Coldwire

by Chloe Gong Narrated by Shannon Tyo

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

This is a fast-paced transportive cyberpunk read with a touch of romance. In a dystopia where the privileged subscribe to a life of virtual reality, a cold war ensues between two VR superpowers.

An instant New York Times bestseller!

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Chloe Gong comes the start of a daring new dystopian series where humanity has moved to virtual reality to flee their deteriorating world, following two young soldiers who must depend on unlikely allies in their fight for survival.

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To escape rising seas and rampant epidemics, most of society lives “upcountry” in glistening virtual reality, while those who can't afford the subscription are forced to remain in crumbling “downcountry.”

But upcountry isn't perfect. A cold war rages between two powerful nations, Medaluo and Atahua-and no one suffers for it more than the Medan orphans in Atahua. Their enrollment at Nile Military Academy is mandatory. Either serve as a soldier, or risk being labelled a spy.

Eirale graduated the academy and joined NileCorp's private forces downcountry, exactly as she was supposed to. Then Atahua's most wanted anarchist frames her for assassinating a government official, and she's given a choice: cooperate with him to search for a dangerous program in Medaluo or go down for treason.

Meanwhile, Lia is finishing her last year upcountry at Nile Military Academy. Paired with her academic nemesis for their final assignment, Lia is determined to beat him for valedictorian and prove her worth. But there may be far more at stake when their task to infiltrate Medaluo and track down an Atahuan traitor goes wrong...

Though Eirale and Lia tear through Medaluo on different planes of reality, the two start to suspect they are puzzle pieces in a larger conspiracy-and the closer they get to the truth, the closer their worlds come to a shattering collision.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Gong’s wit and dialogue transport readers into two heroines’ alternating POVs as they fight for their space in an unjust world. Well-choreographed action sequences keep the battles interesting, while characters embark on a fetch quest layered in corporate conspiracies. Gong’s worldbuilding addresses themes of identity, ­reality, and race, with the heroines’ statuses as second-class citizens vital to the plot. Subtle foreshadowing is hidden behind ­humor and emotional highs, ensuring attentive readers are rewarded but still surprised....This inventive and explosive beginning to a cyberpunk trilogy is a first purchase."— School Library Journal, starred review 10/1/25

"Gong capably explores themes of diaspora, corporate control, and artificial intelligence while spinning a labyrinthine mystery with a sprinkle of romance."— Publishers Weekly 9/8/2025

"This series opener maintains a crackling pace, with inventive worldbuilding and a cleverly executed reveal...
Inventive and engaging."— Kirkus Reviews 11/1/2025

"Chloe Gong has not only built an intricate cyberpunk world in Coldwire, but uses it to shine a searing light on our own reality—and the dangers that our future could hold. A breathtaking thrill ride by a masterful storyteller."— Marie Lu, New York Times bestselling author

“A high-voltage, whip-smart adventure that presents a future both eerily prescient and totally novel. Pulse-pounding and cinematic, with a twist that knocked the breath from me—I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.”— Ava Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Fable for the End of the World

"With gorgeous prose, propulsive action, and swoonworthy banter, Coldwire has skyrocketed to one of my favorite books of the year. Gong’s cyberpunk thriller is unputdownable!"— Axie Oh, New York Times bestselling author of The Floating World

"Super-charged with electrifying action, mindblowing twists, and timely commentary, Coldwire is a cyberpunk masterpiece ripe for our tumultuous new age."— Xiran Jay Zhao, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Iron Widow

"Chloe Gong is bringing cyberpunk back in the best way with Coldwire. This book is page-turning action set in a gritty world with twists you won't see coming. Executed with laser-precision that will leave readers wanting more."— Scott Reintgen, New York Times bestselling author of A Door in the Dark

Product Details

BN ID:	2940194721917
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	11/04/2025
Series:	The StrangeLoom Trilogy
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Eirale 1 EIRALE
At ten minutes to midnight, the riot bots detonate around the block.

