The sweat was still cooling on my skin, and the echo of my own cries was still hanging in the air of Kai's office. For a moment—just one heartbeat—I had felt safe in his arms. I had felt like his touch was the only thing keeping my molecules from drifting apart.
But then I saw the screen. 00:54:21.
Kai was still hovering over me, his forehead resting against mine, his breathing heavy and ragged. He looked human. He looked vulnerable. And that was my mistake. I had almost forgotten that he was the man who had bought me at an auction and put a vibrating weight inside my body.
"I need to get you to the medical bay downstairs," Kai muttered, his voice thick with the after-effects of our passion. He started to pull away to find his clothes. "The extraction triggered a secondary surge. We need to stabilize your blood before—"
"Before I blow up your tower?" I finished for him, sitting up and pulling the ruins of my charcoal gown over my chest.
"Before I lose you," he corrected, his eyes flashing with a sudden, fierce intensity.
He turned his back to me for three seconds—just three seconds—to reach for his holster on the desk. That was the window. That was the "False Hope" I had been waiting for.
I didn't run for the main door. I knew it was biometric. I ran for the private washroom.
"Amara?" Kai's voice sharpened with suspicion.
"I'm going to be sick, Kai! Give me a second!" I slammed the washroom door and locked it.
I didn't go to the toilet. I went to the service hatch behind the vanity—the one I had noticed when I was "exploring" the office layout earlier. It was small, designed for plumbing maintenance, but with the "Subject Six" transformation, my body felt leaner, more agile.
I squeezed through, the jagged metal of the hatch tearing at my silk dress, scratching my thighs. I didn't care about the pain. I only cared about the timer in my head.
00:48:10.
I was in the dark, narrow veins of the building—the service shafts. I climbed down the ladder, my hands slick with sweat. My heart was thundering, and the violet light in my veins was illuminating the dust around me like a ghostly glow-stick.
I'm going to make it, I thought. Marcus is out there. My mother's secrets are out there. I just have to get to the street.
KAI'S POV
"Amara, open the door."
Silence.
My blood turned to ice. I didn't wait. I kicked the door off its hinges, the wood splintering like matchsticks. The washroom was empty. The service hatch was hanging open, a scrap of charcoal silk caught on the latch like a mocking flag of surrender.
"You little fool," I growled, my hand trembling as I gripped my gun.
She thought she was escaping. She thought she was running toward freedom. She didn't realize that her body was calibrated to my proximity. If she got more than five hundred yards away from me while that countdown was active, the stabilization would fail completely.
She wasn't running to life. She was running to a suicide she didn't understand.
"All units!" I roared into my comms, sprinting out of the office and toward the emergency stairs. "Seal the perimeter! Do not use lethal force! If a single hair on her head is harmed, I will burn this city to the ground with all of you in it!"
AMARA'S POV
I hit the ground floor. The basement garage.
It was freezing down here. I could see the exit—the ramp leading up to the rainy streets of the city. I saw a delivery van idling near the loading dock. The driver was gone, likely scared off by the alarms.
This was it. My escape.
I scrambled into the driver's seat, the engine humming beneath me. I shifted into gear and floored it. I felt a surge of triumph as I burst through the security gate, the rain hitting the windshield.
"I'm free," I whispered, tears blurring my violet vision. "I'm actually free."
I drove for six blocks. Then ten. The city lights were a blur. I looked at the digital clock on the dashboard.
00:30:05.
Suddenly, a sharp, agonizing cramp seized my chest. It felt like my heart was being twisted by a red-hot pair of pliers. The violet light in my veins began to pulse violently, so bright it was reflecting off the steering wheel.
"No... no, not now!"
I looked in the rearview mirror. Behind me, a single set of blacked-out headlights was gaining fast. A black SUV, moving like a predator through the rain.
I tried to turn the wheel, but my muscles were locking up. The "Anchor" was too far away. My body was literally falling apart because I wasn't touching him.
The black SUV pulled a precision PIT maneuver, slamming into the back of the van. I spun out, the world turning upside down as the van flipped onto its side, skidding across the wet pavement.
Everything went quiet. Just the sound of the rain and the ticking in my ears.
The door of the van was ripped off its hinges. A pair of expensive leather shoes stepped into the puddle in front of my face.
Kai reached in, his face a mask of absolute, terrifying fury. He didn't say a word. He grabbed me by the waist and hauled me out of the wreckage.
"Please..." I whimpered, the pain in my chest instantly dulling the second his skin touched mine.
"Rule Number One, Amara," he hissed, his voice a low, lethal vibration. He pinned me against the side of his SUV in the pouring rain, his body crushing mine. "You broke it. You tried to leave your anchor."
He didn't take me back to the car. He pushed me down onto the wet hood of the SUV, his hands roughly searching my body for injuries before settling on my hips.
"You want to see what happens when you run?" he growled, unbuckling his belt. "You want to see how I punish a masterpiece that tries to break itself?"
In the middle of the dark street, under the pouring rain, with the sirens of his private security approaching in the distance, Kai claimed me again. It wasn't romantic. It was raw, territorial, and filled with the rage of a man who had almost lost his soul.
I looked up at the rainy sky, the violet light in my eyes fading back to hazel as his touch restabilized my blood. I had failed. The "False Hope" was gone. I wasn't an empress. I wasn't a hero.
I was just a woman who couldn't even breathe without her monster.