Resh remains outside while I deal with the details. I pull up a supply requisition on my wrist comm while she settles Percy into position and begins checking his systems.
Atmospheric supplements go first. Twelve cartridges, enough for a full cycle, and I add a standing reorder so the stock replenishes before it drops below eight. She had six left in the Splits. Six cartridges, twenty-four days of breathable air, and a credit account bleeding faster than she could refill it. It’s not enough.
“Take one of these.” I pull a respiratory supplement from the provision kit stocked beside the workstation and hold it out to her. The pill sits in my palm. “They are standard atmospheric supplements suited for human respiration at this depth. The filtration system handles most of it, but the lower levels run thinner than surface standard.”
Suspicion bleeds through her body, her temperature rising a fraction.
“If I wanted you drugged and compliant, there are more elegant methods.” I place it on the desk beside her mug. “I need your lungs functional. A human female passing out at a workstation is attention I can’t afford.”
She picks up the pill, examines it, and swallows it dry without breaking eye contact. The defiance in the gesture is so deliberate it borders on theatre. I hold back my chuckle.
Humans have no natural defence. They are prey, not predators, yet she acts as though she’s at the top of the pecking order. She’s definitely not stupid. It’s all bluff.
I key in a food order for her on my wrist comm after the cartridges. Standard human-compatible provisions: protein, hydration, the caloric density she’ll need after months of subsistence rations in the Splits. I have no idea what humans prefer to eat so I order three options and hope one of them doesn’t offend her.
“Food will arrive within the quarter hour.” I move toward the door. “Eat. I’ll return shortly to begin your briefing.”
“How shortly?”
“As long as it takes.”
She opens her mouth to push back, and I seal the door behind me. The lock engages, my biometric signature keying the mechanism to me and Resh. She won’t be opening it from the inside.
It’s the obvious decision. She’s new. Uncleared. An unknown variable I brought into the Warrens less than an hour ago.
Leaving her free to wander the residential levels would be irresponsible. That Kazren is currently in residence three levels above us has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Neither does the sharp pulse of unease that accompanied the thought of leaving her unsupervised. I’m ensuring her security. That’s all this is.
Security.
Chapter Five
Zavin
Resh falls into step beside me as we leave the residential tier, but he doesn’t speak. Not in the corridors. We walk in silence until the operations room seals behind us and the security field engages.
Only then does his composure crack. “Selin is dead.”
Fuck. Not Selin.
Twenty-six-year-old Selin, who was sharper than operatives twice her age. She came to me four years ago, a Sethrai female working the entertainment quarter’s lower tiers, running information between pleasure houses for credits that barely covered her food. An ear for languages and a memory that retained conversations verbatim — when I offered her a position in my network, she accepted on one condition: she would never work under Kazren’s oversight. She’d seen what his version of employment did to the women in his direct operation, and she wanted no part of it. I agreed because we thought the same way.
I built her a cover that kept her invisible to the family ledger, ran her listening post through my personal channels, and for four years she gathered intelligence from visiting dignitaries and traders with a discretion that made her one of my most valuable assets.
She trusted me to keep her outside Kazren’s reach.
My claws extend against the table surface. The scrape of keratin on stone is the only sound in the room.
“When.”
“Nine days ago.” Resh pulls up the intelligence map on the central display, a three-dimensional render of my network’s cells. Red blooms across the projection in three places. “A blade through her throat in a service corridor during the shift change. The official report calls it a contract dispute.”
I press my palms against the table. The stone is cool beneath my scales, grounding, steadying.
“Her cover was blown by information that shouldn’t have been accessible from any single point in the network.” Resh highlights the connections between three red nodes. “And she’s not the only one. Same signature as two other compromises this quarter. The operative feeding us military repositioning data from the Korvan trade summit is burned, and the Zhael listening post went dark overnight. I got our operative out before they reached her, but the data stream is gone. We spent three years building those positions.”
A hiss leaves my mouth.
