Page 76 of Rupture

His arm went numb, his vision strobed, and his lungs flattened.

As darkness closed in, a single thought embraced him.

Rose is safe.

43

Oh,my God.

“Finn.” Rose stumbled back from the screen, her hands clamped to her mouth. The helmet feed showed the device’s timer frozen with only minutes left. Disarmed. But Finn’s hands jerked into view, fingers contorted into rigid claws.

A pale, bloated shape drifted into his camera feed. A millipede. Its hideously oversized body nearly as long as Finn’s forearm.

“Finn.” Terror raised the pitch of her voice. “Answer me, goddammit.Finn.”

Static sputtered through the speakers. She didn’t even know if the comms still worked, if he could hear her desperate voice.

“Ethan. Liev.Finn’s hurt.”

“What the hell?” Ethan’s normally calm voice was brittle.

An alarm sounded. Finn’s bio-monitor readings flashed red. His heart rate was spiking and his oxygen levels plummeting.

Rose forced her attention to the station schematics, blood crashing in her ears. “Some kind of millipede. It’senormous. He’s unconscious and trapped in the vent. No response on comms.”

“En route.” Liev’s accented voice.

But neither of them were close enough.

Her eyes darted over to the schematics.Think.“I’m deploying MARV. It’s closer.” Her hands shook as she toggled from Finn’s helmet feed to MARV’s controls. The biohybrid’s systems lit up despite her fingers fumbling on the interface. She activated MARV’s cameras. Twin beams of yellow light carved through the murk as MARV moved off.

This was exactly the situation she’d built MARV for.

“Rose, you said millipede?”

“Yes—”

“Shit. Remipede.” Liev’s voice was razor-sharp.

“Christ.” Ethan hissed. “Rose, we’re tracking his beacon. There’s anti-venom in the emergency kit.”

Emergency kit?

She spun, scanning the room.

The red case blazed against the wall.

She sprinted across the floor, ripped the kit free, and dropped to her knees. Supplies scattered as she dumped the contents, fingers scrabbling through bandages and vials. Labels blurred past as her breath came in short, ragged bursts.

Where is it?

Anti-venom.

There.

She boosted to her feet, clutching the vial against her chest, and staggered back to the comms. “Ethan. I’ve got it.”

For so long, she’d believed the only person she could rely on was herself. Thea had drilled that lesson into her with every betrayal, every peace offering rejected. But Finn had shown her something else—trust didn’t have to be aweakness. And she wouldn’t stand by and let him die at the bottom of this godforsaken lake because of her sister’s vendetta.

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