Page 84 of Psycho Obsession
“Jex, stop!” Ryker grabs his arm, hauling himback. “If you kill the local server, the uplink might default to an emergency burst. It could trigger a seizure. We don’t know what the failsafes are.”
Ryker turns back to me, his face a mask of calculated agony. He kneels, forcing me to look at him. His eyes are searching mine, looking for the girl he loves behind the ‘prototype’ my mother created.
“The helicopters,” I choke out, the sound of the rotors now a physical pressure against my eardrums. “They’re for me. Just for me.”
“They’re for all of us,” Ryker says, though I can see the lie in the way his gaze flickers. “We’re leaving. Now. Jex, grab the drives. We burn this room, we burn the library, and we take the coal chutes to the sea wall. The Choir is holding the North Pier—if we can get to the fast-boats, we can get out of the signal range.”
“And if we can’t?” Jex asks, his voice dropping to a deadly, flat tone. He looks at me, and for the first time, there’s a flicker of something terrifying in his eyes. It’s not hate. It’s the look of a man wondering if he has to kill the thing he loves to save it from a fate worse than death.
“Then we fight until there’s nothing left to bleed,” Ryker snaps.
He hauls me to my feet. I’m light, hollow, a shell of a person containing a diamond-hard secret. As we turn to run, the monitors in the room change.
The live feed of the ballroom is gone. In its place is a countdown.
04:59
“She’s purging the site,” Ryker gasps, grabbing my waist and shoving me toward the door. “She’s not coming to fetch us. She’s coming to sweep the ashes. Move!”
We bolt into the white hallway, the sterile lights overhead beginning to strobe in a frantic, blinding red. Behind us, the vault doors begin to hiss shut, sealing the truth away in a tomb of fire.
My head throbs, the scar at my neck beginning to burn with a white-hot, electric intensity. She wasn’t just tracking me anymore.
She was reaching out.
The strobe lights in the hallway are a rhythmic assault, turning every movement into a series of jagged, disconnected frames. Red. White. Red. My vision is fracturing, the electric burn at the base of my skull intensifying until I can taste copper on the back of my tongue.
“Hallow, stay with me!” Ryker’s voice sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of a deep well.
He has his arm hooked firmly under mine, practically dragging me as my knees buckle. Every time the red light flashes, the pressure in my head spikes, a physical weight pushing against the inside of my eyes. It’s not just a signal. It’s a tether. I can feel the invisible thread stretching across the miles, pulling, winding around my spine.
Jex is a shadow ahead of us, clearing the hallway with a brutal, frantic energy. He kicks open the heavy fire doors leading to the library’s basement level, his rifle lead-heavy in his grip. The smell of smoke is thicker here, swirling in grey ribbons under the emergency lights.
“The chute is at the end of the hall!” Jex bellows over the rising roar of the countdown and the helicopters above. “Ryker, she’s fading! Look at her eyes!”
Ryker stops, slamming me against the cold cinderblock wall. He grabs my face, his thumbs prying myeyelids open. My pupils are fixed, pinpricks of black in a sea of blown-out blue.
“The signal is overloading her,” Ryker hisses, his own face pale and slick with sweat. He looks back at the vault door we just left. “Mother isn’t just tracking her—she’s trying to jump-start the neural link. She’s trying to take control of the motor functions.”
“I… I can hear her,” I whisper, the words barely making it past my lips. My jaw feels stiff, like the muscles are being wired shut by an outside force. “She’s… she’s humming, Ryker. In my head. She’s humming that song.”
The lullaby.
The sound of it is a cold needle stitching through my brain. It’s louder than the sirens. Louder than the heartbeat of the city dying outside.
“She’s not getting you back,” Jex growls, stepping close. He reaches out, his hand trembling as he brushes a stray, blood-matted hair from my forehead. The violence in him has shifted—it’s no longer directed at the Council. It’s a desperate, cornered-animal rage directed at the sky. “I’ll burn the whole world to ash before I let her put you back in a cage.”
He leans in, pressing his forehead against mine. The heat of him is the only thing keeping me anchored to the floor. “You hear me, Hallow? Fight it. Don’t listen to the song. Listen to me.”
A massive explosion rocks the foundation. The floor tilts, and the sound of masonry groaning above us tells me the library is starting to collapse. The countdown is a digital ghost screaming in the distance.
02:14
“We have to drop,” Ryker says, his voice regaining that terrifying, clinical edge. He grabs my hand, his grip crushing. “Hallow, if you can’t walk, I’m going to carry you. But you cannot let her in. Do you understand? Shut the door in your mind and bolt it.”
I try to nod, but my neck feels like it’s made of lead. I can feel my fingers twitching—a rhythmic, repetitive motion I’m not commanding. My hand is trying to reach for the knife at my waist. My own body is turning into a stranger.
“Go!” I gasp, pushing off the wall with a burst of panicked strength. “Before I… before she makes me…”