Our ropes tremble, each suspended harness bracing against the shock waves slithering up the skyscraper’s exterior, but we stay put patiently, twenty floors overhead. By the time the protesters run in our direction, the tear gas will have dispersed fully from the explosions, exactly as we outlined at the base. They won’t see us.

“Capture unit, get ready.”

Anti-NileCorp protests are a common sight along Button City’s main avenues. When they get too unwieldy, NileCorp rolls in their riot bots on behalf of the Atahuan government, always faster on the scene than local police. Button City has more NileCorp warehouses per square foot than anywhere in the world. There’s going to be something at the ready no matter what sort of trouble disrupts.

I test my line. The hold loosens enough for me to take two careful steps down the vertical glass before glancing over my shoulder, tracking the panicked figures running below. There’s faint yelling, maybe. Hard to tell. My suit helmet does its best to block out nonessential noise.

“Mint, keep eyes on surveillance.” My earpiece continues to feed through. “Eirale, proceed to ground floor.”

Tonight’s demonstration is made up of truckers. They cobbled together their signs when a new line of NileCorp’s autonomous semis put tens of thousands out of work, and then NileCorp’s data scraping smoothly deposited their plans onto our radar. There’s a process to shutting down a protest quickly, efficiently. Riot bots steer the dissidents all to one side of the road. Tear gas explodes from the canisters and takes out their vision for a few hours—or a few days, with the unrulier troublemakers who try to tackle the bots. Before long the street will clear, and their resistance symbols copied off the internet will be nothing more than soggy signs disintegrating in the sidewalk puddles. Usually, there’s no need for the corporate soldiers, the units like us, to get involved.

We’re reserved for high-level hire. Such as capturing anarchists.

“All right,” Teryn declares, satisfied with the coverage we have. “Let’s go.”

I unlatch my carabiner, let the rope run slack. My suit screams a warning that I’m going too fast, that I’m going to hit the concrete and I should consider rappelling properly. The screen before my eyes flares red, trying to calculate the damage upon impact.

I turn the line taut suddenly. My harness seizes tight; I jolt to a stop just before my boots touch the ground. I haven’t been a NileCorp contractor for long. They assigned me to the Button City base six months ago. While everyone else in my grade who went the route of NileCorp private forces was posted directly after our final exams and sent downcountry to run amok in the real world, I wasted three months recovering. Still, all those years of military school have prepared me to be fast, faster than the NileCorp-issued suit that tries to propose my next movements for me. The red fades. The suit’s screen clears when I detach my harness.

My quick exhale warms the inside of my helmet. A row of billboards synchronizes on the street level, changing from Eveline ads to a news segment. I barely catch President Sterling taking the podium, the crawling ticker at the bottom announcing RELATIONS SOUR FURTHER WITH MEDALUO—INCIDENT IN THE NORTH SEA, before the tear gas has clouded my vision, closing over the top of my head.

My suit switches on infrared capabilities.

I was eavesdropping earlier in the barracks when Teryn received the emergency briefing for this mission. She hadn’t stepped far enough into the hallway before answering the video call on her handheld. The trucker protest was forming along Seventh, three blocks away. The riot bots would intentionally push them toward us and then detonate, conveniently offering cover from the surveillance cameras pointed at the entrances of our target building. It would save NileCorp from having footage of its forces barging into civilian businesses: more fodder to sell to the tabloids, more ammunition for hit pieces on the governance of Atahua and the country’s reliance on private military contractors.

“Everyone else, get to your assigned entrances. He’s not getting away this time.”

Gravel crunches underfoot when I pivot. I circle the exterior of the skyscraper, the tall lobby unmoving on the other side of the thick glass. Infrared shows nothing in my way at the back entrance. By official registration, some hedge fund owns the building, abandoned by well-to-do businesses who continue to pay rent but no longer perform operations on-site. One security guard clocks in during the day, then another is bought off after-hours once the nightclubs and tattoo parlors and dog-fighting rings set up shop. That’s classic downcountry.

