“You know them?”
“Played with two of them.” His voice was a growl. “Played against the others. Tavriik was a defender for the Vorth Strikers. Best in the League before—” he stopped. Swallowed. “Before he disappeared. The file was never closed.”
She scrolled further, her stomach twisting. Some files had death dates attached. Others were just… empty. No exit date, no current location. Just a void where a life used to be.
“Missing is worse than dead.”
She kept pulling files. The pattern was jumping off the screen now, the same way Kian’s expense reports used to jump off the quarterly audits. She didn’t know warball. Didn’t know rankings or positions or any of the tactical nonsense Raaze had tried to explain in the cockpit, but she knew fraud when she saw it.
“Every single one of these clearances opened a slot.” She was talking fast now, her fingers moving across the interface. “Tavriik’s disappearance… someone moved up to fill his position. This one, Zorrat, same thing. And this one—” She pulled up the fifth file, and the pattern crystallized into something worse. “They all cleared the way for the same athlete.”
Raaze went very still. “Who?”
She ran another search. “Vikrav R’Tev.”
She didn’t need to know who Vikrav was. The expression on Raaze’s face was enough.
Cait, we have to go, Fred urged. The checkpoint guard is looping back. The afternoon shift is arriving in five minutes. Get the data and get out.
“I need more time.”
You don’t have it. The guard is four corridors away, Fred warned.
She ignored him and kept working. She began a deep dive into the entire directory, mirroring the files onto her encrypted drive. Every scrap of data, all the mismatched timestamps…
Three minutes.
“Cait,” Raaze said her name. Ignoring him, she started copying everything.
Two minutes, thirty.
The transfer bar crawled across the screen. 80%… 85%…
Two minutes.
92%… 95%…
Cait, you need to move.
She ignored him, her eyes locked on the progress bar. 98%… 99%…
The drive chirped. Copy complete.
Ripping the drive from the console, she shoved it into her pocket and slid off the stool. “Done.”
They exfilled on her route and his timing. Fred fed her directions, and Raaze set the pace, his hand finding her elbow when she hesitated, his body angling between her and every potential danger without being asked.
The H4-RPY was exactly where they’d left her, docking clamps still engaged, ramp already lowering as they approached. Fred must have started the launch sequence the moment they cleared the archive corridor.
She hit the ramp running, Raaze half a step behind her.
Clamps releasing. We’re clear in thirty seconds.
The ramp sealed behind them, and the deck vibrated as the engines boosted. Then they were lifting, the station falling away beneath them, and she was standing in the cargo bay with her lungs burning and her hands shaking.
Raaze stopped a few feet away.
She stopped as well.
