“I didn’t have a choice, 41.” His hand hovered over the panic button on his belt—the one that would flood the cell with neural neutralizer. “Who unblocked you?”
He slapped the emergency override. The massive door groaned open. 41 unblocked
She opened her eyes. They were the color of old honey. “No one. The block expired.” “I didn’t have a choice, 41
The Acheron was a decommissioned deep-space freighter, its forty-two cells arranged in a spiral around a core of liquid helium. Inmate 41’s cell was at the very bottom, Level 9, behind six inches of lead-lined carbonite. By the time Jay reached the access corridor, the lights were already flickering—not from power failure, but from her . Her consciousness was bleeding through the walls like cold smoke. “I didn’t have a choice