Page 44 of Claimed By the Wraiths

Tal had made it through the first two checkpoints on his credentials and stopped at the third.

Then he changed.

His shoulders came back. His voice lost the strain it had carried since Meridian. The frightened man on the Ghost disappeared under twelve years of diplomatic training.

“My diplomatic authorization was accepted by an unregistered installation,” he told the clerk. “I want the authorizing officer and the station supervisor.”

The clerk blinked. “Sir, I need you to continue through processing.”

“No. You need to explain why an unregistered installation accepted a vessel under my authorization and assigned it a berth without disclosing its identity.”

People started looking.

Good.

The clerk touched her earpiece. Two security officers appeared at the far end of the processing lane.

Tal saw them. His face didn’t change.

“I also want your name,” he said to the clerk. “For the incident record.”

The officers reached him.

“Liaison Tal. Command has been expecting you. You need to come with us.”

There it was. The authorization hadn’t cleared him; it had flagged him and brought him inside.

“On whose authority?”

“Sir.”

“That is not an authority.”

A third officer was coming now. Everyone in the lane was watching the diplomat refusing to move.

Nobody was looking toward the maintenance grille.

Tal’s voice followed me.

“I assume I’m being detained.”

One of the officers said, “Come with us.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

I backed away from the grille before they moved him.

The service corridor was narrow, poorly lit, and almost empty. I let the visual meld settle over me completely.

This was the ordinary version, if anything my people did with shadow could be called ordinary. Light bent around my body and the things tight against it. Clothes. Boots. The flush comm seated against my ear. Even the blaster at my hip disappeared into the shape my eyes refused to hold.

It was camouflage, not dissolution.

The deeper state was different.

If I had to compress through a gap smaller than my body, the body could follow the shadow. Close flexible clothing could follow. The comm could follow because it never broke contact with my skin.

A blaster could not. A pack could not. Tools with rigid housings could not.