10,001. I stared at the ever decreasing series of illuminated numbers programmed into the skin stretching across the side of my neck. Every second that passed, every breath that I took, every beat of my heart ran the numbers down. Down. Down. Down. They would continue to decline until the Count hit zero—or rather they would for everyone else. My Count would never zero-out. It should have over ten and a half Counts ago. I had already lived more beats in sixteen years than most anyone alive ever would. That was the beauty of being born into a family of Elite—of being born an Altaire. I could afford to live out as many beats as my heart would survive. My Count wouldn't expire before my body began to age and fail. I had all the heartbeats I could ever want.

I heard once that people used to say that money wasn't the answer to everything —that there were things it couldn't buy. That time had passed long before I was born. The world had thrown a fat wad of cash at whatever person had been foolish enough to coin that particular phrase. Everything held a monetary value these days and the product in the highest demand was time—or rather, heartbeats. Everyone wanted more beats. Only the going rate for a few hundred thousand ran a pretty penny.

Most people never even came close to living out their allotted 2,000,000,000 beats. They would sell off a thousand or so here and there to buy groceries or pay rent to whatever slumlord controlled their tenement. They would barter their own life-span in order to live out a bit more of it themselves. The only two ways to live a relatively long and happy life were to either be born an Elite or to live as a Rester. Living out your beats as a Rester... I couldn't even call that living—I would rather zero-out than live that way. They kept their activity to a minimum, always matching their active and resting heartbeats, never letting them rise above 60 BPM. Rester's ate bland uninteresting diets made up of food that had been pumped full of anti-anxiety supplements meant to keep their heart rates low. They were pitiful, slothful excuses for human life.

Elites, on the other hand, could live whatever lives we wanted. We never had to worry about our Counts zeroing-out. If we were running low, we just had to pop into a transfer facility, complete the transaction, and watch as our Counts ran all the way back up to the start. Most Elite's only completed a transfer every decade or so. They never exceeded three in a lifetime. I had already been through close to thirty transfers and had burned through over 20,000,000,000 beats and counting. I wasn't about to stop anytime soon.

There were other's, of course, the Low-Counts. Those who couldn't afford to be Resters or Elites. They did what they had to in order to survive, nothing more and nothing less. Their lives were still strikingly dull for my taste. Again, I knew that I would zero-out before I ever allowed myself to quit actually living.

To most, the very creation of the Count was sickening; a subject of controversy riddled with obstruction of human rights. There was always some debate going on between world leaders over it. I had heard it all before...

Everything went to shit a century or so back. The Earth was dying from over- population and tensions were running high. Violence was on the rise along with disease and despair. A world hell-bent on equality had given birth to its most oppressive invention yet—the Cardiac Enumeration Restraint—or as the world had come to lovingly refer to it, the Count. The device was implanted into the side of your neck at birth. It literally tracked and counted down the number of heartbeats an individual had left of their original allotment before they zeroed-out. Each implant was preprogrammed with a ceiling of 2,000,000,000 beats. The number could and would decrease over time, but it could never increase past the original setting.

The logic behind the implant had followed something along the lines of: If every life-span was limited to an equal period, the time given would be better appreciated and spent. Life would be better for all of humanity. Wars would not be raged as confrontation increased heart-rate, and increased heart rate lead to earlier expiration. The environment would be better cared for as toxins would add stress to the human body and consequently the heart, which would increase heart-rate and lead to earlier expiration. Human health would be kept in prime condition as ill-health, obesity, and malnutrition would lead to increased heart-rate and earlier expiration.

To the inventors, the Count was intended make life better as there was now a definitive amount of time heartbeats out for every living being. Your remaining beats would be ticking down on your flesh for you to watch as your life ticked away. The inventors' logic was flawed in its idealism, though. There was always a loophole— always a way out. They had tried to install safeguards against inequality, but the world had found a way. Sure, beats couldn't be invented; Counts couldn't simply be reprogrammed to reset once beats ran out, but they could be supplemented. The beats you were given was all you would get. Until the Programmer, Earyk Altaire, came along. He was an entrepreneurial lord to the Elites. He had been the one to figure out how to hack the Count. He was the one who discovered that beats could be transferred between Counts. He was the one to put a price on life. The Programmer had been selling beats for over eight full Counts. His original Count had expired ages ago, but his Count would continue to run until his body gave out.

