The Tethered Pulse

Summary

My heartbeat was unnaturally steady. It was almost inhuman.

Whether I was sleeping, running a fever, or losing blood, my heart rate barely fluctuated.

At eighteen, I was brought into the Vanguard Medical Institute by the Vance family, confined to the climate-controlled penthouse suite.

Not because Elias Vance loved me.

But because the one-of-a-kind neuro-bionic heart in his chest needed my heartbeat as its source frequency to calibrate.

If I was steady, he lived.

If my heart raced, he died.

Three months ago, a nurse accidentally peeled off one of my biosensor patches.