Corso Vell. Former cargo handler, Deck Nine logistics, employed under my father's direct oversight for eleven years. Terminated from station records six months ago. Not fired. Not transferred. Just gone, the way people go when someone decides they never existed.
Except Talia's debtors don't forget. Corso Vell owed fourteen thousand credits to a gambling den on the lower tiers, and gamblers keep better records than gods. His last known location, according to the den's meticulous ledger of shame: Sealed Section 7-Alpha. Quarantine.
"Quarantine for what?" I ask, though I'm already pulling up the station schematic on my own terminal. The intelligence hub hums around me, screens casting their blue-white pallor across every surface, and the recycled air tastes like it always does in here. Like nothing. Like a place that's been scrubbed of anything human.
Astra leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. "Medical sealed it. Your father's authorization, personally coded.No override without the Seat's biometric confirmation." She lifts one eyebrow. "Which, as of two weeks ago, is yours."
"Convenient."
"Or deliberate." She straightens. "I've had two teams try to access that section in the months since Malachar disappeared. Both times, the security protocols escalated beyond my clearance. Whatever's in there, he wanted it locked even from me."
That lands somewhere between insult and intrigue. My father trusted Astra Venn with the station's defense grid, its weapons array, and the lives of everyone aboard.
He didn't trust her with whatever was behind that door.
I pull up the quarantine order. Standard formatting, medical language, contamination protocols. All of it sterile and procedural and utterly devoid of specifics. The hazard classification reads "Anomalous Environmental Condition, Class Undefined." Which means nothing. Which means whoever wrote it either didn't know what they were containing or didn't want anyone else to know.
"Get Dexter," I say. "And get me Ethan Eames."
Ethan arrives beforemy brother does, which is either a testament to his proximity or his surveillance. He walks into the intelligence hub like he's entering a party he's already bored by, all loose-limbed grace in that rumpled coat, and he settles into the chair across from me without waiting for invitation. His eyes, though. His eyes are doing something different from the rest of him. They're cataloguing.The screens I have open. The schematic. The quarantine file.
"Sealed Section 7-Alpha," he says, before I ask. "You found something."
"I found a name. Corso Vell."
A flicker behind his expression, there and gone like a glitch in a display. "Vell. Yes. Cargo logistics. Quiet man, religious about his routines. Your father liked him because he never asked questions."
"He's listed as residing in the sealed section. Which you told me was quarantined."
"It is quarantined." Ethan crosses one leg over the other and folds his hands in his lap, the picture of a man with nothing to hide, which is how I know he's hiding something. "It was locked down six months ago. Before your father disappeared."
"Before."
"Several weeks before, in fact." He pauses, and the pause has architecture to it, a calculated beat that's meant to feel reluctant. "Your father never told me why. Though I suspect it's related to his personal research."
"Personal research."
Ethan's mouth curves, not quite a smile. "Malachar had interests beyond station governance, Zane. You know this. The man spent half his evenings in labs that weren't on any official manifest. He told me once that Duskfall Station was built in this particular location for a reason, and that the reason was older than the station itself." He lifts one shoulder. "I assumed it was eccentricity. Now I'm less certain."
I hold his gaze and count the things he's not saying. The information he's doling out in careful portions, enough to seem helpful, not enough to actually illuminate. This iswhat Ethan does. He stands in the gap between what you know and what you need, and he charges rent.
"You suggested I look in the sealed section," I say.
"I suggested there were places on this station you hadn't explored. You drew your own conclusions." His smile reaches his eyes this time, and it's the warmest, emptiest thing I've ever seen. "Shall I pull the access logs? I can tell you who's been requesting entry besides Astra's teams. Might paint an interesting picture."
"Do it. Send everything to this terminal."
He stands, inclines his head with that practiced courtesy that makes my teeth ache, and leaves. The door seals behind him and I sit in the silence of the hub, staring at the chair where he sat, thinking about angles. Ethan Eames deals in information the way other men deal in weapons. Every piece of intelligence has a trajectory, and you don't always see the target until it's already bleeding.
Dexter arrives with the subtlety of a decompression alarm, shouldering through the door already mid-sentence. "Astra briefed me. Sealed section, quarantine, former cargo handler, what are we waiting for?" He plants both hands on the console and leans forward, all coiled energy and impatience. My brother runs hot the way reactors run hot. Useful, until containment fails.
"We're waiting for information."
"We've got information. We've got a name and a door. I say we open the door and ask the name some pointed questions."
"And if the quarantine is real? If there's an actual biological or environmental hazard behind that seal?"
"Then we go in with gear."