Even Earyk's back door in the system wasn't enough to grant immortality, though. Human beings are finite. Our bodies age and die. Our Counts only matter if our bodies, our hearts, are strong enough to continue beating.

In the beginning, Earyk and his company, Altaire Applications, would only harvest beats from the sick and the dying, those whose bodies would give out far before their counts zeroed-out. He would offer the family a small sum—appealing to their own self- interest and sense of self-preservation—in exchange for the remaining beats on their loved one's Count. The purchased moments would then be transferred to the highest bidder. Pre-mature death wasn't even a fleeting thought to Elites, anymore. These days, only the Elites were able to live enough beats to start families, to watch as their hair silvered and their bodies aged.

Eventually, though, there weren't enough sick to meet the demands of the Programmer's ever extending list of entitled clients. The poor were the next logical choice—survival of the richest and all.

I still had never seen someone zero-out. I had read the news stories and heard the gossip, but I had still never actually seen it happen. I had come close myself more times than I cared to remember. My Count was always racing down, down, down. There was something exhilarating about dancing that close to the edge of death—to have my heart thundering against my chest, begging to break free. I loved the feeling of fire in my veins; it set the world ablaze in brilliant clarity, made my body hum with terrible energy only just right of restrained.

My true Count didn't matter. I knew that life wasn't valued by monitoring the beats you had left; it was about enjoying the moments and the time you actually lived, and goddamn, I was alive.

I stared again at the numbers glowing just below the surface of my skin. 9,018. My heart was already racing. I could feel the familiar thrill creeping in just along the edge of my consciousness. It was almost time. I would be meeting the other three Sybarites in just under an hour. I had already made the proper arrangements. I would meet up with one of Uncle Earyk's techs after the trick and we would make the transfer. All of our Counts would be kicked back into the Gold Standard, and the latest Sybarite trick would make the headlines. We would all make it back home in time for dinner and the latest lecture warning us against following the actions of those troublesome children. No one would be the wiser. They never were. That was the way every trick we had ever pulled over the past three years had worked.

Kazly, Lorian, Halcyon, and I had become celebrities among the younger generations and criminals in the eyes of the Low-Counts, older Elites, and Resters. We were both hunted and celebrated, but we had never been caught and we damn well never would be. No one knew our true names. As far as the world knew, my little group of thrill-seeking, life-lovers were the four Sybarites: Kayfe (Kazly), Laedan (Lorian), Hathlynze (Halcyon), and Vynne. I was the ring leader of the bunch. We were notorious for the racing beats our tricks racked up both among ourselves and anyone present whenever they went down. We were responsible for bringing life back into the steadily dulling world, and hell, did we have a reputation to uphold.

It had been over a month since our last major trick; Kayfe and I had pulled a few minor stunts, Laedan and Hathlynze had made the news too. We had been careful; never racking up more than a few thousand beats or needing a transfer. Now, though, it was time for something big. We had given Tyee, our double-agent of a tech, the time he had asked for. After our last trick, the four of us had run through over 3,500,000,000 beats all together. He had needed some time to restock our ghost account on the Altaire Applications servers, and to keep Uncle Earyk from noticing the hundreds of thousands of beats being funneled away. Earyk despised the Sybarites. As the man responsible for the new world order, the creator of the Market for Time, he had been the one to publicly condemn us. Two and a half years ago he told the world that we were nothing more than a bunch of "spoiled adolescent criminals—the products of over-priveledge and a supreme lack of discipline—without any regard for the true value of the human lives responsible for fueling our antics."

