Ward’s grip on my wrist tightened into a vice.
“Guards!” he bellowed, his voice fracturing the dead silence. “Lock down Sector 4! Lethal force authorized!”
The hallway’s cold blue lights instantly snapped to a violent, strobing crimson. Alarms shrieked. The heavy thud of combat boots echoed down the marble corridors, converging on our position.
I tried to wrench my arm away, but the old man was unnaturally strong.
“General, let me go!” I shouted.
“I can’t,” he hissed, his eyes wide and unblinking.
He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at my knuckles.
Because the tiny scars weren’t just scars anymore. Under the red emergency strobes, they were moving. Sub-dermal lines shifted and reconfigured beneath my skin, glowing with a faint, sickening pulse of bioluminescent gold—the exact color of the dropped coin.
My blood suddenly felt like boiling lead. It felt like a million microscopic gears were waking up in my veins.
“Your father didn’t die in a helicopter crash, Lieutenant,” Ward said, his voice trembling as he shoved me back and unholstered his sidearm. He leveled the heavy barrel directly at my chest. “He stole Project Carter. The military’s first sentient biological hard drive. And he hid the apex predator inside his own daughter.”
“What are you—” I gasped, falling to my knees as the burning intensified.
“That coin was a magnetic dampener,” Ward whispered, his finger tightening on the trigger. “As long as you held it, the weapon slept. Dropping it just initiated the boot sequence.”
A sudden, deafening crack echoed through my skull. Not in the room. *Inside my head.*
Instantly, the fear vanished. The pain stopped.
My muscles coiled with a terrifying, lethal precision I had never felt before. I looked up at the General’s gun, calculating its exact trajectory, velocity, and my window to disarm him—all in a fraction of a millisecond.
Then, a voice echoed clearly in my mind. Deep, familiar, and dead for twenty years.
*Time to wake up, sweetheart. Let’s show them what we can do.*