The stairwell was a throat of darkness, and Caleb was choking on the words that Mosaic had spoken. The trigger phrase echoed in his skull—*Eidolon rising, sky falling. October 24. Remember what you lost*—each syllable a hook buried deep in the soft tissue of his brain. The scar behind his ear burned with a cold fire, and his vision fractured into shards of memory: rain on a windshield, his mother's voice, the white room with the grey chair. The kill code was trying to activate, a machine inside him grinding to life, and he was holding it back with nothing but the stubborn, bleeding edge of his will.
"You don't control me," he said again, his voice a rasp of defiance. "You never did."
Mosaic descended another step, the trigger device still clutched in his hand, his pale eyes glittering wi