“I’m in place,” I say. My voice is hoarse. I haven’t spoken aloud since we left the base. Teryn turns any complaint into a motivation speech, and if I’m not in the mood for her usual spiel, I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut.

“Enter the stairwell,” Teryn instructs immediately. “Get closer to the nightclub.”

I push through the back entrance, surprised to find it isn’t locked. In the dark, my suit warns there’s movement to my right, but it’s only a tendril of tear gas slipping through with me before I shut the glass door and hurry into the main lobby. The space is open-concept: dilapidated pillars that hold up a white ceiling, the front desk a strip of metal lifted by steel beams sprouting from the tiled floor. I make a cursory scan. Empty. I head toward the elevator hall.

“Ma’am.” Smith’s voice pipes through my earpiece, getting Teryn’s attention. Our unit is split down the middle among the six contractors. There’s Teryn, Mint, and me. New graduates. Fresh blood on the base, intent on doing a good job because our team leader, Wright, intimidates us. The other three don’t care about impressing him. They’re Nile Military Academy graduates who are a decade older, bored of the job and struggling to be granted a promotion that puts them in charge.

“Ma’am,” Smith prompts again. “The locks are broken on the second-level balconies.”

“What?” Teryn exclaims.

I push open the door to the stairwell. It’s quiet—and glaringly bright, doused in an intense violet from LED striplights running up all four corners. The infrared of my suit switches off automatically against the onslaught, but I still can’t see. I tap the back of my suit to open the helmet. The stairwell door shuts behind me.

“I’m moving up,” I report, drawing my firearm. “Nothing here—”

“Hey,” Mint interrupts into the comm line. “Our surveillance is scrambling.”

My steps pad up to the second floor quietly, the rest of my sentence forgotten. The nightclub is accessible from its main entrance along a skywalk, or from a side entrance leading into the building stairwell. Teryn and Mint have entered: Teryn as a field scout and Mint to keep watch using the cameras around her. Smith and Buchanan have eyes on the skywalk. Penrose stays on the platform jutting off the thirty-fifth floor, where we rappelled from, acting as a backup sniper. I’m the only one stationed here.

“From what?” Teryn demands.

“It’s signal interruption,” Mint replies. I come to a stop outside the nightclub, the faintest whisper of music thumping past the soundproof walls. At this I pause, my grip tightening on my firearm. The only entity that could block our signal is… “Someone from federal must be on the scene.”

“Why?”

No one answers Teryn. The Atahuan government offloaded this task to NileCorp, contracted us instead of a federal bureau to capture Nik Grant. But we’ve already attempted two capture missions and failed both times now, so maybe they’re losing patience.

“Federal only scrambles surveillance if they’re up to something,” Smith says. A snide edge colors his voice, obvious even through the comms. “I wonder what.”

Wright has been out of commission with an injury for weeks. Under normal circumstances, if Atahua’s most wanted anarchist entered Button City in that time, the task to mobilize and lead the charge that would apprehend him should have gone to another unit at the base, or to the contractor in our unit with the next highest seniority—Smith. Instead, they gave it to Teryn. Eighteen-year-old Teryn Moore, the niece of James Moore, the CEO of NileCorp.

“We won’t know until we know,” Teryn decides. Either she didn’t pick up Smith’s dig, or she chooses to ignore it. “Eirale, do you have a visual?”

“Negative,” I answer.

“Capture unit, proceed as planned. Our target is in the building.”

Teryn and I went to Nile Military Academy together, though the first time I spoke to her was after graduation, when I introduced myself in the Button City barracks. She was good enough to make valedictorian, yet I haven’t been able to match that repute to the soldier I’ve worked alongside. She’s capable, I suppose. She’s quick and she’s smart and she takes a few seconds every morning in front of the tiny mirror in the barracks to straighten the collar of her uniform and ensure that NileCorp’s logo is polished clean on her chest.

She also hesitates in the field and leads us astray during situations when we need cohesion. If we fail to close in on Nik Grant a third time, the rest of us are going to have our jobs on the line. Teryn, meanwhile, will be fine. No one fires their own niece.