Publicly, I played the dutiful niece and supported his consensus. Privately, I was Vynne of the Sybarites, and I did everything in my power to disprove and discredit him. He and the entire rest of the world had forgotten what it meant to actually be alive. Life found its meaning in moments—moments of pleasure, despair, terror, or any combination of the three. It wasn't meant to be lived from within a glass castle, watching the world waste away around us.

As the leader of the Sybarites, I had been the one to organize our public denunciation of him and any and all of his supporters. The day after his speech we had pulled what had been our biggest trick to date. We travelled out to one of Altaire Applications' floating nexuses meant to track Count Transfers all over the world. We set charges throughout the entire A.I.-run facility, jumping from the deck into the ocean just as they went off. None of the Counts or transfers had been lost; our act of destruction had only shut down the world servers for just over seventeen hours. Uncle Earyk had been the one to personally bring the entire system back online. Tyee had live-streamed the entire thing from the deck of the yacht we anchored a hundred or so meters away. We were a viral sensation overnight. We also all had criminal records and had catapulted to the top of the world's most-wanted list. It was exhilarating.

We had pulled over fifteen major tricks since then. We were burning through hundreds of thousands of beats each time; all of which were pulled from Altaire Applications' servers, the various charges then dispersed throughout the accounts of the world's Elite. Despite Uncle Earyk's opinion and those of the world's leaders, the Sybarites were about more than seeking reckless thrills. We were here to remind all of humanity what life was meant to be. We were here to show everyone who would watch what it meant to be alive.

* * *

"You're late," I said, not bothering to turn and look as Tyee stepped out onto the platform. He had been meant to meet us on the helipad atop Altaire Applications' main headquarters twenty-seven minutes ago. The building was over 180 stories, Earyk Altaire's main place of operation, and the launch site of our biggest trick to date. It would make the nexus explosion look like child's play in comparison. Waiting for Tyee had put the entire operation at risk and the stress had run my count down another 2,065 beats. I would be cutting it close, this time. The thought itself set a thrill through me, forcing my heart to beat faster still.

"They know something's about to go down," he said, a frown deepening the already bitter set of his angled face. Black eyes that could calculate near exact proportions of beats per minute per adrenaline filled trick analyzed me the same way they had the day I had chosen him. Tyee's mind was brilliant but easily swayed. He had grown up praising the Altaire family. He would do most anything I asked. "Mr. Altaire has been logged into the system for the past week. He's been monitoring every transfer above 10,000 beats. I had to recalibrate the program to break the transfers apart even more and spread them to Resters and Low-Counts. He's catching on, Avyanna."

"Vynne," I corrected, my eyes darting to search for any cameras or mic's Kayfe and Hathlynze could have missed; there weren't any in the immediate area. Satisfied, I turned back to Tyee.

"The Programmer can watch all he wants. We already have what we need," I said, tying my hair back into a tight braid along the back of my skull. Laedan had just powered up the transport and the rotation of the blades kept spitting locks of golden- brown hair into my eyes, snagging them between my lips.

"He's watching me. I don't know how much longer we'll be able to keep this a secret." Tyee shifted his weight between his feet, his black eyes rotating constantly from the transport, to the door to the roof, and finally to Hathlynze, Kayfe, and I. His fingers twitched around the translucent tablet in his hands we would use to make the transfer when we were all safely back on the ground. Altaire Applications' logo was embossed on the back of the hyper-sensitive glass, frosting the surface in the shape of a tyachacardic rhythm—Uncle Earyk had found an ancient heart monitor on the net a few months after he cracked the Inventors' code. Altaire Applications' logo was an imprint of his own heart beat.

"Take a breath, Squint," Hathlynze said, his voice mimicking the Rester advertisements constantly blaring throughout the media. "Save the transfers for the Counts that will actually need it."

Tyee glared at Hathlynze, but didn't respond. They had never gotten on well; only Kayfe could help keep the peace between them. I shot her a look and she stepped forward, moving between the two boys.

"We'll keep you safe, Tyee," Kayfe said. She reached out to touch the back of his hand and his expression softened, his Count slowing its previously accelerated decline. "That was the deal we made. Don't worry about the Programmer. Vynne can take care of him. All you need to worry about is making sure those transfers go through the moment our feet hit the ground."

