Chapter 4

Joi sprinted down the ruined corridor. Her high heels crunched over shattered glass and scorched tiles. She didn't even look down.

She ran right past Aislinn. She didn't spare a single glance for the girl lying in the massive pool of blood, the flatlining monitor screaming from her wrist.

Joi threw herself onto the floor next to Gayla's convulsing, charred body. Her hands shook violently as she ripped an emergency life-support syringe from her pocket and jammed it straight into Gayla's carotid artery.

A trauma team rushed in right behind Joi, pushing a hovering stasis pod. The hallway was absolute chaos.

One of the paramedics glanced at Aislinn. He grabbed a portable defibrillator and took a step toward her lifeless body.

Joi whipped her head around. Her eyes were venomous.

"Leave that trash!" Joi screamed, her voice tearing her throat. "Focus everything on stabilizing Gayla's gene chain! Now!"

The paramedic flinched. He immediately dropped the paddles and rushed to help lift Gayla into the stasis pod.

Brennon stood frozen. Cold sweat dripped down his spine. He stared at Joi's back, his fists clenching and unclenching. He opened his mouth, the urge to say something fighting against his throat. But the weight of his family's alliance with the Dean crushed his vocal cords. He swallowed hard and stayed silent.

The trauma team rushed the pod away, the sirens fading down the hall. The students had already fled.

The heavy sensor doors at the end of the corridor hissed shut. They left Aislinn lying on the freezing tiles, abandoned like a piece of broken machinery.

Ten minutes passed in absolute silence.

Then, a wet, rattling cough broke the quiet.

Aislinn's chest jerked upward. The residual bio-electricity from the blast had pooled in her nervous system, acting as a natural pacemaker. It shocked her dead heart back into a sluggish, painful rhythm.

She forced her eyes open. The world was a blurry, spinning mess. Every single bone in her body felt like it had been pulverized with a hammer.

She didn't call for help. Her brain was crystal clear on one fact: in this Academy, letting them know she was alive was a death sentence.

Aislinn ground her teeth together. She reached out with blood-soaked hands and dug her fingernails into the grout between the floor tiles. She pulled.

Her body dragged forward an inch. The torn flesh on her chest screamed, fresh hot blood spilling over her ribs. Her eyes were completely devoid of warmth, burning with a cold, mechanical focus.

She dragged herself out of the light. She pulled her broken body into the shadows beneath the ventilation ducts, avoiding the main security cameras. She aimed for the abandoned D-Block dormitories.

It took her an hour to crawl two hundred yards. Behind her, the automated cleaning drones hummed to life, silently scrubbing her blood trail from the floor.

Finally, her bloody fingers brushed against the rusted metal door of her old D-Block room.

She pressed her thumb against the biometric scanner.

Beep. The lock disengaged.

The door slid open just enough for Aislinn to throw her weight against it and roll inside.

She slammed her hand against the manual override lock. The heavy bolts shot into place, sealing her off from the rest of the world.

Aislinn collapsed against the door. She gasped for air, her lungs burning like they were stuffed with hot coals.

Her trembling fingers reached up to her neck. She fumbled with the plain, black metal necklace she always wore. It was a dark matter drive she had scavenged in her past life. It was the only key to the Chimera Protocol.

She snapped the hidden clasp. A microscopic needle slid out from the metal pendant.

Without a second of hesitation, Aislinn jammed the needle directly into the jugular vein in her neck.

Ice-cold liquid dark matter flooded her bloodstream. It hit her heart like a freight train.

A holographic blue warning screen violently projected directly onto her retinas: WARNING. CHIMERA PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.