“Void, you guys,” Emery hissed, “Leave him alone!”
She tried to push past, but the tall woman blocked her, gripping Emery’s shoulder and shoving her back to pin her against the wall.
Cavalon somehow found the will to reach up and shove Snyder away weakly. The circitor’s shoulder barely turned back with the pathetic attempt.
He snickered. “Is that all the fight you’ve got left?” He gave a small shrug. “That’s probably my fault. I figured we’d see what the intensity slider was like at ‘max.’ The EX had it at a measly twenty percent. Kinda lenient, in my opinion.”
“What do you expect me to say?” Cavalon growled, surprised at how haggard and dry his voice came out. “I wasn’t even born when that damn edict passed. I had nothing to do with it.”
“That’s not the point,” Snyder said. “My family suffered, so his family is going to suffer.”
Cavalon glared. “It’s hilarious that you think he gives two shits if I suffer. You’d be doing him a favor.”
Snyder smiled. “Nice try. Your pathetic lies only make this all the more fun for me.”
A wash of copper flooded Cavalon’s mouth as he clenched his fists. As much pride as he took in his shit-cutting prowess over the last twenty-four hours, enough was enough. He’d tried. Shit-cutting wasn’t going to cut it this time.
In a rush of glittering metallic, the gold and bronze squares on his right arm dispersed from their default formation, speeding his movements as he leapt to his feet. With Imprint-fueled force he lunged for Snyder.
But the man had already started to swipe at his nexus controls. Cavalon had been too slow.
A tidal wave of hot pain tore through him, igniting every nerve. His muscles seized, and his view of the hallway tilted and skewed until his cheek met the floor. Sparks of azure light cut across the backs of his clenched eyelids.
A shrill, grating tone rang through his ears, vibrating across his skin, clawing through every one of his muscles and burrowing deep into his bones. The pain pulsed, echoing, building on itself—an endless feedback loop of agony.
It was an unprecedented level of pain. One that raised the bar, that set a new standard for intolerable. But Snyder had already set it to max. Why was it so, so much worse this time?
Then somehow, between the seconds, came a brief, almost imperceptible moment of clarity. Cavalon detached from the pain just long enough to feel it: how his royal Imprints struggled to climb up his arms and down his legs and across his back. How they jittered along his skin in disjointed, drunken motions. And how the black Sentinel Imprints on his left arm grew hotter and hotter with each passing second—each square an electric diode firing a lightning bolt’s worth of energy out across his body … and into his royal Imprints.
Then he realized … this was it. Volatile interfacing. This was what they’d been warning him about—something that could really, actually, get him killed.
With a rush of panic, he realized he had to not use them. He had to stop using them.
The millisecond the thought fully registered in his brain, his royal Imprints terminated. Yet instead of sliding back to their default formation as they always had—as they never, not even once, hadn’t—they simply stopped dead in their tracks, like hundreds of tiny metallic bits marooned all across his pale skin.
The grueling, feedback-like waves of electric pain ceased immediately, leaving only the regular torture caused by the activated Sentinel Imprints. But that was cool and easy and almost tolerable in comparison.
His muscles still twitched with the residual pain, body curling instinctively into a fetal position. His nails dug into his palms as his hands tightened into fists, and the urge to summon his Imprints persisted. He had to use every ounce of will to fight his instincts, to assure his royal Imprints didn’t reactivate while this bastard had control over the other set.