"Move." I unhook from the wall and drop into the lower corridor, landing in a crouch. Astra follows, her boots hitting the deck with barely a sound. We're inside the facility perimeter now. The corridors here still have power, emergency lighting painting everything in sickly red.
The research facility reveals itself in pieces.
First, the door. Reinforced, mag-locked, with a security panel that's been modified with tech I don't recognize. I pull out the bypass kit, but Astra's already moving, her hands flying over the panel with the kind of speed that comes from muscle memory.
"Medical override," she murmurs. "They're using a hospital-grade security system. Probably salvaged from a colony ship."
The lock disengages with a soft click. The door slides open, and we step into a laboratory that shouldn't exist.
Equipment hums softly in the dim light. Workstations arranged in a circle around a central holo-projector, currently dark. Monitoring stations with screens still displaying data streams. And along the far wall, rows of storage units marked with symbols I recognize from my father's personal files.
Spatial anomaly research. The same field Malachar Torrence spent twenty years studying before he disappeared.
"Dexter." Astra's voice is quiet, controlled, but I hear the tension underneath. She's standing in front of one of the workstations, a data slate in her hands. "Look at this."
I cross to her, reading over her shoulder. The notes are in multiple hands, different writing styles, different terminologies. But one section, dated three months before Sigma-9, is in handwriting I'd know anywhere.
My father's.
"He was here." The words taste like ash. "Before Sigma-9. Before he vanished. He was working on this."
"Not just working on it." Astra scrolls through the data, her face illuminated by the slate's glow. "Directing it. These are his research parameters, his hypotheses. Dexter, this whole facility was his project."
The implications settle over me like a shroud. Sigma-9 wasn't random. The coordinates, the assets, the ambush that killed her squad and destroyed my father, it was all connected to this. To research that someone wanted badly enough to kill for.
"Well." The voice comes from the doorway, calm and familiar. "I was wondering when you'd find me."
I turn, hand already on my weapon, but I don't draw. Not yet.
Webb stands in the entrance, flanked by four guardswith rifles raised. He's older than the last time I saw him, hair gone grey at the temples, new lines carved into his face. But his eyes are the same. Sharp. Calculating. The eyes of a man who's always three moves ahead.
"Dexter Torrence," he says, stepping into the lab. "And Astra Venn. Together. That's interesting." His gaze shifts between us, assessing. "I assume you're here to kill me."
"That was the plan." I keep my hand near my weapon, but Webb makes no move to draw his own. Neither do his guards, though their rifles stay trained on us. "Want to tell me why I shouldn't?"
"Because I can give you answers." Webb moves to one of the workstations, his movements unhurried. Like we're colleagues discussing research, not enemies in a standoff. "About Sigma-9. About your father. About what you're really chasing through the dark."
"You sold us out." Astra's voice could cut through hull plating. "You gave them our coordinates. My squad died because of you."
"Yes." Webb doesn't flinch from the accusation. "I provided information to certain parties in exchange for compensation. I won't insult you by denying it."
"Then you admit it." Her hand moves to her weapon.
"I admit I was a conduit." Webb's eyes stay on her, unflinching. "What I didn't know was what they planned to do with that information. The coordinates, the asset locations, the patrol routes—I thought it was corporate espionage. Industrial intelligence gathering. I didn't know they were planning a massacre."
"Liar." The word is flat, absolute.
"Probably." Webb's smile is tired, empty of humor. "But consider this: Sigma-9 wasn't about you. It was never about you. It was about what you were guarding. Cargo youdidn't know you were carrying. Research data. Malachar's work."
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees. I feel it in my chest, in the ice forming around my lungs.
"Explain." My voice comes out cold, controlled. The voice I use when I'm one wrong word away from violence.
Webb pulls up a holo-display, and data streams across the air between us. Coordinates. Asset manifests. Transfer records. And buried in the middle of it all, a single file tagged with my father's personal encryption signature.
"Your unit was transporting more than supplies," Webb says, highlighting a section of the manifest. "Hidden in the cargo containers, encrypted and compartmentalized, was twenty years of Malachar's anomaly research. Someone wanted it. Badly enough to kill everyone who knew it existed."
"Who?" Astra's question is ice and rage in equal measure. "Who gave the order?"
