Elias sat on the edge of his bed in the small white apartment, turning a plain white business card over in his fingers. It held only a name and a number. Selene Cross. The detective who had watched him walk out of a courthouse where three men lay dead. He picked up his phone and dialed before he could talk himself out of it. She answered on the second ring, her voice low and unsurprised. "You called faster than I expected." "I don't have time to wait," Elias said. The countdown in the corner of his vision showed three hundred fifty-eight days bleeding away, and somewhere in the city a pharmaceutical CEO who had murdered forty-seven children was preparing to flee beyond any law that could touch her. "Neither do I," Selene replied. "Meridian Building. Rooftop. One hour. Come alone." The line went dead. Elias dressed in a black jacket and left without locking the door. The Meridian Building rose forty stories above the financial district. He took the elevator to the top and found the

St. Mary's Hospital smelled like every hospital Elias had ever been in. Disinfectant and despair. The walls were white. The floors were linoleum. The people moved with the slow urgency of those who had learned that rushing changed nothing. He found Room 304. The man inside was thirty-five, with a beard and a broken arm. Machines breathed for him. His eyes were closed. Elias touched the man's hand. It was warm but unresponsive. He focused and reached for Verdict Touch. Nothing happened. The man was innocent. He had seen something, known something, and someone had driven his car into a tree to make sure he never spoke of it. But innocence left no mark. Verdict Touch showed only guilt. Elias let go. He walked to Room 305. The woman inside was older, with gray hair spread across a pillow. Her face was bruised along the left side. The car accident had been two weeks ago. Elias touched her hand. Nothing. He cursed under his breath. He needed physical evidence. Something Vane had touch

The airstrip was twenty miles outside the city. It was private. It was dark. The only light came from a small terminal building and a jet parked on the runway. Elias parked behind a hangar. Selene parked beside him. They got out. The night was cold. The wind smelled like fuel. "She's already inside," Selene said. She held binoculars. "I see two bodyguards at the door. One at the jet stairs. The pilot is in the cockpit." "How do you want to do this?" Elias asked. "I'm the police," Selene said. "I walk in. I arrest her. I take her to jail." "That won't work," Elias said. "She'll have lawyers at the jail in twenty minutes. She'll be out by morning." "Then what do you suggest?" "I suggest you let me do what I do." Selene looked at him. Her eyes were hard. "No. I'm not letting you kill her in cold blood." "Then what are you doing here?" Elias asked. "I'm here to make sure justice happens," Selene said. "Not murder." They stared at each other. The wind blew between them. Then th

The rain did not stop. It fell on the windshield in sheets that blurred the world into gray and green, the wipers beating a rhythm that matched the pounding in Elias's chest. Selene drove with her hands fixed at ten and two, her eyes on a road that twisted through darkness and trees, her face lit by the dashboard's pale glow. Elias watched the System window in the corner of his vision. The numbers updated in pale blue light. Three hundred fifty-one days. Twenty-eight million dollars in an account he had not opened. A new skill that sat in his mind like a loaded weapon he did not yet know how to fire. His shoulder throbbed where the bodyguard's bullet had grazed him. It was the first time his resurrected body had bled, the first time he had felt the particular vulnerability of a man who could die again. The wound was shallow but real, and it bled through the bandage Selene had tied in the chateau's kitchen while the rain hid their escape. "You're bleeding," Selene said. She did not l

Elias woke on Selene's couch with the afternoon light slanting through the blinds. He had slept four hours, deeper than he should have, dreams of children and needles and mothers who screamed in languages he did not understand. The System window was waiting when he opened his eyes. It pulsed with a new urgency, the text sharper than before, the colors shifted toward red. [PENALTY ASSESSMENT COMPLETE.] [30 DAYS DEDUCTED. NEW COUNTDOWN: 321 DAYS.] [STALKER'S MARK: ACTIVE.] [TRACKING TARGET: DETECTIVE SELENE CROSS. LOCATION: CURRENT — 14.2 METERS. STATUS: STATIONARY.] He sat up. The apartment was quiet. Selene was in the kitchen, making coffee, her movements efficient and silent. She did not know she was being watched. She did not know that a system she could not see was mapping her location, her movements, her proximity to him. Elias reached into the interface. He searched for the Stalker's Mark, trying to find its source, its code, its weakness. But it was buried deep, woven into