Tyee nodded before looking to me.

"South quadrant of the city. Old Maiyner building. Fifth floor. We'll meet you there in an hour." I didn't look up as I spoke, reaching into the pack I had brought along to dig out the golden helmets that helped keep the true identities of the Sybarites from the media. I tossed Hathlynze and Kayfe theirs. Laedan was already wearing his as a precaution against the security system on the transport. I had boycotted dismantling the on-board cameras. They would help to document the entire trick. Laedan had already set up cameras along the roofs of the buildings of our projected flight path as well as on the ground, but everyone knew the public loved a bit of behind the scenes action. Who were we to deny them their jollies?

"Heard," Tyee said, his head of dark hair bobbing up and down. He turned, but paused halfway back to the entrance to the stairwell that would take him back down to the elevator bay in the service sector of the building. "Be careful, Vynne."

I flashed him a fox smile that I knew the other three Sybarites mirrored. "Never." Tyee shot Kayfe one last lingering look before ducking into the stairwell. Hathlynze clapped his hands, rubbing them together in anticipation. "Alright,

Hoodlums, let's give these Stiffs something to talk about." Kayfe crowed in approval, popping the mirrored visor down to cover the majority of her face. I pulled my own helmet down over my head, shielding my all-too-well-known Altaire-Amber eyes from the world, shifting into the persona I had adopted for the Sybarites' many tricks.

* * *

"Swing us out around the edge, then take us back in low." My voice came in distorted through mic implanted in my helmet. Tyee had installed vocal alteration software after our first trick made the headlines. He had also been the one wise enough to suggest we adopt code-names when we were out on a trick. None of us wanted to know what would happen if the world found out that three of the world's most well-known Elites and Earyk Altaire's own niece were the ones behind the Sybarites and their antics.

"Heard. Coming back in low, boss" Laedan said, his hands moving deftly across the complex board of flight controls. The transport banked easily around the outer edges of the city before righting itself as we headed back into town, our Altitude easily 300 feet below what any government sanctioned flight would dare attempt.

Eighty-seven beats later, the first head turned and a shout went up from the ground. I had to resist the urge to throw my body halfway out the still open transport door and wave at the terrified gawkers on the ground. Instead, I checked the digital readout of my Count on the watch that Tyee had programmed for us; Kayfe, Laedan, and Hathlynze each wore one around their right wrists as well. My Count was racing, my remaining beats ticking away at a rate far faster than I had planned. I had to calm down. We were still over a mile out from our destination. I couldn't risk using more beats than absolutely necessary. Tyee had predicted a minimum of 5,000 beats necessary from the transport's departure from Altaire Applications to the moment our chutes deposited the four of us onto the ground three blocks from the old Maiyner building. That would only leave me around 1,113 beats to make it to Tyee for the transfer before my Count zeroed-out.

I forced myself to take several deep breaths, closing my eyes as I mentally tracked the distance left between us and our destination.

"Hathlynze, are you ready with the chutes yet?" I asked. my voice steady through the coms despite the adrenaline burning through my entire system.

"200 beats, boss," he replied. I craned around in my seat to watch as he helped Kayfe strap herself into the ejection pack. It was almost double her size and it was obvious she was struggling with the weight.

307 beats until impact.

"Drop it and run the second your feet hit solid ground," I ordered, taking the pack Hathlynze offered me twenty-seven beats later. He and Kayfe both nodded, before he handed me the final pack. Laedan flipped on the autopilot, taking the pack from my outstretched arm. He had disabled the transport's basic safety mechanisms to keep the autopilot from changing the aircraft's impact trajectory. Construction had just ended on the newest Altaire Applications' mainland nexus. It was just outside of the city limits, but its height put it in full view of anyone within fifteen miles of the city in every direction. The media had been covering the nexus's construction from day one. They would be swarming the site today—thousands of cameras and billions of eyes would be on the Sybarites as they carried out their greatest trick yet.