“Any visual inside?” Smith asks.

“Negative,” Teryn answers. “Keep every balcony secured. Once we give chase, he will have no qualms about making a leap onto the street.”

I tap my foot, its echo traveling across the stone floor of the stairwell. We don’t have enough soldiers on the perimeter. Penrose should have been situated on the skywalk too. Or we should have combined with another unit and doubled our efforts, given our previous failures.

Nik Grant first gained public infamy after he bombed a military base outside the capital. Three casualties, one a commander… but more importantly, the damage took out a whole surveillance grid. The government flailed directionless for a week trying to determine the culprit and left the District of Melnova to operate blind until their servers were fixed. The nation speculated viciously about the possibility it was Medaluo’s work. A terrorist emerging among the ethnic Medans who called Atahua home. Someone recruited on their ancestral ties to turn the cold war hot. Then an identical bombing targeted a NileCorp base, taking out a team of contractors, and in hours NileCorp had identified the perpetrator and generated a headshot for the news. It confirmed he was Atahuan, born and raised. Unlikely an agent of a foreign enemy power, but rather a domestic anarchist. NileCorp didn’t release his name initially. Their representatives refused, in fact, which led to speculation that he was a former contractor with a grudge. That was quickly put to rest when they relented with a sprinkle of biographical information: he was only seventeen years old.

Considering these recent attacks, Atahua’s Federal Bureau of Defense has entrusted our security forces to execute justice, NileCorp announced in a statement. Due to the perpetrator’s status as a minor, we feel it is best to keep his information out of public scrutiny. Please report any sightings on the NileCorp website.

In the next footage the live camera crews got of him, he was spray-painting the rubble of his bomb site, finishing the last letter on his message—MY NAME IS NIK GRANT, LOL—before disappearing. A clear middle finger to NileCorp for wanting to conceal his identity.

With each of his subsequent attacks in the last few months, he has only grown larger than life. The news splatters headshots of Nik Grant to encourage Atahuans to report any information they have about his whereabouts, and the image continues to be no less baffling. He could have been one of my fellow cadets at the academy, slightly blond in the right light and frowning with the insolence of a class troublemaker. Atahuan media spins up one new theory after another about why he wants to destroy his own country—maybe a tragic past as an orphan, or secret parentage from an extremist group—all to avoid addressing the likely truth: he despises NileCorp, and he’s doing everything in his power to ruin the company. He’s become notorious for his slogans, all of which support absurd conspiracy theories but still spread like wildfire each time he spray-paints them over his bomb sites. NILECORP KILLS ITS CRITICS; INDISPOSITION IS REAL; LOG OFF BEFORE YOU LOSE YOUR MIND.

“The secretary of defense is here,” Mint suddenly declares. “I see him. At the back, near the bar.”

“Hm,” Teryn says. She hesitates. “I suppose we leave him to his business. It probably has nothing to do with our task.”

At least Teryn is very good at tame, controlled responses. Anyone else would have asked what sort of business Chip Graham could possibly have in a dingy downcountry nightclub. NileCorp contractors know our defense secretary’s face about as well as we know President Sterling’s. In times of war, while President Sterling addresses the public, we get Chip Graham. On paper he may be in charge of the Atahuan military, but the military has so many holes in its infrastructure that the country wouldn’t feel a difference if it were dissolved tomorrow. There’s no need to funnel money into the military when NileCorp exists to plug up the holes. NileCorp salutes to Chip’s directives instead and passes the assignments down a cohesive line of corporate soldiers.

“Possible target sighting near the tables,” Teryn reports. Her tone changes, sharpening for combat.

“Ready on your signal,” Smith prompts.

A few minutes pass. My palms prickle with sweat beneath my gloves. I adjust my grip on my firearm.

“Never mind,” Teryn says eventually. “It’s a look-alike. I’ve gone through the northwest quadrant. Mint?”

“Nothing in the south so far,” Mint answers. “Everyone’s moving around too much for me to confirm if I’ve surveilled all patrons.”

That’s the problem with trying to capture a fugitive in a nightclub.

