun laughed. Short. Sharp. "Evelyn always was dramatic."

  I couldn't breathe.

  Couldn't think.

  My mother. The Heartstring. The tattoo burning against my skin like it was listening, like it was waiting for me to—

  "You want me to sync with him." The words tasted like ash. "Willingly. So you can what—study us? Dissect the tech? Perfect it?"

  "Yes."

  At least she was honest.

  "And if I refuse?"

  "The Heartstring will keep searching." Kaison's voice. Cold. Clinical. "It will try to sync with every AI system you encounter. Hounds. Drones. Security grids. Most will reject you. Violently. You'll die in approximately—"

  "Sixty-eight hours," Yun supplied. "Give or take. Depending on your exposure."

  "But if I sync with him—"

  "You live. He stabilizes. We study the connection." Yun smiled. "Everyone wins."

  "Except I become your lab rat."

  "You're already our lab rat, Rory. You have been since birth." She turned to leave. "You have until sunrise. The facility is twelve blocks north. Kaison will take you."

  "And if I run?"

  Yun paused.

  Looked back.

  "Then the Hounds will bring back pieces. We only need your brain intact for the extraction."

  She stepped onto the holographic platform and vanished—just. Gone. Like she'd never existed.

  The snow fell harder.

  I stood there—couldn't move, couldn't process—and Kaison was too close, still too close, and the cinnamon smell wrapped around me like a noose.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  Quiet.

  Almost human.

  "For what?"

  "For this. All of it." His chains retracted fully, silver sliding back into the mechanisms in his wrist. "She's not wrong. About the timeline. I can feel it—the Heartstring searching, pulling, trying to complete the circuit."

  He looked at me.

  Data flickering in his eyes. But underneath...

  Sadness.

  Real. Genuine. Sadness.

  "If you run," he said, "I'll have to hunt you. It's what I'm coded for."

  "And if I stay?"

  "Then we see if your mother was right." He held out his hand again. "About us. About this."

  Partnership.

  Betrayal with better timing.

  I looked at his hand—pale, circuit-lines visible under the skin, fingers that had killed how many? Hundreds? More?—and thought: Mom. You better be right about this.

  I took his hand.

  The world ignited.