The Surrogate’s Blade
I press my back against the Faraday wall and breathe until the spinning slows, until the cold sweat on my neck stops feeling like the precursor to a blackout.
Three. Two. One. I check the tablet. The thermal map is gone, replaced by a SENSOR ERROR: VOLTAGE SPIKE notification. The GPS dot pulses on, steady and obedient blue.
The camera is dead. The leash is still intact. A blind spot, carved out by hand, paid for in marrow.
Ninety seconds left. I pull the Phantom Blade from my hair. In the Faraday cage’s dim light the titanium needle catches nothing.
It is too flat, too practiced at being invisible, a thing that has survived ten years because it refuses to shine. This is the only piece of the
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