If they were hurt, they’d heal.
If they were killed . . .
I refused to let my mind go there.
This wasn’t about us.
I pressed my palms to the CPU’s fingerprint recognition software and shot a burst of current through the system, hacking into their mainframe.
Overhead, the red lights stopped flashing, blinked once, and then once again. And then remained on.
A new loop began on the speaker system: “Destruct sequence activated. All personnel evacuate the building. This is not a drill.”
A new countdown clock had begun.
TYLER
I PRESSED THE BUTTON IMPATIENTLY, SHIFTING anxiously on my feet.
Overhead, the monotone voice echoed off the walls. “All personnel must now be evacuated. Autodestruct set to commence in two minutes.” That was new, the audio countdown.
This whole ordeal was almost over.
I jammed my thumb at the elevator’s button one last time, deciding some kind of security protocol must have overridden the system and I’d missed my chance.
Then, just as I was about to give up, the doors slid open and I leaped inside. I still had Dr. Clarke’s key card, the one Kyra had given us in case we came up against any security measures, and I swiped it, my pulse pounding recklessly.
“All personnel must now be evacuated. Autodestruct set to commence in one minute forty-five seconds.” I didn’t want that to be the last voice I ever heard.
When the doors slid open again, I was facing a room full of computers. I did a quick survey, all the time I could afford, and an unsettling thought knocked the wind out of me: something had gone wrong. Kyra had made a run for it.
Then . . . I sensed her.
She was still here, just not on this floor. My mouth went dry as I stabbed the button again.
As the doors finally opened, I exited to the main floor, and I felt her presence . . . her awareness that I’d come back . . . her confusion and anger and reluctant pleasure all mixed up, all at once.
“Tyler? What the hell?” Kyra said, wasting no time coming to me. I wondered if she knew her cheeks flushed when she was pissed, and that it only made her more beautiful.
The voice intruded on our reunion. “All personnel must now be evacuated. Autodestruct set to commence in one minute fifteen seconds.”
“That?” she said, pointing at the ceiling despondently. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Shut up,” I told her and reached for her. “This isn’t the time to tell me what I should or shouldn’t be doing.” I put my mouth to hers, not a kiss exactly, but the promise of one. Her lips parted and I could taste her breath. I could feel her heart beneath mine. “You said no one wins the girl, but you’re wrong.”
And with that, I made good on my promise, kissing her so completely, so thoroughly, she didn’t have the chance to argue. Her tongue was sweet and familiar, and I couldn’t imagine how I’d ever forgotten her. Forgotten this.
I felt whole and alive. This was where I wanted to die.
Overhead, the speaker announced two more countdowns, leaving us less than a minute by the time I released her.
“Why’d you come up here?” I asked gently. Softly.
“I knew I couldn’t make it out in time, but I thought, maybe . . . maybe I could find a place to see the sky . . . the stars one last time.” Her lips were swollen and her eyes were glossy. “You should’ve gone.” But this time when she said it, she gave me a crooked smile and I knew, even without reading her, she didn’t mean a single word.
“Liar.”
She shrugged, and I pulled her into my arms.
“All personnel must now be evacuated. Autodestruct set to commence in thirty seconds.”
Against my chest, she jerked.
“You scared?” I whispered.
“So scared,” she answered truthfully. “How do you think it’ll happen?”
I half shook my head and half shrugged because I had no idea. But I all-the-way held on as tight as I could. I listened to her breathing . . . in and out, in and out, until the voice gave us our fifteen-second warning.
“I’ll remember you always,” I told her, this time out loud because I wanted the last things we said to each other to be spoken . . . human.
She looked up at me, her eyes fat with tears as she answered back, “I’ll remember you always.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“THREE . . .” THE VOICE OVERHEAD DRONED ITS final notes.
It was okay. I was okay . . .
“Two . . .”
Tyler was here. We were together.
“One . . .”
The first blast came from several floors below—the Basement most likely, where the ships were. Followed immediately by a second and a third. I didn’t even flinch as Tyler’s arms closed around me, trying to shield me from whatever was coming.
When the flashes came, they weren’t in sync with the explosions, but I felt them all the same . . .
Tiny pinpricks, like holes being cut right through me . . . all over my body. A million, billion, trillion infinitesimal stingers plunging into my skin.