245 beats until impact.

Laedan and I joined Hathlynze and Kayfe in the loading zone of the transport. The doors had been jammed open. Wind ripped at our clothes, throwing the straps of our packs back against us, slapping the ends against our trademark black flight suits. The reflective gold-plated surface of our helmets caught the dying light as the sun hung low on the horizon. We were entering into the golden hour. Every eye in the world would be on the Sybarites. We would shine brighter than the sun itself.

Ninety-eight beats until impact.

The transport had been set to steadily gain altitude. We flew past Altaire Applications Headquarters just as the nose of the craft lifted back up over the roof of the building. Earyk Altaire himself stood on the now-vacant helipad, his hand up to shield his amber eyes against the sun as he glared at the four Sybarites abroad the hijacked craft.

I shot him a mock salute from my position in the open transport bay. His shouted curse was pushed away by the whirling blades of the craft as we careened directly toward the newly completed nexus. 

Forty-two beats until impact.

The adrenaline fueled tremors that had been previously limited to my hands alone began to spread, wracking my entire body as the nexus loomed up in front of us. Our four small forms on board the transport reflected back at us from the building's mirrored surface. No one was set to occupy the building for another week. The entire structure was vacant save the crowd watching from the ground.

Thirty-one beats until impact.

"Split up once you reach 10,000 beats. Head out in separate directions. Meet back up at Maiyner before your Counts dip below 4,000. 5th floor. Lowest Count completes the first transfer," I yelled, my voice fading away over the coms, drowned out by the thundering wind blasting us from the open transport door. Hathlynze, Kayfe, and Laedan's Counts were all still in the green. I was the only one who ever insisted upon running a trick in the red. The added danger... it made it all somehow better. Being that close to death made me feel that much more alive.

Twenty-five beats until impact.

I stared at our reflection. We were brilliant beacons in the dying light. The crowd's terrified chatter was drowned out by the heavy whomp of the transport's blades cutting through the wind.

Nineteen beats until impact.

I smiled at the other Sybarites though I knew they couldn't see it. My heart was racing. We waited, timing the distance until the last possible seconds left between the transport and the nexus.

I vaulted out into the open air. "Show 'em how to live!"

Ten beats until impact.

The wind hit me like a physical thing, knocking the breath from my lungs and pushing me from every angle as I catapulted toward the ground.

Four beats until impact.

Screams rose up from the ground below.

Three beats until impact.

I whooped behind my mirrored visor.

Two beats until impact.

The world waited for the crash.

One beat until impact.

The transport collided with the nexus in a shower of glass and sparks, inciting a

hailstorm of flaming debris. The explosion rocked every cell in my body, deafening me, drowning out the screams of spectators below. A maniacal grin carved my mouth, lifting my cheeks, and creasing my eyes as I fell, faster, faster, faster.

I barely caught the movement as Kayfe banked to the left, angling her descent around the corned of a building, drifting over almost en entire city block. Hathlynze and Laedan had already done the same, each of us splitting off into separate directions. I angled my body forward, dipping my frame so that I sliced through the air, sailing out over the Southern edge of the city.

My throat was raw from the cheer of exhilaration that had ripped from my chest the moment I left from the transport. Still, I continued to yell, the voices of the other Sybarites joined me over the coms, cracking as the distance between us grew.

The ground loomed up below me, the barren expanse of forgotten land beyond the boundaries of the city gaping up at me. I angled my body once more, arching around back toward the city limits.

"Give me a Count," I yelled.

Static broke across the connection for five beats before Hathlynze's voice came through audibly, "9,0495."

"7,822." Laedan.

"8,576." Kayfe.

They were all still in the green.

"Vynne?" Kayfe asked. 

I glared at the readout on my watch. 5,723.

"Still, in the green," I said. "Pull your chutes in eighty and meet me on the ground." 

Their voices all carried through the coms in unison. "Heard."

