I know that face. Anyone with an ounce of self-preservation would. He’s smaller than Zavin, the same bronze-copper scaling but darker. Age hasn’t softened him. If anything, it’s stripped away everything unnecessary. There is nothing remotely empathetic in his sharp eyes as they fall on me.
Heat crawls up the back of my neck as I keep my eyes trained on the floor and walk past on legs I can’t feel. I have to concentrate onputting one foot in front of the other. I don’t look back after I pass him, convinced claws are going to hook into me at any moment.
The awareness of him follows me anyway, sitting between my shoulder blades all the way down the hall. When I finally turn a corner and the line of sight breaks, my breath whooshes out. I lean on the wall, blinking away black dots from my vision.
Of all the people in House Sethrak, he was the last one I needed to run into.
A horrible feeling settles in my stomach. I’m not supposed to be down here. Zavin made that abundantly clear when he parked me in those quarters and wrapped half a dozen security protocols around me. The whole point was to keep me out of sight while I worked. If Lord Sethrak mentions seeing me wandering around the lower levels alone, the conversation that follows is going to be spectacularly unpleasant.
Assuming it’s only a conversation. I push away from the wall. Panicking about it won’t help. The damage is already done.
Get the logs. Get back to my room. That’s it. I don’t need another look at Lord Sethrak. One was more than enough.
The junction node is only a few corridors away. If I move quickly, pull the buffer data, and head straight back, this becomes a strange encounter and nothing more. A contractor in the wrong passage at the wrong time.
That’s the story I’m sticking with.
Thankfully, the buffer download takes less than two minutes. I spend every second watching the corridor access feed on the maintenance terminal, waiting for a security alert, a patrol route, or some indication that Lord Sethrak decided a human female wandering around his lower levels deserved a second look. Nothing appears. Thetransfer completes, I disconnect the drive, and head back the way I came.
The walk back feels longer than the trip down. Every empty hallway gives my imagination more room to work. By the time I reach the stairwell, I’ve already rehearsed half a dozen explanations for why I was wandering around the lower levels alone, and none of them survive contact with reality.
The corridors stay empty. That should make me feel better. Instead, all I can think about is Lord Sethrak.
When my door finally comes into view, I resist the urge to sprint the remaining distance. Percy releases the lock the moment the internal sensor recognizes me. I slip inside, close the door behind me, and stand there for a second, listening for footsteps that never come.
“I’m back, Perce.”
The room feels exactly the same as when I left it. The workstation hums. Percy’s cooling fan spins steadily. Nothing has changed. My body hasn’t gotten the message.
I press a hand against my chest and wait for my heart to remember that I’m no longer standing in a utility corridor with Lord Sethrak. When it refuses, I give up and head for the workstation.
A few minutes later I’m feeding the recovered logs into Percy’s workspace. I was successful apart from one teeny tiny hiccup that may or may not come back to bite me in the ass. For now, the only thing I can do is keep working and hope for the best.
The recovered buffer logs give me exactly what I was hoping for and none of what I actually want.
The picture is getting clearer. Not clear enough to identify the mole, but sharp enough to make out the shape around them. Every trail points upward. Every alteration requires access that shouldbelong to senior personnel. The more data Percy processes, the smaller the suspect pool becomes.
I keep wondering what Zavin’s going to do when I tell him. Not because he won’t believe me.
Because he will.
The problem with a senior mole is that eventually the investigation starts brushing up against people nobody wants to suspect.
I’m still staring at the latest authorization map when the door opens. Zavin steps inside without knocking. I’m already running a quick assessment before he’s fully through the door. No guards. No expression that says he knew I’d been seen.
His eyes narrow. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
I fix my expression. “Like what?”
“Like you’re deciding whether I’m about to be a problem.”
For one second I wonder if he knows Sethrak saw me. Then his lips tilt. He flashes a smile and every part of me locks onto his lips. “I’ve been in the room for three seconds.”
The change is so unexpected that I forget what we were talking about. I’ve seen him smile before. The easy version. The practiced one. This is different. Gone almost as soon as it appears, and I want to see it more.
Zavin is handsome, in the way predators always are, but in that unguarded moment he was… so much more. He was… indefinable. Luminous. The hardness he wears like a second skin cracks open and something warmer slips through, turning him reachable and far more dangerous than before.
I’ve been in the room for three seconds.
