Page 15

“And?”

His gaze slides toward the clinic module in the distance.

Every muscle in my body tightens before he speaks.

“Prentiss asked about my lock design when she arrived,” he says. “Not because she stole anything. Calm your tits, big man. She noticed the latch model and told me the manufacturer recalled a run of them because the diagnostic port could be spoofed with a child’s math toy. Then she called the lock ‘embarrassingly optimistic’ and walked away.”

Pell blinks. “She knew that from looking?”

Brakk shrugs. “Apparently.”

The bond pulls at me again, not softly. It drags attention through irritation, admiration, and dread until Anita’s absence becomes its own presence. Reckless and intelligent. A dangerous combination in any environment, but catastrophic here.

“Who else knew?” I ask.

Brakk scratches behind one ear. “Terry might. Pell might. Any decent tech might, if they bothered to read recall notices instead of pretending expensive means secure.”

Pell scowls. “I read recall notices.”

“Then you’re still a suspect. Congratulations.”

Before I can respond, my wrist comm pulses with a perimeter alert.

Western lower access. Door C-7. Manual open.

My blood turns cold.

Pell sees the alert on his compad. “That is the same route as the unauthorized entries.”

Brakk looks toward the excavation pit. “Who opened it?”

The badge signature appears.

Anita Prentiss.

Everything in me becomes very quiet.

Then I am moving.

The outer dig strikes my senses in violent layers as I leave the equipment cage behind. Cold air claws at my throat. Floodlights glare against drifting dust. Workers shout around me, but their voices blur beneath the pounding of my boots on metal grating. The site’s layout unrolls in my mind: cleared path, central terrace, western descent, service hatch C-7, partially excavated chamber beyond. She should not know the route unless she read the restricted map, stole a glance at a monitor, or simply looked at the site and understood it better than the people paid to contain it.

All three possibilities are equally infuriating.

I reach the hatch as it seals behind her. The lock accepts my override with a reluctant chirp. Warm stale air breathes out from the tunnel below, carrying mineral dust, old ozone, and a faint scent like rain on heated stone. The descent lights are active, though only at half strength. Anita has not been reckless enough to go blind.

That does not comfort me.

I duck through the hatch and descend.

The tunnel narrows after twenty meters, forcing even my frame to turn slightly at the shoulders. Its walls are a mixture of League-cut support plating and exposed ruin stone blacker than the surrounding basalt. My armor scrapes once against a protruding brace. The sound moves ahead of me strangely, echoes returning too late from distances that should not exist inside a short access tunnel.

“Prentiss,” I call.

Her voice floats back, annoyed and alive. “If this is another lecture, can we schedule it after the history-making discovery?”

I follow the sound into a partially excavated chamber lit by two portable lamps and the pale beam of her scanner. She stands near a curved ruin wall, one boot braced on fallen stone, her curls pinned worse than before and her coat streaked with dust. She looks small against the architecture. She also looks entirely too pleased with herself.

Relief hits first.