I stared at my count again. 5,450

Fear threatened to seize my chest, chilling my blood as my breaths came in short, shallow gasps. I needed to calm down. I had to calm down. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

I would make it to Tyee. We would complete the transfer in time. We had every other trick before. This one wouldn't be any different. I would make it.

Kayfe's surprised shriek cut through the coms exactly eighty beats later and I knew she had pulled her chute. Hathlynze and Laedan each followed three or so beats later.

I glared down at the rapidly expanding ground. I had just crossed back into the outer edge of the city. I was still over five blocks from the Maiyner building and the security Tyee's transfer-tablet entailed. I had overshot my mark.

5,090.

My designated eighty beat chute deployment window had already come and passed. I continued to plummet toward the ground. I was well beyond the safe- deployment altitude, but still, I couldn't bring myself to pull the tab to release my chute. My fingers twitched around the tab. I needed to pull it now or a low Count would become the least of my worries.

My curse was carried away by the wind as I ripped down on the tab, my chute billowing out behind me, catching air with enough force to knock all of the air from my lungs. Black spots danced across my vision as the massive cloud of fabric worked to slow my descent. It wasn't enough, though. I was still falling too fast. I rushed to filter through the information I had gathered from the parachute safety seminar I had watched earlier in the week. I needed to relax, to allow my body to naturally absorb as much of the impact as possible to prevent serious injury.

Foolishly, my eyes darted to the readout of my Count on the face of my watch. 4,510. I couldn't breathe. Terror locked every muscle in my body as my heart thundered faster still against the cage of my chest. It felt ready to explode.

I regained control over my body 200 beats before impact. Shockwaves reverberated up my legs as I struggled to force my body to follow the direction and momentum of my fall, tucking my limbs in. Rolling and bouncing along the uneven ground, I felt various odd angles and bones crack against the pavement, but the pain of each individual impact faded into one larger, mind-splitting hurt. The wind pulling through the city streets still ripped at my chute as I rolled to a stop.

The fingers on my right hand were hardly functional, three of them bent at odd angles along the joints, but somehow, I managed to release the restraints of my ejection pack. It hurt to breathe past the piercing pain in the right side of my chest, and I knew that I had probably cracked or bruised more than a few ribs. Explaining those would prove to be fun later on, but I couldn't worry about what my parents and the Programmer would say right now. If I didn't make it to Tyee, and fast, a few cuts and scrapes wouldn't matter at all.

4,032.

I forced myself to push my aching body up off the ground. My ankle cried out in protest whenever I put the slightest pressure on it, but the pain wasn't anything unbearable. I could probably jog the remaining three blocks before it gave out.

"Location," I gasped into the coms.

"Hathlynze and I are here, boss. Laedan just walked in. Where are you?" Kayfe asked.

I dug my nails into my palms as I fought to keep the true extent of my pain from my voice. "On my way. Tyee needs to have that transfer ready."

"What's your Count?" Hathlynze's voice broke over the connection.

"Too low. Fucking hell—" I screamed when my ankle buckled under me, twisting at an entirely unnatural angle as I stepped off a curb half a block from the building. I crashed to the ground, my leg no longer able to support my body weight.

"Vynne? What happened? Where are you?" Laedan asked, his voice blaring through the coms.

"South. Eight blocks. Can't walk." I drug myself toward a light pole three and a half feet away.

"We're on our way to you, now."

I checked my count before closing my eyes, leaning back against the cool metal of the pole. 3,362.

I had only ever dropped below 5,000 once before, but the moment my count hit 4,999, the transfer had kicked in and my Count was back up at the ceiling within three beats. Tyee was still eight blocks and five full flights of stairs away, and my fear was making my heart rate skyrocket. I usually thrived on the adrenaline of a low Count, but not this. This was too low. This was cutting it too close. I should have made Tyee perform a transfer before I even stepped foot onto the transport.

"Vynne, we're coming. Hold on," Kayfe said, her own fear now present in her voice.

"You lot look like hell," I said 970 beats later when the three other Sybarites skidded to a halt in front of me.

