Broken Circuit

Kade’s hand was still locked around Vera’s when the tenement lights went out.

The corridor dropped into blue emergency glow, every cracked wall turning the color of old bruises. Somewhere below, a generator coughed and failed. The silence that followed was too complete for the Undercity. No pipes groaning. No arguments through thin walls. No market music bleeding up from the street.

Only Vera’s breath against his shoulder.

“Tell me that was planned,” she murmured.

Kade tightened his fingers around hers. Their bond answered - not with words, not exactly, but with the warm pressure beneath his ribs that had become hers by choice. A living current. A second pulse threaded through his own.

“I was going to say the same thing.”

Her laugh was quiet, edged with exhaustion. She leaned into him, silk sleeve brushing his bare forearm. They had spent the afternoon carrying salvaged furniture up six flights, arguing over which window leaked less, and pretending the room they had rented was a beginning instead of a shelter with a lock that barely worked.

On the floor behind them, a paper bag held two bowls of steaming broth and a bottle of cheap citrus liquor. Their first meal in the Undercity as bonded partners. Their first night without a corporate alarm, a military handler, or someone waiting to decide what their bodies were worth.

Kade had wanted one quiet evening.

Just one.

The emergency lights flickered back. A woman screamed on the floor below.

Vera’s hand went cold in his.

The sound cut off sharply, followed by a burst of running feet. Doors opened. Voices rose through the stairwell.

Kade reached for the knife at his hip.

“Stay here,” he said.

Vera turned her head. In the blue light, her eyes caught silver. “You’ve known me long enough to stop saying that.”

“I’ve known you long enough to know you’ll follow me into a gunfight barefoot.”

“I have boots.”

“Vera.”

The name carried more than warning. It carried the instinct to shield her, the old reflex he had promised himself would not become another cage.

She felt it. Their bond made hiding impossible.

Her expression tightened. “Don’t make my choice for me.”

The stairwell erupted.

A man slammed into the railing below, striking metal hard enough to bend it. He wore a gray utility coat, one sleeve torn open at the shoulder. A woman followed him with jerking, unnatural speed. Her pupils were blown wide, iridescent circuitry crawling beneath the skin of her throat.

The man looked up.

For half a second, Kade saw only terror.

Then the woman seized his jaw and dragged his face toward hers.

“Don’t look away,” she whispered.

The bond between them flashed visible in the dark - a strand of pale light stretched from sternum to sternum, snapping taut whenever either moved. It was not like Kade’s link with Vera. His bond flowed, responsive and warm. This one pulled like wire through flesh.

The man clawed at her wrist. “Sable, stop.”

She smiled at him with blood on her teeth.

Kade knew that voice.

He knew the scar splitting the man’s left eyebrow. Knew the way he favored his right knee. Knew the old military shorthand tattooed behind his ear.

“Ryn,” Kade said.

The man’s head jerked toward him.

Recognition crossed his face, followed by something worse. “Ronin?”

Vera stepped beside Kade, her shoulder touching his. The contact steadied him, but the bond flared at the sight of Ryn and Sable, reacting to the pressure in the air.

Sable noticed.

Her gaze dropped to their joined hands. “You chose yours.”

Kade kept his knife low. “Put him down.”

“She chose me too.” Sable’s fingers tightened around Ryn’s throat. “They all choose, in the end. They just lie about when.”

Ryn’s face had gone gray. “Kade, get her away from me.”

Sable’s smile vanished.

The corridor lights burst overhead.

A wave of invisible force slammed through the building. Every bonded nerve in Kade’s body lit at once. His knees struck the floor. Vera gasped beside him, fingers crushing his.

For one violent instant, he felt everything she felt: the electric bite in her spine, the old terror of being reduced to a system, the desperate need to reach him through the pain.

Then the connection stuttered.

Not gone. Never gone.

But distorted.

Kade tasted metal. He heard Vera’s voice as if from the far end of a tunnel.

“Kade - look at me.”

He forced his eyes open.

Sable had released Ryn. The pair stood in the center of the corridor, their link blazing white between them. Doors slammed all along the tenement. People shouted below. A child began crying.

Ryn staggered toward the stairs.

Sable followed, not walking so much as being dragged by the bond.

Kade pushed himself upright. Vera caught his arm.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

He looked down. A thin line of red ran from his nose to his mouth.

“So are you.”

She wiped beneath his nose with her thumb, then stared at the blood on her skin. The gesture was intimate enough to hurt.

“Suppression failure,” she said.

...