Fracture

The medical wing of the Presidential Spire was a sterile expanse of white tiles and humming aether-monitors.

Nyx stood in the corner, her ruined red dress covered in Silas's blood, her arms crossed tight over her chest. She had refused medical attention for her own cuts. She hadn't spoken a word in three hours.

Silas lay in the intensive care bed, unconscious but stable. The doctors had managed to stabilize the localized necrosis caused by the aether-bolt.

The heavy glass doors of the med-bay slid open. Minister Thorne marched in, flanked by four elite heavily armored guards. Thorne was a tall, skeletal man with a face like a dried apple and eyes that burned with malicious ambition.

"Get out of here, Corvus," Thorne ordered, his voice dripping with disdain.

Nyx didn't move. She shifted her weight, dropping her hand to her thigh where a fresh knife was strapped. "I am the President's personal security. I don't take orders from you."

Thorne sneered, tossing a thick manila folder onto the foot of Silas’s bed. "You aren't security. You are a sleeper agent. We recovered the data drives from the assassins on the zeppelin. They share your specific cybernetic signature. The Syndicate engineered the attack, and you let them in."

Nyx felt a cold blade of panic slide between her ribs. "That's a lie. I killed them."

"You killed them to cover your tracks after they failed," Thorne stated smoothly, turning to the guards. "The evidence is incontrovertible. When the President wakes up, I will present him with the execution warrant for your treason. He will sign it to save his political career, and we will hang you from the Clocktower by morning."

Nyx looked at Silas’s unconscious form.

The old instincts—the brutal, cynical lessons of her past—screamed at her. *Powerful men always betray.* Silas had taken a bullet for her, yes, but he was a politician. When faced with fabricated evidence and a political coup that threatened the entire city, would he sacrifice his presidency for an illegal street fighter?

Thorne was giving her a window to run. It was a setup. They wanted her to flee to prove her guilt.

But staying meant trusting Silas with her life. It meant trusting that he wouldn't sign the warrant.

Nyx looked at Thorne, her silver eyes burning with a cold, terrifying hatred. "If he dies while I'm gone, Thorne, I will hunt you down and rip your clockwork heart out of your chest."

Before the guards could raise their rifles, Nyx sprinted toward the towering glass window of the med-bay. She vaulted off a medical cart, her spine whining as she generated the kinetic force to shatter the reinforced glass.

She plummeted into the freezing, smog-choked night, deploying a grapple-line from her wrist to swing into the labyrinth of the lower city, leaving Silas completely unprotected.