Marco Vasquez

The water was a fist around my throat, cold and black and endless. I kicked upward, lungs screaming, but the hook in my chest dragged me down like an anchor made of ice. My laptop was gone, ripped away in the fall, swallowed by the river and with it, the last illusion that code could save us. Bubbles streamed from my mouth as I fought, but the darkness pressed closer, thicker, until the red pulse of the Heartstone was the only light left in the world.

Elena floated in front of me, ...