“Darren, what if we are too late?” Aiden said as the elevator started moving. His voice was calm and collected, but his expression was tight. Alert, as if he expected something to jump at them at any moment.
Squeezing his hands into fists, Darren tried not to give into that fear. They’d come straight here as soon as Nyle had given them the location two hours ago.While Marcus had still been searching for it.This had to be something else. Maybe there had been an accident and everyone was dealing with it now.
“There are no signs of a struggle. Or bodies,” Rick said. He met Darren’s gaze and gave him a small smile. “If the people here are Valrais supporters, they would’ve fought back.”
“Bea, have any ships docked in the last twenty-four hours?” Darren asked.
“The records show just a routine supply shuttle. It stops by every five days.”
That settled a fraction of the anxiety, but the reprieve didn’t last. The twisting feeling in his stomach spiked again when they reached the reception area on the third floor. The white room was empty and still. Three half-full coffee mugs sat on one end of the registration desk, the liquid in them lukewarm.
“Where is everyone?” Aiden muttered, holding up a tablet from one of the L-shaped couches arranged in front. The device was playing a muted cartoon show.
Darren went to the holoscreens on the inner side of the desk. An access badge belonging to a security guard was tucked away in a compartment under the shelf with tablets. He picked it up, showing it to the other two.
“That should get us to station control,” he said, marching across to the door with the authorized access sign.
Any hope he held out that they were going to come across someone vanished the moment the door opened. Station control stood as empty as the reception room. Cups and half-eaten pastries were scattered across desks and surfaces, but not a single person was in sight. At least at first.
But as Darren approached the observation deck overlooking the power reactor at the heart of the station, hisstomach turned and his lungs felt like they were about to burst. The people he’d come looking for were down there, piled on top of each other at the base of the reactor platform. They didn’t wear radiation suits.
Darren heaved, shoving off the glass. He couldn’t look, couldn’t stand the bulging yellow eyes staring up at him.
“Oh my god,” Rick gasped, yanking away from the window. He looked like he was about to faint.
Aiden sucked in a deep breath and snapped his eyes shut. He stepped away too and in the process knocked a monitor down, the crash booming in the silence around them.
“Guys, what’s going on?”Bea’s worried voice pulled Darren’s attention.
He took a deep breath and swallowed the nausea. “We found the researchers, Bea. They are dead.”
“Dead?”
The legs of a chair scraped along the floor. Darren whipped his head in the direction of the sound and found Aiden grasping onto it for support. “They went into the reactor room with no suits,” he said, his voice leveled.
There was a pause.“That’s… Why would they do that? Old space station reactors release too much radiation! Everyone knows that!”
The back of Darren’s neck covered with prickles. No one would willingly walk into a reactor room without a suit. No one. And even if it was to commit a suicide, an entire space station doing it at the same time?
That just didn’t happen.
Fear clutched Darren’s chest, Aiden’s words from the elevator ringing in his head. They were too late. This was Marcus’ doing, there was no other explanation. He’d somehow found out about the research station and got here before them. He’d killed all those people before Darren could save them.
“Darren.”
Marcus was always one step ahead. He’d never stopped hunting down the Valrais supporters, and he never would. He had power, resources, people. He ruled the world from the shadows and no one could oppose him.
No one but Darren and his crew.Because they held the key to the one thing that could bring Marcus down—the Valrais Legacy.
“Darren.” Aiden grabbed his arm and shook him.
Darren’s eyes snapped to Aiden, settling into the shivers-inducing hazel of his intense gaze. Squeezing his hand back, Darren recentered himself. “Bea, can you access the main system?”
“Yes. But everything’s been purged. I’ll need you to run a bunch of commands Nyle designed.”
Aiden darted over to the central console. “On it. What do you need me to do?”
Ten minutes later, they had part of the surveillance and station logs. Marcus’ footprint was all over them, confirming what they all suspected. Part of Darren had still hoped there would be some other explanation, a freak incident or mass hysteria, but as they boarded the Maine and left the ghost station behind, he accepted the tragedy for what it was.
Marcus wasn’t going to stop until he hunted down every last person that knew who the Valrais were. He wanted the legacy, and he didn’t care how many people he needed to kill to get to it.
But Darren could fight him. He was still outnumbered and he didn’t have Marcus’ power, yes, but he wasn’t alone in this anymore. He had the Maine’s crew and with their help, they were going to raise an army to take Marcus down.