"Speak for yourself, boss," Hathlynze said. He and Laedan both positioned themselves under my arms before Hathlynze counted down from three. I bit back a cry as, together, they lifted me back up to my feet. "Alright. Let's move."

Kayfe led as the three of us stumbled along behind her, the two boys carrying the majority of my weight. All the while, my Count continued to decrease.

1,747.

I had to stop after the first flight of stairs. My chest felt ready to cave in on itself. Every breath felt like a knife plunging into my abdomen and my left leg was useless.

Kayfe let us pause in the middle of the third flight. "What happened out there, boss?"

"Just took a wrong turn, that's all," I sputtered. I spat blood out onto the ground from my busted lip, grimacing from the iron flavor invading my mouth.

662.

Tyee was waiting for us just inside the door to the fifth floor. His entire frame shook, his hands quaking as he struggled to key the proper commands into the tablet to complete the transfer.

275.

Hathlynze cursed under his breath before ripping the tablet from Tyee's fumbling hands. "Just tell me what to do, Squint."

Tyee spouted off a series of technological commands, the terminology akin to a foreign language on my uninformed ears. Tech was Uncle Earyk's thing. I hadn't ever bothered to learn much more than basic networking. I hadn't seen the need, not when I had an army of tech-specialists at my fingertips.

"No, Hathlynze's, she has to hit the ceiling. You have to enter in the exact amount!" Tyee's voice took on a desperate edge.

"Tell me what it is, then. What's the number?"

"1,999... uh... 1,999,999,895," Tyee said, his black eyes somehow pulling the numbers out of the empty space in the air above him. Almost a full count. Too close. I was cutting it too close.

"There, that's it. Hit submit!" Tyee's voice had reached a frantic volume. Hathlynze jabbed the pad of his finger down against the designated button and all eyes were on my Count, waiting for the numbers to race back up and hit the ceiling. They continued to decrease, ticking down with each goddamn beat of my heart. He hit the tablet again and again.

One hundred. Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight.

"Tyee, what's going on?" Kayfe said. "Why isn't it working?"

The tech ripped the tablet back from Hathlynze, his fingers tapping relentlessly against the glass surface. The sounds of the aftermath of our latest trick still filtered in to us from outside, the roar of emergency vehicles mingling with frightened cries and muted explosions. I didn't hear any of it, though. My mind only registered the staccato rap of Tyee's fingers against the tablet.

"I don't understand!" He cried, his frustration rapidly morphing into terror. "This should be working. Why isn't it working?"

"What do you mean it's not working?" Hathlynze yelled, moving his hulking frame to tower over Tyee's smaller form.

"I—the system. It's locking me out. I can't—it says our account doesn't exist!" His entire body looked ready to dissolve into a puddle of anxious fear.

"It worked five minutes ago! Fix it, Squint, or you get to be the one to tell the world you let Earyk Altaire's niece die." Tyee cowered further under Hathlynze's anger. Still, his fingers drummed against the tablet.

Seventy-three. Seventy-two. Seventy-one.

"What about the implant?" Laedan asked. "Can't we just take it out? It wont matter if her Count zeroes if it's not in her, right?"

"It's not that simple!" Tyee cried.

"Make it!"

Tyee's black eyes looked ready to swallow the world as he looked to Hathlynze,

Laedan, Kayfe, and then finally to me. "The implant—the A.I. was designed to function with the central nervous system. Once it was inserted, it bound itself to her spinal cord. If you try to take it out without the proper commands it will sever the connection. She won't just zero-out. She'll die."

"So figure out the right commands, Tyee. Now," Kayfe yelled. Whatever affection had softened her voice before was absent now. Tyee paled, but his fingers resumed their maddened rhythm against the surface of the tablet.

Fifty-five. Fifty-four. Fifty-three.

"We should be doing this in a hospital," he muttered, still gesturing wildly against the hyper-sensitive glass.

"I think we can all agree that an infection is the least of our worries right now," Laedan said. "Just tell me where to make the cut already, Tyee."

"Pull her helmet off. The base of her neck. Three centimeters to the right of the last illuminated digit," Tyee said.

