The stall went utterly, brutally quiet.
“Open your comm,” I instructed, keeping a deathly tone.
The Ohrur’s hand shook so hard it nearly dropped the comm. “P—please.” His voice was thin, wavering between calculation and a creature’s plea. “Please, not?—”
Another customer—a Melvar, draped in maintenance leathers—stared with his mouth half-open. “Are you... Are you an Arkhevari?” he whispered, as if the name itself might summon calamity.
I should have cared about these witnesses. I didn’t. All I could think about was her. The rest of my mind was focused on keeping my aura golden. Carefully, I leaned in close enough that the Ohrur could feel my breath, and I let the faintest heat of my aura press against his thoughts. Panic spooled through his mind like a loose thread.
“Find me the Ohrur ship that left from an outpost called MX45,” I instructed. "Now.”
I had finally figured out the name of the outpost through Nythor's mumbling. It took the computer a few heartbeats, but I found it.
His eyes darted; he was trying to buy time, hoping a guard would come to his rescue. They wouldn't help him. “I—names are encrypted—routes?—”
“You will open the manifest,” I cut in. “You will trace the manifest hop back one node. You will tell me its current hold and send me the vector. You will route the comm through Ohrur nets and mark it with your signature. Do it now.”
He began to babble, pleading for his life—Please, don’t kill me, please—but my finger tightened on the grip until the oil-slick skin trembled. Fear makes clever men clumsy. Fear unlocks corners they hide from when their hands are steady.
Somewhere in the stall, the other customers shifted uncomfortably, but no one intervened. The Melvar stole glances, eyes wild, then looked away as though seeing gods was an act of bad luck.
The Ohrur’s fingers flew over the comm panel as commanded. I felt him sweat; I felt his thoughts like static against my will. He found the convoy manifest, the transport signature. The ship was on its way to Morrakbarr.
“Node Seven,” he whispered, trembling. “Shuttle cluster—transit lane—left the planet hours ago.”
“Good,” I said, and the word was the end of any courtesy between us.
One last time, the merchant whimpered, in a voice that was barely a breath, “Please—don’t?—”
“You will tell no one about this moment,” I said, and when he hesitated, the muzzle pressed harder. “You won't even remember this happened.” My mind probed his and embedded the command, filling it with different memories instead. I wasn't as clumsy as Nythor.
“Yes. Yes. I will?—”
Morrakbarr. A slaver hub. A trade planet where the Ohrurs funneled contraband and flesh alike. It fit the pattern: a moving convoy born of bargains between Cryon hands and Ohrur ledgers, rendezvousing at one of the transit nodes.
The merchant nodded, his eyes wet and vacant, the memory-threads I’d woven in his skull already knitting the lies I’d planted. He would wake to a story that tasted like cowardice and caution; he would not wake to the knowledge of what I had done. Good.
The concourse hummed with the usual commerce and the oily breath of traders, but the motion in the crowd shifted like a school of fish startled by a predator. Footsteps—not the casual pacing of shoppers but the measured, armored cadence of enforcers—thudded closer.
I straightened. Not because I worried. Because timing is everything.
They appeared as a wedge of motion at the end of the lane: three males. Space Guardians, I assumed, by theiruniforms and the way they carried themselves. Their silvery skin shone under the artificial lighting, and the realization of who they were—or who they were supposed to be—hit me with a vengeance that threatened to rob my breath. I knew this species. It was one of the last we seeded before we stopped with the senseless undertaking. But this one wasn't one of the original species. No. This one reeked of artifice, of something stitched together in vats and cold laboratories, not born of balance. Things that were never supposed to be. They were one of those things brought to life without soul, without purpose, animated shells meant to obey and endure.
They had taken what we once seeded and corrupted it.
They?
Who?
Blind fury raged underneath my skin. I needed to find out.
I would find out.
But first, I had to get Ella back to safety.
The three males advanced in formation, their weapons slung with the easy assurance of soldiers who had known nothing else since their first breath. Their silvery skin gleamed beneath the station’s harsh glow, every line of muscle too precise, too engineered. Even their eyes, flat and dark, betrayed nothing, no spark of the starlight that bound species to creation.
Space Guardians. That was what they were called now. Mercenaries. Enforcers. Tools leased out by theOhrur, like blades from a rack. But I knew what they truly were: echoes. Faint reflections of something my kind had once woven, now stripped of their soul and made to serve masters who knew nothing of balance.
