Page 17

Then he told me he needed to retrieve something from the adjoining storage room.

I nodded without looking up.

He disappeared through the side door.

Three seconds later, I heard the faint activation tone of a private communicator.

My hands stopped over the sample tray. The storage room walls weren’t soundproof, and while I couldn’t make out the words, I could hear his voice—low, fast, speaking Zunatorian. I glanced toward the door. Maybe he was calling another researcher. Maybe he was reporting a records problem. Maybe there was a completely reasonable explanation for why he had ordered me away from my own file and immediately disappeared to make a private transmission.

I looked at the workstation, then at the storage-room door.

The communicator went silent, and a second later Sera’n emerged, his expression composed again—too composed. He saw me watching him. Neither of us spoke.

Then the terminal beside my hand chimed. A message had appeared across my screen: ACCESS PERMISSIONS UPDATED.

My stomach dropped. I tapped the archive icon. Denied. Historical records: denied. Compatibility records: denied. I slowly lifted my head.

Sera’n stood across the lab watching me.

“You revoked my access.”

His face gave me nothing.

“I told you to stop.”

That should have been the end of it. Instead, it confirmed the one thing I hadn’t wanted to believe: whatever I had found wasn’t just wrong—someone was afraid I would keep looking.

I looked toward the storage room where he had made the call. Sera’n had spent months making sure I had a place in this laboratory; now he was the one closing doors in front of me, which meant either I had been wrong about him from the beginning, or he was more afraid than I understood.

I knew which possibility frightened me more.

CHAPTER THREE

Veyr

The man died before he understood I was in the room. That was usually preferable—less noise, less resistance, fewer variables. I caught him beneath the jaw as he turned, drove him backward into the wall, and pressed two fingers against the side of his neck. Silver-white current moved from my hand into his body in one precise pulse.

His muscles locked. His weapon slipped from his fingers, and I caught it before it hit the floor. He stared at me, eyes wide, throat working uselessly as his nervous system stopped answering him. I held the charge for exactly as long as necessary, then released him.

He collapsed—alive, barely conscious. Good enough.

Behind me, something shifted. I turned.

The second male had been hiding behind a broken partition. He came out fast, blade raised, but he had already made three mistakes. One, he had waited too long. Two, he favored his left knee. And three, his breathing had changed before he moved.

I stepped inside the swing, caught his wrist, twisted until the joint gave, and drove my elbow into his throat. The blade clattered away, and he dropped to one knee, choking. I could have ended it there. Instead, I put my palm against his chest and sent another controlled burst through him. His body seized and hit the floor beside the first.

Two bodies. Both breathing. No alarms.

I looked around the room.

Old cargo station. Outer trade route. Half the lighting dead. One entrance, one emergency vent, two surveillance points—both disabled before I entered.

The air smelled of burned circuitry, engine grease, and blood.

Not mine.

I retrieved the data unit from beneath the table and slid it into the inner compartment of my vest.