Page 26 of Claimed By the Wraiths

I let the silence sit.

“When it does, your name can appear in one of two places. In the chain that kept the operation alive. Or in the record of the person who finally helped us break it. Those are the choices I can actually give you.”

“That’s not a rescue.”

“No.”

He looked toward the sealed window.

For a long moment I thought he was going to stand up and leave.

Instead he said, “I didn’t know at first.”

I waited.

“Trade authorizations. Immunity tags. Cargo exceptions. Things people in my office process every day.” His voice stayed controlled by force. “Then the intake notices started crossing my channels. Status updates. Transfers. I knew. I kept routing them because by then the people above me knew I knew.”

He looked back at me.

“And men like Vain don’t accept resignations.”

“We know about Nexus Station.”

That landed harder than anything else I’d said.

His head came up.

“We have the coordinates,” I said. “We have the feeder manifests. So don’t give me the existence of the facility like it buys you something. Tell me what we don’t know.”

Tal stared at me for three seconds.

Then he made a choice.

“Vain commands it. Garrison is roughly two hundred, depending on rotations. Cargo and processing on the lower ring. Holding through the middle. Command and research above.” He paused. “They’ve been expanding the holding sections.”

“How do you know?”

“Routing certifications include emergency physical infrastructure. If the network fails, diplomatic liaisons need to know which nodes can be reached manually.” He touched the inside pocket of his jacket. “My credential carries an offline cache from the last certification I handled.”

“How old?”

“Eight months.”

Useful.

“Anything else?”

“Military docking is separate from cargo. Central service spine connects the sections.” His mouth tightened. “The cache won’t show whatever they’ve added since certification.”

My comm buzzed against my wrist.

Priority.

“Go.”

Serak’s voice was already clipped. “The second security layer doubled. Twelve personnel. Six teams. They tightened every service access near your level.”

Tal went still.