“I’m seeing some movement in the third-floor offices,” Buchanan contributes. “Any chance of it being the target?”

“Can’t be.” Smith’s answer is slightly muffled—he’s turned away from his mic, speaking to Buchanan directly. “Ward’s on the stairwell. She’ll have seen him move.”

A new layer of sweat breaks down my back. It’s certainly impossible that he got past me. There’s only one route.

“He could have climbed the exterior,” Buchanan returns.

“If he’s climbing the exterior to get away from us,” Teryn says, “he would have made a break for it rather than approach the third floor.”

“Maybe he was already situated there,” Mint says. “It’s not the first time we haven’t—”

A scream interrupts the rest of her sentence, piercing into the shared comm link. I flinch, my hand flying up to my ear in haste. It must be someone directly beside Mint if her mic has picked it up. I barely have a moment to brace before the door in front of me flies open and a mass of patrons pour into the stairwell. They’re funneling from the thin hallway outside the nightclub’s side entrance, moving in such a stream that the two adjacent doors don’t have the opportunity to close behind anyone. It pierces a gaping hole throughthe nightclub’s soundproofing. The music is suddenly loud enough to taste, the bass piping up and down the stairwell.

“What’s going on?” Smith demands. “What’s all that screaming?”

I barely make way for the crush, pressing to the wall to avoid the patrons scrambling through the threshold of the exit and hurrying down the stairs. I catalog each of their faces, needing to ensure Nik Grant isn’t slipping out in this chaos, but the ultraviolet light plays tricks on my sight. Everything has an odd sheen to it.

“Excuse me!”

I grab a girl out of the crowd at random, stopping her in her tracks. Though she attempts to continue forward, her arm stretching out for a friend who proceeds without her, she can’t break free. My grip is immovable.

“What happened?” I demand.

They don’t turn off the thunderous music inside. I have to shout to be heard. Electric strobe lights dart into the stairwell too, slashing through the bodies like a skipping rope I’m not jumping with in time.

“Let go of me,” she screams. The three piercings through her left eyebrow catch the strobe. Its glare almost blots out my vision. “Someone fired a gun in there.”

I do let go of her then. My own firearm is still clutched in my other hand, hiding at my side. The girl is quick to run off down the steps. The rest of my unit continues shouting instructions through the earpiece, but I haven’t been listening. My attention returns to the patrons. Teenagers with scarves tied over their faces to hide from facial recognition cameras. Older men in suits ushered by personal guards.

A server in waitstaff uniform coming through the door and making an immediate right, walking up the stairs. I can’t make out any other detail under the strobe lights. It doesn’t matter. No one else is ascending.

I bolt forward, pushing through the crush of people.

“I’ve got him,” I say. “I’ve got him. He’s in the stairwell.”

The moment my feet hit the stairs, taking three at a time, Nik Grant bolts. He hurtles skyward, trading subtlety for speed. Teryn demands that I wait for her. Smith is yelling for me to hurry with a location so he can block Nik’s exit from the correct floor.

A bang echoes from above. One of the stairwell doors has been flung open, striking the wall. I crane my neck and risk looking up directly through the middle of the railing, catching the telltale flicker that betrays his location before its door closes again.

“Fifth floor,” I report. “Get to the fifth floor!”

I close the distance rapidly. There’s a moment of resistance when I try to tug—he’s tied something to the handle—but I yank again and snap the plastic cord that he looped with a knot.

I emerge into a ghostly hallway. The floors that aren’t utilized by downcountry opportunists appear largely the same, exactly how their owners left them. They’re the remains of abandoned offices, crowded with boxes along the walls and mold climbing up the side of the tall windows. I’m careful while I walk toward the open-plan desks, stepping over a broken chair arm and the faulty bolt lying beside it.

A creak sounds behind me.

I whirl around, lifting my firearm. “Freeze.”

Nik Grant goes still. There’s little light at the mouth of the hallway, so I can’t parse his expression. He lingers in the shadows, only half his face visible under blue and flickering pink bleeding in from the billboards on the street level.

