Page 37 of Claimed By the Wraiths

She was still there. Still herself.

I put my hands on the controls and flew toward her.

JESSA

The cell was three meters by two. Metal walls, metal floor, a bench bolted to one wall that served as bed, chair, and the only horizontal surface.

A drain in the corner for a refresher. The light was constant, a flat white panel in the ceiling that didn’t dim, didn’t shift, didn’t acknowledge that time was passing. The door was solid with an electronic lock and a slot at the bottom for meal trays.

I’d been here for approximately six hours. I knew because I’d been counting guard rotations since the sedative headache cleared.

Twenty-two minutes between patrols. Sixteen rotations, allowing for the margins of error in my counting. Add the transport, sedated going in and awake in the dark for the last stretch of it, and call it fourteen hours since Meridian.

The ceiling light never dimmed, so rotations and meal trays were the only clock I had. I’d count both for as long as they kept me, and I already suspected that would be days.

My wrists were bruised from the restraints they’d used during transport.

They’d taken my remaining conference shoe and given me thin detention slippers with soles barely thicker than cloth.

My datapad was gone. My comm. The data drive Deyric gave me was gone.

The access codes were in my head, and they couldn’t take those without a conversation I didn’t plan to make easy.

The meal slot opened. A tray slid through.

Protein block. Water packet. Standard detention rations.

I checked the seal on the water and the packaging on the protein block. Meaningless, really. If they wanted me unconscious, they had already proved they could manage that without poisoning breakfast. Vain wanted me lucid. Calories were the better gamble.

I ate everything. Whatever was coming, I needed the calories more than I needed to make a point about my accommodation.

A guard came for me at what I estimated was mid-morning. Young. Nervous.

The experienced guards worked the upper levels and the research wing; the holding corridor got the new conscripts, the ones who hadn’t earned a real posting yet. This one held his weapon wrong, grip white-knuckled, barrel drifting left. He couldn’t have been older than nineteen or twenty.

“On your feet,” he said. He tried for authority and landed somewhere near request.

I stood. He led me out of the cell and through the holding level corridor. I counted as we walked.

Forty-seven steps to the lift. Four other cell doors visible, all closed.

The corridor was clean, well-maintained, brighter than the cell. Cameras at every junction, mounted high, wide angle. Two guards at the corridor’s far end, armed, professional, not nervous like this one.

Nothing inside the cells had shown a lens or microphone grille. Holding watched doors and corridors; the research wing got the instruments.

The lift took us up two levels. I counted the indicator lights anyway. Habit.

The doors opened onto a different world. The holding level was institutional. This was corporate.

Polished floors, indirect lighting, the faint hum of air recycling at a higher quality than the cells below. Conference rooms with real chairs visible through frosted glass panels. A viewport showing the void outside.

The young guard stopped at a door at the end of the corridor. Opened it. Stepped aside.

Kess Vain was waiting inside.

He stood when I entered. Simple courtesy for a colleague arriving at a meeting, the kind so automatic it was either deeply ingrained or very carefully performed.

He was not what I expected.