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Eldridge turned her head, dragging the barrel across her scar. “I’m already dead. You just haven’t caught up yet.”

Leo thumbed back the hammer of his pistol, the sound far too loud in the room. “Either Korolov comes through that door, or this ends with you. Right now.” His lips twisted as if being close to Eldridge left a foul taste in his mouth.

“All your eggs in one basket, Landon? Never a good idea.” Eldridge’s smile cut thin, revealing something desolate. “He’s already moved to the uplink control. You’ll never reach him before the clock does.”

“Fuck.” Leo lowered his gun.

Kat did the same, her gaze colliding with Leo’s.

His face was grave. “If we don’t have Korolov, we turn this place into a fucking crater.”

Every choice led to death. Every path forward was stained with blood.

A laugh, brittle as fractured glass, drifted from the doorway behind Kat.

“Looking for me, ptichka?”

Scent tickled her nostrils. Manufactured. Like air-freshener.

Then cold metal pressed against her temple.

She didn’t flinch. Couldn’t afford to.

But her heart lurched as the world snapped tight.

45

“On your knees.”

Leo fisted his hands at his sides, helpless, as Korolov’s gun jabbed at Kat’s temple.

Eldridge perched stiff-spined in her wheelchair, hands in her lap, the tablet still counting down crimson time, four yards to his left.

Korolov’s mouth warped. “Gun.”

Kat tossed her Glock. It skittered under the bed frame and clattered to a stop. She sank to her knees, eyes locked on Leo the whole way, her silence saying more than any scream.

Leo glanced at the tablet on Eldridge’s lap.

Less than seventeen minutes.

“Now you.” Korolov jerked his head. “All of them.”

Leo’s pulse beat against the inside of his skull. He could taste bitter panic yet his hands moved—first boot gun clattering on the floor, then, after a five-second eternity, the backup piece from the small of his back.

He straightened.

Korolov smiled. “Very good.” He ground the muzzle against Kat’s head and her eyes fluttered closed for a single breath.

A faint electric whine crawled through the building’s bones, scratching at Leo’s eardrums as the broadcast array powered up.

Sweat tracked down his spine, and static flared in his comms.

His brother Zak. “We’re not in yet. Thirty seconds to grid access. But once the countdown hits the terminal phase, we lose any override options.”

Leo couldn’t reply, and his fingers twitched uselessly at his thighs.

“Just a touch over sixteen minutes until evolution,” Korolov purred.