The lights flicker again, slower this time.
Outside our room, the corridor shifts to red-light standby. Soft. Pulsing. Like a countdown heartbeat we’re not invited to hear.
We both look out through the thin wall panel window.
He doesn’t speak.
Neither do I.
But we’re already moving.
CHAPTER 12
TATEK
There is no time.
That is the truth beneath every movement now—every glance at the panel, every keystroke, every breath I pretend is even. The lockdown sweep has begun early. That tells me Obol’s predictive systems have registered deviation—some spike in our interaction log, something algorithmic that screamedtoo close, too fast. They don’t know why, but they knowsomething. And that’s enough to kill her.
Mara is two corridors away, downloading clearance rotas from an unpatched sanitation hub. I should be with her. But that would make us easier to find. Two anomalies in one place draws more heat than one ghost drifting through obsolete halls. We agreed. Separate for now. Regroup at the sub-level junction by shift change.
My hands move fast, faster than they should, fingers skimming across the rusted terminal of the abandoned medical bay like I was bred in wires and bypass commands. The screen flickers—old, yellowed. Its interface predates most of the Coalition’s newer encryption architecture, which works in my favor. Age means neglect. Neglect means vulnerability.
“Come on,” I mutter.
The code skeleton appears.
I exhale.
The override protocol is exactly where I hoped—buried beneath a medical ethics review file last updated three standard years ago. Obol never wastes energy scrubbing the dead space. Too many ghosts on the station. It’s easier to corral the living.
I extract the key.
It pulses blue on the screen—live, volatile. One use. One override. After that, it’ll self-nullify. Like everything else the Coalition touches.
My compad vibrates against my chestplate.
I freeze.
Then check.
Mara. Three pulses. Safe. Still downloading.
I nod to no one and resume work.
Next: reroute the pod. I leave the bay and cut through a narrow maintenance shaft that reeks of recycled coolant and insulation foam. The walls are tight. I have to angle my shoulders sideways just to move through.
Claustrophobia isn’t a Vakutan trait. But even I feel the pressure.
I reach the access hatch for the old shuttle terminal. It's decommissioned, stripped of personnel and repurposed for resource storage. But the pod itself—hollowed, scorched, mostly forgotten—is still docked. Not flyable. Not really. But Mara says she can rig enough power through the junction plates to make it move. Doesn’t need to fly. Just float. Drift out of bounds and vanish into debris patterns the station already ignores.
I slide open the panel.
The shuttle’s interior greets me with silence and dust. A fine powder coats every surface, like the ship’s been waiting to be touched. My boots scuff the floor, raising quiet clouds that sting my nose.
I access the nav core.
It’s broken. Of course it is.
