Chapter 5

At precisely 9:00 a.m., Jazmin signed the last page of the divorce agreement. The Garretts' lawyer, a man with a perpetually pinched face, slid a cashier's check across the polished conference table. It was an obscene amount of money, enough to live a hundred lives of luxury. To Jazmin, it was just a number. A resource.

Adrian was there, his face a thundercloud. Melody hovered beside him, her attempts at smug glances bouncing right off Jazmin's wall of indifference.

Jazmin walked out of the law office and into the crisp morning air. She took a deep breath. It didn't smell like freedom. It just smelled like New York: exhaust fumes and roasted nuts.

She checked her watch. 9:45 a.m. Fifteen minutes until her mysterious appointment.

She hailed a cab and gave the driver the address for the corner of 5th and 59th. The cab dropped her off across from the Plaza Hotel. She paid the driver and stepped onto the crowded sidewalk, just another face in the river of people flowing down the avenue.

She stood there, watching the traffic, waiting.

Then she heard it. A low, guttural roar that cut through the city's symphony of noise. It wasn't the sound of a normal engine. It was something angrier, more powerful.

A black, heavily modified SUV shot around the corner from 58th street, its tires screaming in protest.

Jazmin's enhanced vision instantly calculated its trajectory and speed. It was moving at well over sixty miles an hour. And it was aimed directly at her.

Her body tensed, muscles coiling, ready to leap out of the way. She could have been ten feet away in a fraction of a second.

But a different thought, a cold, clinical curiosity, took hold.

Let's test the damage threshold of this avatar.

She stood her ground.

The impact was immense. A bone-jarring collision of metal and flesh. The sound of the crash-a deafening boom of twisted steel and shattering glass-was drowned out by the collective screams of a dozen pedestrians.

Jazmin's body was thrown nearly fifty feet, a rag doll tossed by a giant. She hit the pavement with a sickening thud, the world dissolving into a brief, silent darkness.

The SUV screeched to a halt half a block away. The passenger door opened, and a bodyguard pushed out a man in a wheelchair.

The man was Iain Mendez. His face was a sculpture of sharp angles and cold beauty, his eyes the color of a winter sky. He watched the scene with the detached interest of a scientist observing an experiment.

A crowd was already forming. Phones were out, recording. Someone was shouting that they were calling 911.

Iain gestured for his bodyguard to check on the body.

The moment the guard's fingers touched Jazmin's shoulder, her eyes snapped open. The pupils glowed for a split second with a faint, red light.

She sat up.

A ripple of gasps and horrified shrieks went through the crowd. People scrambled backward. The bodyguard fell on his backside, his face pale with terror.

Jazmin slowly, deliberately, twisted her neck until it produced a series of loud, sickening cracks, resetting the vertebrae that had been snapped out of place. Inside, she could feel a strange, accelerated process taking place-the faint grinding of bone knitting itself back together, the tingling sensation of torn muscle fibers reweaving at an impossible rate. It was less a recovery and more a system diagnostic, correcting for unexpected physical trauma.

For the first time, Iain Mendez's cold composure wavered. His pupils constricted, and a flicker of something that looked like manic excitement lit up his face.

Jazmin got to her feet. She brushed the dust and glass from her clothes. Her gaze swept past the terrified crowd, past the approaching sirens, and locked onto the man in the wheelchair.

She recognized him. Iain Mendez. The name triggered a cascade of data in her mind, pulled from some deep, internal source. A key figure, flagged with the highest possible security clearance and a danger rating marked simply as 'Unknown.' The system offered no guidance on whether he was an ally or an enemy.

She started walking toward him, her steps steady and purposeful, ignoring the police officers who were now shouting at her to stay put.

She stopped directly in front of his wheelchair, looking down at him. A small, knowing smile played on her lips.

"Nice car," she said, her voice clear and steady. "But next time you try to run someone over, you might want to remember the brake pedal."

Iain didn't react with anger or surprise. He simply raised a hand, his long, elegant fingers reaching for her face. He gently brushed a smear of blood from her cheek.

The instant his skin touched hers, Jazmin felt a faint, static-like probe against her consciousness. It was weak, clumsy, but unmistakable. He was trying to read her mind.

And he was hitting a wall of pure, silent white noise.

Iain's fingers froze. His mask of cool detachment finally cracked, revealing a sliver of raw, stunned disbelief. He had never, in his entire life, encountered a mind he couldn't enter.

Jazmin slapped his hand away.

"Trying to read my thoughts?" she said, her voice low and mocking. "You're not qualified."

A slow, dangerous smile spread across Iain's face. The shock was gone, replaced by an intense, predatory curiosity.

"Interesting," he said. "Let's talk."