Twenty minutes after declaring war, I was losing.

  Crumpled paper, broken tools, and the wreckage of a folding chair I’d thrown against the wall when Simulation #43 ended with “SUBJECT TERMINATED,” littered the Kennel floor.

  I’d tried to be strategic. I’d run every combat scenario Handy’s processor could handle. Frontal assault? Dead in twelve seconds. Submersible approach? Dead in eight. Stealth infiltration? Detected by thermal sensors at three hundred yards. Dead.

  I stood in the center of the mess, chest heaving, sweat cooling on my skin in the damp underground air. It smelled like ozone, cheap energy drinks, and my panic-sweat.

  “Simulation #44 complete,” Handy chirped. “Result: Subject terminated. Casualty: Hostage terminated.”

  I kicked a socket wrench across the room. It clanged against an oil drum, the sound sharp and lonely in the empty space.

  “Run it again,” I rasped.

  “Nikki, repeating the simulation will not alter the geometry of the ambush. North Pier is a tactical dead end. The probability of survival remains below 2%.”

  My legs gave out. I sank onto the concrete, the fight draining out of me like water from a cracked cup. I pulled my knees to my chest, staring at the graffiti-scarred wall. Someone had spray-painted “MOLLY + REZA 4EVER” in neon green, then crossed it out in black. Fitting.

  My phone was somewhere in the dark—I’d thrown it after the seventh time Mom called. The screen had cracked against the far wall. Good. I didn’t deserve to hear her voice. Didn’t deserve the hope I knew would be in it.

  I couldn’t stay in that house. I couldn’t watch my dad stare out the window or watch Mom make tea for a daughter who wasn’t there. Every second I sat in my bedroom was a second Jackie sat in a cage.

  Jackie’s stuffed rabbit sat on the workbench where I’d left it days ago. Pink. Floppy ears. One button eye hanging by a thread because I’d promised to fix it and never did. The other eye was starting to come loose too. I’d noticed it last week. Said I’d get to it this weekend.

  Another promise broken.

  My throat closed. The tears had stopped an hour ago, but the ache stayed lodged in my chest like a bone stuck in a wolf’s throat. Every breath scraped. The cold from the floor was seeping into my jeans, making my legs numb. I didn’t move.

  “Nikki.” Handy’s voice crackled from the wristband. Electronic. Flat. Annoying. “Vital signs indicate rapidly increasing cortisol levels. You are entering a non-functional emotional state.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Crying reduces combat efficiency by approximately 40%. Hyperventilating reduces oxygen to the frontal cortex. Strategic analysis suggests you calm down.”

  “I said shut up.” My voice came out flat. Dead. Someone else’s voice.

  The AI went quiet.

  Brick Crusher was supposed to be dead, but they’d brought him back. Turned his corpse into a monster. Chrome and hydraulics and glowing red death. Deathlok. They had given him my sister’s face as a target and pointed him at the one person in the world I’d burn cities for.

  I pressed my palms against my eyes until phosphenes swam like electric jellyfish in the darkness. The pressure helped. A little. My nail polish was chipped—purple, three days old. Jackie had painted it for me. Made me sit still for twenty minutes while she concentrated, tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth.

  “Do you have a sister, Handy?” I dropped my hands. The Kennel swam into focus—oil drums, scattered tools, the portable generator humming in the corner. “Do you have anyone you’d die for?”

  “I have several backups I am quite fond of.”

  “Right. So you don’t get it.” I stood. My legs shook. Pins and needles shot through my feet. “You don’t get what it’s like to know you’re the reason someone you love is about to—”

  I couldn’t finish. The words stuck in my throat.

  Jackie, sitting in some dark room. Scared. Crying for me. Maybe hurt. Maybe hungry—she was picky about food, refused to eat anything green. Probably terrified out of her eight-year-old mind. And it was my fault. I’d gone to the shipping yard. I’d stolen Pandora’s data. I’d made myself a threat.

  I’d painted the target.

  “This is my mess,” I said. “Mine.”

  “The allocation of blame is irrelevant to the objective,” Handy said, his tone clipped. “Guilt consumes processing power required for tactical planning. Delete it.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I laughed. It came out bitter and wrong, scraping my throat raw. “Oh, cool. Great. Just delete my feelings. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “He exists because of me!” The shout tore out of my chest. Bounced off the concrete walls, came back at me twice as loud. “I killed him. I created the monster. Me. And now he’s going to—”

  My voice broke.

  The Kennel fell silent except for the generator’s low rumble and the distant hiss of traffic on the street above. Somewhere a siren wailed. Someone else’s emergency. Someone else’s nightmare.

  I sank onto the edge of the workbench. Wood bit into the backs of my thighs through my jeans. I picked up the rabbit. Its fake fur was matted, worn smooth where Jackie held it every night. She’d named it Mr. Buttons. She’d made me promise to keep him safe when she went to summer camp last year. Had cried when I’d tried to leave him behind.

  I’d kept the rabbit safe.

