Page 42 of Claimed By the Wraiths

“Communications?” I asked, like I was commenting on the lighting.

“Yes.”

Nothing more.

He didn’t need to tell me what the hardware did. I had grown up around diplomatic routing systems.

I memorized the room.

Door. Four guards. Service panel. Thirty steps from Vain’s conference room.

The lift carried us back down two levels.

Corporate polish became metal again. Better air became recycled staleness.

The young guard was waiting.

“We’ll talk again, Ms. Corren,” Vain said.

“I assumed.”

“I have questions about your crew.”

“I assumed that too.”

“And you have questions about my work.”

He almost smiled. “We both know this is an exchange.”

He was comfortable because he believed he had controlled the exchange.

He had shown me exactly what he wanted me to see: a successful subject, a cleaner method than Hessler’s, a future he thought governments would buy.

He didn’t know I had made him give me the success count.

He didn’t know I had tested the Khavai question.

He didn’t know I had confirmed the population by making him correct my estimate.

And he didn’t know I was counting guard positions and measuring the route to communications while he talked.

The young guard escorted me down. His name tag read PATEL.

His weapon was still held wrong, but he’d adjusted the barrel drift. Small improvement.

“Patel,” I said as we walked.

“I’m not supposed to talk to prisoners.”

“You’re also not supposed to hold your weapon with your finger inside the trigger guard during escort. Move it to the frame.”

He looked down. Adjusted.

“Better,” I said.

He locked me in my cell. I sat on the bench and closed my eyes.

Vain had solved the problem. Not through torture and crude chemistry. Through something precise and replicable and infinitely worse.