“Put your hands up,” I say evenly.

His hands stay where they are. His head tilts. “You again.”

I was the one who almost got him on our last capture attempt. I had him blocked in, within a few feet and my cuffs prepared, but then somehow he’d set off a glaring flash bomb. By the time I opened my eyes, he was gone.

“There’s nowhere to run,” I say. “Put your hands up, or I have instructions to shoot.”

“You know, it’s never made sense to me why Wards work for NileCorp,” Nik says. His tone is easy, as though we’re making small talk on the bus. “It may be law that you enroll in military school, but no law says you have to continue on as a corporate soldier to clear your debt. What’s your opinion?”

I keep my arm steady. I don’t speak my question aloud, but…

“Yes, I know you’re a Ward,” he says, answering it anyway. “Eirale Ward. I looked you up.”

“I’m giving you three seconds.” It’s not a far cry to see a Medan face in Atahua and assume they’re a Ward. When the cold war between Atahua and Medaluo started, most Medans living in Atahua decided to flee rather than be treated as the enemy. For centuries there had been a significant presence of Medan immigrants in Atahua, and within a few years—as people raised the funds to escape to Cega or another island in the Western Territories—the number dropped to paltry amounts. Those who remain now either have too many ties to give up, or they’re orphans born into this war with nowhere else to go. Wards of the state, branded as property of Atahua down to the very name.

Nik Grant takes a step forward.

I shoot.

He avoids the first bullet, already moving out of its path before I pull the trigger. Despite everything I know, despite the hours we’ve spent on base watching surveillance footage of Nik Grant to prepare for apprehending him, I’m still taken back by how fast he is when he rams into me.

I avoid falling on a wholly instinctive lurch, regaining my balance right as he swings a fist. Instead of blocking him and risking my momentum, I veer away, then try to recover my stance and straighten my shooting arm, but Nik predicts where I turn. He grabs my elbow, twists, and suddenly I’m pressed chest-first to the wall, my firearm pointing skyward behind my back. My suit whines in the protest of danger.

“Tell me, soldier,” Nik Grant says into my ear. “Why were you posted in Kunlun last year?”

When the billboards go black outside, the darkness in the hallway turns whole and blanketing. There’s no boom, but the abrupt, accompanying silence indicates another detonation has gone off. An electromagnetic bomb somewhere in the building, cutting out the voices that had been piping through my comm link. My team can’t hear me. I’m on my own.

“What are you talking about?” I demand.

“It’s a very simple question,” Nik says. “Just tell me why you were posted there. Tell me what you did.”

I raise my foot behind me and kick, striking his knee. Though I hoped that would be enough for me to tug free, Nik doesn’t let go. He pushes my arm up, hard in the wrong direction with my shoulder. In that flash of screaming pain, I drop the weapon.

“I”—Nik kicks the gun with a huff, sending it skittering along the floorboards—“read your files. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

I slam my head backward. Nik grunts, his grip releasing, and I immediately swivel, searching for where my firearm has gone.

I get the feeling he’s allowing me to shift to the offensive now that he’s disarmed me. The hallway flares with abrupt green, lit by the advertisement that returns to life on the billboard directly outside. My earpiece offers a bit of static, too, then:

“Eirale? Eirale, come in—”

“I already said fifth floor,” I hiss into it. “Fifth floor, hurry up—”

Nik Grant is going to run for the windows.

I gauge it in the turn of his left shoe, in the flicker of his eyes under the awful green light and his attention latching on to the glass. The moment he starts forward, I lunge to stop him, colliding with him to send us both toppling to the floor.

“They will discard you, soldier.”

I slam my forearm over his clavicle. He stops struggling. Both his arms stay splayed on either side, locked where I can see them.

“Don’t move,” I seethe.

“They will use you, then discard you. If you’re lucky, maybe they’ll post you upcountry first. You won’t even feel it when you’re squeezed out.”

“Good,” I snap. “Maybe then I won’t have to watch your stupid tapes over and over again.”

