Rain came down like silver nails as we moved through the corpse of the city. The storm smelled of burning wires and rotting meat, a fitting stench for what we'd become.
Rook limped beside me, his breathing hard. The golden veins under his skin pulsed brighter with every step, the stolen System code rewriting him from the inside out. Which is entirely my fault. I'd forced the hive merge to save him, and now he was the one paying the price.
"Still with me?" I asked, pressing a hand to his chest. His heartbeat thundered against my palm too fast, too wrong.
He caught my wrist, his new eyes cutting through the dark. "Worry about him first."
A shadow moved between the b
Cloth less remains of skyscrapers.
Kai. Not Kai.
The thing wearing his face stepped into the open,with its white eyes glowing like searchlights. His once-familiar features were twisted into something cold and alien, his smile stretching too wide.
"You look tired, little sister." His voice was layered, a chorus of whispers under them. The Architect's voice.
I raised my gun. "I'll sleep only when you're dead."
Bullets wouldn't kill him. Of course,I knew that.
But I kept firing anyway, each shot forcing him back as we danced across the rooftop.
"You're wasting time," the Kai-thing taunted, catching my fist mid-swing. His skin burned against mine, not with heat, but with the icy chill of the System's core. "He only wants to talk."
I drove my knee into his gut. "He shouldn't have sent you as his messenger."
Something fractured in those white eyes. Just for a second, I saw my Kai, the one who'd taught me to fight, who'd bandaged my scraped knees, who'd whispered "I'll always find you" the night Lillian first tried to erase me.
Then it was gone.
The Kai-thing slammed me against the rooftop ledge, my spine cracking against concrete. "You're being childish. He made*you. Show some respect."
Rook's scream reached the air as he tackled Kai off me, his golden-veined hands locking around the impostor's throat. "Get out of his head!"
The struggle was very much brutal. Fists cracking ribs. Knees going deep into guts. Rook fought like a man possessed, because he was. The System fragments inside him recognized the Architect's control, hated it.
It gave me time to pull the one weapon that might work.
Lillian's neurotoxin injector.
I plunged it into Kai's neck.
Kai's body went still, black veins spiderwebbing from the injection site. His mouth opened in a silent scream as the Architect's control flashed—
And for three precious seconds, my Kai looked at me.
"Ari," he choked, blood bubbling on his lips. "Listen—"
I grabbed his face. "Where is he?"
Kai's hand trembled as he pressed something into my palm, a data chip slick with his blood. "Voss Tower... sublevel six... He's not..." A seizure wracked his body. "Not human anymore..."
Then his eyes turned white again.
The Architect's laughter poured from Kai's mouth. "Oh, Ariella. You should have taken my deal."
I shot Kai between the eyes.
His body crumpled. Silence.
Then—
System Alert:Hostile connection severed. Warning: Architect initiating final protocol.
Rook collapsed beside me, holding his head tightly as golden light erupted from his eyes, his mouth, his veins. The System code inside him was reacting, and it was burning him alive.
I grabbed him. "Fight it!"
"I can't—" His back arched. "It's calling me—"
The data chip in my hand activated, projecting a hologram into the rain.
A man stood there. Tall with silver hair . Eyes the same fractured green as mine.
Dr. Elias Voss.
My father.
The first words he'd ever spoken to me:
"Come home, daughter. Let me show you what you truly are."
Rook was dying.
Kai was gone.
The Hollow Men were converging on our location, drawn by the Architect's call.
And my father?
He'd just invited me into the lion's den.
I looked at Rook, his body failing, his mind destroying and made my decision.
"Time to meet the devil," I whispered, slinging his arm over my shoulders.
We vanished into the storm.