"Take a deep breath, Vynne," Kayfe said, clutching my trembling hand in two of her own. I squeezed until I thought I would break bone. Then I screamed.

"Hold her still!" Laedan yelled, and hands, probably Hathlynze's locked down around the backs of my shoulders, pinning me against the dirty concrete floor. The world threatened to fade entirely to black from the pain of Laedan's knife digging around in the flesh of my neck.

Forty-five. Forty-four. Forty-three.

"That's a lot of blood, Tyee!" Kayfe yelled.

"You're still trying the transfer, right, Squint?"

"I'm still locked out of the server. They had to have found our accounts. The transfers to you three probably tripped whatever firewalls Mr. Altaire installed." My screams drowned out the sound of Tyee rapping furiously on his tablet.

"Forget the Sybarite account. Use hers. Use the Altaire's. Hell, use any of ours!" Kayfe's hands around mine tightened.

"Don't you think I've already tried that! I'm locked out. All of my access has been revoked!"

Thirty-seven. Thirty-six. Thirty-five.

"You're supposed to be some sort of genius, right? Hack the fucking server. Do whatever the hell you have to—just make the transfer!" Hathlynze's yell vibrated in my ears. My screams became weak whimpers. I could feel my body beginning to shut down, shifting into shock from the pain of the fall and Laedan's fruitless treasure hunt in the back of my neck with a pocket knife.

"It's not that simple!" Tyee said. "Earyk Altaire is a fucking god, okay? He invented all of this shit! I just—I'm a transfer tech!"

"Who the fuck cares, Tyee! Just fix her!" Kayfe screamed, her hands tightening further around my own. My entire body felt as if it weighed more than the Earth itself. My eyelids keep drifting further down, blocking out more of the world with each passing beat.

Twenty-five. Twenty-four. Twenty-three.

"Tyee, I can see this thing. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to get this shit out of her." Laedan's voice was the calm in the storm raging around me. If the rapidly decreasing numbers on my Count phased him at all, he didn't show it.

Nineteen. Eighteen. Seventeen.

"Hold on. Hold on. I'm pulling up the original design specs," Tyee said.

Hathlynze's voice cut through me when he asked, "Do you honestly think she has time for this shit? Just fucking save her, already."

"Goddammit, Halcyon!" Kayfe yelled, "He's trying!"

"Do you really want to be the one they blame when they find out that Avyanna Altaire zeroed-out?" Hathlynze—no, Halcyon. Yeah, that was his name. Halcyon yelled back at her.

"She's still here!" Kazly said. "Christ, quit panicking and help us save her!"

Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve.

"Lorian—I mean Laedan—I... fuck," Tyee's escalating levels of terror and stress strained his voice. In the back of my mind, part of me knew that I should feel bad for running down Tyee's count this way. He wasn't Elite. He would be a Low-Count soon enough, and all of our tricks had already burned through several thousand of his beats.

"Who the fuck cares about fucking code-names! Just tell him what to do!" Halcyon yelled.

"Can you see the implant? It should look like a small computer chip with silver wires extending out of it toward her spine." Tyee's manic typing continued.

"If that's what this thing is, then yeah. I'm looking at it, and there's a light on here that's flashing," Lorian said. Absently, I watched as the pool of red continued to expand slowly out around me. Kazly wiped at it with a mound of black fabric. I couldn't find it in me to ask where the fabric had come from. That would take a lot of energy, and I was already exhausted. Shadows continued to creep in along the edges of the world.

Ten. Nine. Eight.

A shadow fell across where I lay, followed by the vague sensation of pain as Lorian's knife probed around in the back of my neck. "I need you to find the access point," Tyee said.

"We're running out of time, guys!" Kazly's voice was barely a whisper as her hysteria mounted.

Seven. Six. Five.

"If we can just find the access point, I can reprogram the software."

Four.

"Yes, just to the right of the light!"

Three.

"Come on, Squint!"

Two.

"Just one more second..."

One.

"There—"

ZERO.