  I couldn’t keep her safe.

  “You are spiraling,” Handy said quietly.

  “Yeah. No kidding.”

  “It is counterproductive.”

  “Wow. Thanks. I’m cured.” I traced Mr. Buttons’ threadbare ear. The stitching was coming apart there too.

  The wristband’s interface flickered. “Fact: You are seventeen. Fact: An illegal genetic experiment bit you. Fact: Pandora Corporation chose to weaponize a corpse and kidnap a child. These are variables outside your control. Focusing on them is inefficient.”

  “Doesn’t matter whose sins they are if Jackie dies.” My voice came out hoarse.

  “Correct. So ensure she does not die.”

  I lifted my head. Stared at the wristband. The blue interface light reflected off an oil slick on the floor.

  “Show me the location again,” I said.

  Handy projected the map onto the dirty floor. North Pier. A long finger of concrete jutting out into Lake Michigan, lined with old warehouses and rusted cranes. The red marker blinked at the very end of the pier.

  “North Pier,” Handy droned, outlining the geography. “Single entry point. Single exit point. The approach is a six-hundred-yard straight line with zero cover. Warehouses on both sides provide elevated sniper positions. The water is deep enough for submersible extraction or reinforcements.”

  I stared at the blinking red light. It looked like a heartbeat.

  “It’s a kill box,” I rasped.

  “Correct,” Handy said. “Tactical analysis indicates a 98% probability of ambush. Even with your enhanced speed and regeneration, if you walk onto that pier alone at 23:00 hours, you will not leave.”

  “He knows I know that.”

  “Yes. But he also knows you have no leverage. He holds the asset. You have to walk into the fire to get her back.”

  I looked at the map. The long, narrow pier. The water. The traps waiting in every shadow. If I went there, I died. If I died, Jackie died. Or worse, Pandora kept her. Raised her in a lab. Turned her into something like me.

  “They want me broken,” I said. “They want me scared and stupid and walking into their trap because I’m desperate.”

  “Desperation is a predictable variable.”

  “So I stop being desperate.”

  I set the rabbit down carefully. Positioned him so both eyes faced forward. Stood. Rolled my shoulders. My spine cracked. I felt the shift deep in my chest—the wolf waking up, shaking off the lethargy. The human part of me wanted to cry. The wolf part looked at the map and saw only terrain.

  Terrain that favored the enemy.

  “I’m not going to North Pier,” I said. My voice came out steady. Calm. Wrong in a different way now—cold and smooth like a blade.

  “Nikki, if you miss the deadline—”

  “I’m not missing it. I’m changing it.”

  I grabbed my jacket off the floor. Shook off the dust and concrete grit. Checked the pockets—three protein bars, a folding knife, the stolen keycard from Pandora’s east facility.

  “Handy,” I said, staring at the map until the red light burned into my vision. “You said Deathlok is running on Brick’s old neural patterns, right? Weaponized, digitized… but it’s still him.”

  “The core personality matrix is derived from Brick Crusher, yes. But Pandora’s protocols shackle his cognitive functions.”

  “But he still has an ego.”

  “Data suggests his combat style retains elements of arrogance, yes.”

  “Good.” I zipped up my jacket. “Because I’m going to use it.”

  I paced the small room. North Pier was their game board. Their rules. As long as I played by their rules, I lost. I needed a new board. Somewhere messy. Somewhere dangerous. Somewhere I knew better than they did.

  My eyes landed on the map again. Not the pier, but the city skyline behind it. One building stood out—a skeletal structure of steel and concrete near the lake, wrapped in cranes and scaffolding.

  ōkamiden Tower.

  The unfinished high-rise where the construction union had gone on strike three months ago. Open to the wind. No walls. A vertical maze of girders and drops. No place for snipers to hide without me seeing them. No single choke point.

  And high enough that if I threw a cyborg off the roof, he’d have a long time to think about gravity.

  “Handy,” I said. “Can you trace the signal back to Deathlok?”

  “The message originated from a localized burst transmission. I can’t pinpoint his exact GPS without an active link, but if we can keep him on a line for thirty seconds…”

  “I don’t need to find him,” I said. “I just need him to pick up the phone.”

  “You’re going to call him?” Handy sounded skeptical. “He is a combat unit, Nikki. He does not do chat lines.”

  “He’ll answer.” I felt the wolf stir under my skin—not in fear this time, but in anticipation. “He thinks he’s the predator. He thinks I’m the rabbit.” I glanced at Mr. Buttons on the workbench. “He’s waiting for me to show up at the slaughterhouse.”

  “And when you don’t?”

  “Then I give him a better offer.”

  I sat back down on the floor, crossing my legs. I closed my eyes for a second, picturing Jackie’s face. The gap-toothed smile. The way she hugged me when I came home from practice.

  I’m coming, shrimp. But I’m doing it my way.

  I opened my eyes. The blue light of the wristband reflected in them, hard and cold.

  “Handy,” I said. “Get me a secure line.”