Nik blinks. “Ouch.”

My earpiece keeps spitting overlapping voices at me. I finally use my free hand to grip the mic in my suit collar, shouting, “I said, fifth floor!” but seconds pass and Teryn continues asking for a location. I’m still blocked out.

I shift the smallest amount. Nik says, “Trouble getting through?”

His shoulder twitches beneath my arm. It’s only then that I notice he’s wearing an earpiece himself.

“Change of plans,” he says. He’s not talking to me. “I have something interesting here.”

“Excuse me?”

I catch the sleight of hand too late. A dark patch of something appears in Nik’s palm. By the time I’m attempting to move, to put distance between us, he’s already slapped it onto my neck.

I’m not unconscious for long.

Two minutes. Maybe three. I scramble upright, lurching into a sitting position.

I haven’t moved. I’m still on the fifth floor, the billboards continue to emit green into the hallway, and the window is wide open, the moth-bitten curtain fluttering with the wind.

Shit.

I wince, pulling the patch off my neck. The micro-needles across its surface emerge with a thin smear of blood. I’ll need to get the wound checked to make sure Nik Grant didn’t give me some disease.

“Can anyone hear me?”

The sudden cacophony of responses would confirm yes, I’m transmitting through the comm again. I stumble to my feet. There’s no chance that Nik will still be within sight, but I hurry to the window anyway. Indeed, he’s long disappeared, but my eyes widen to register eight, nine, ten black cars parked all around the building.

“Eirale, where did you go—”

“He was here,” I rush to say. “I went after him on the fifth floor. I’m coming back down.”

I shoulder through the door into the stairwell. It’s quiet. The ultraviolet LEDs have been replaced with an ugly, normal white light, calmer on my eyes while I round the landing, counting the fourth floor, then the third. Mint is trying to speak into her mic—“They want us out. They had a threat called”—and with someone else at the same time. She’s arguing with federal. Government people.

I make it back to the second floor, then along the thin hallway. Inside the nightclub, the lights have come on as well, white-blue to replace the strobes. Not all the patrons ran out. There are still clusters milling around the walls, nervously wringing their hands. I push my way past them, searching for Mint or Teryn.

Then I see the blood.

“Don’t come closer!”

I’m suddenly at the receiving end of ten rifles, red lasers pointing a collection of dots onto my suit. The nightclub is smaller than the blueprints made it seem—or maybe the chipping black paint on the walls pulls everything closer together. I’ve approached the back of its dance floor, beside the bar. And everywhere I look, there are federal agents. Holding weapons, directing camera drones, setting up caution tape.

“What’s going on?” I mutter into my suit for my team to answer. I raise my hands to either side of me, keeping them in sight for the agents. “Why are they pointing their guns at me?”

“Eirale, over here.” Mint’s reply feeds straight into my ear, but there’s a double echo, her actual voice coming from nearby. My eyes flicker to the side, and I catch a glimpse of her green braids over the shoulder of a federal agent. She shifts until I can see her face properly, her folded arms wrapped tightly around her torso. Her head tilts, gesturing to her left, and I follow the trail of blood on the floor up to a booth.

My breath snags in my throat. A man slumps over the table, his face pressed to the metal at an awkward angle. Judging by the red spreading around him, oozing onto the tiles at his feet, I have to imagine there’s a bullet embedded dead center in his forehead.

“Is that Chip Graham?” I murmur. I don’t want to move my mouth too much. I don’t want the federal agents to read what I’m saying, but my hands must lower in shock because they rush to scream at me, yelling to stay still or else they’ll shoot, they’ll fire immediately.

“I’ve been trying to tell them we were after Nik Grant tonight and that he did this,” Mint hisses. “But the footage already leaked onto the feed.”

“What footage?” I demand. The federal agents are starting to approach me. One is taking out cuffs. I can’t understand what could have possibly prompted this reaction, why their rifles remain pointed at me, until Teryn’s voice breaks over the comms, ice cold:

“You, Eirale. There’s video of you shooting the defense secretary.”

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