Page 50 of Claimed By the Wraiths

On the next escort he asked me a question under his breath about the three-attempt lockout on the level junctions. He already knew the answer. He wanted to know whether I did.

I answered correctly.

Two meal cycles later, nothing happened.

Then nothing happened again.

On the sixth day, a folded piece of paper came through the slot with my tray.

Compounds. Dosage numbers. Careful handwriting copied from a medical log by somebody terrified of being caught.

He’d also confirmed one thing I’d only inferred from the hardware: the holding cells weren’t recorded inside. Door states and corridor feeds only.

Patel wasn’t an ally because of one piece of paper.

He was a crack in a wall.

That was enough to start.

Vain kept calling me back for interviews. Not every day. Often enough that I stopped pretending each one was new.

Same questions, shifted half a degree.

How many people had seen the Meridian traffic. What Deyric could reconstruct. What Serak’s abilities actually were. Whether the Raptor had other sources inside the Consortium.

I gave him the same useless edges and kept the center to myself.

Sometimes he stopped interrogating and tried to recruit me instead. He talked about scale and control, about how someone who understood diplomatic systems should understand why the work would survive him, as though competence were a moral argument.

He wanted me lucid because I was useful. He wanted me talking because I understood systems. And under every question about Serak sat the same assumption: he would come.

Then I went back to the cell and kept building.

Narev gave me the lab wing on the seventh day.

“The biological containment protocols,” she said through the door gap. Her voice was stronger now. “There’s an override panel on the eastern wall of the main lab. I’ve watched the technicians enter the code during medical assessments. Four digits. They don’t cover the keypad.”

“You memorized it?”

“I memorized everything. I’ve been sitting in a cell for eleven months with nothing to do but watch and count.” A pause. “I’m a boat builder, Jessa. I notice how things are put together. And I notice how to take them apart.”

I banked the code.

The other levels were harder.

Patel escorted prisoners to the medical bay between them. Medical paperwork moved with the prisoners. The paperwork moved farther than we could.

Narev knew a name.

“Rynn. Akaruun. She still fights. They had to sedate her twice in the first month. Her mate is on the level above us. Kovac. They can hear each other through the vents sometimes.”

“Can you get a message to her?”

A long pause. “What kind?”

“The kind that tells her somebody is counting with her.”

The first message vanished.