Page 125 of Tracked and Taken

“The geometric logo on the monitor in his chamber. I have routed it to specialist contacts at the corporate registry. I do not know whose logo it is. I have a feeling I am going to know shortly and I am not looking forward to whose.”

“Copy.”

“Drask has been pulled into the case on the Velarkis board file. The transaction code from my notebook matched something in the shell paperwork. His name is formally attached to your case as of this morning. The shell company has been seized. Severin BioSystems is the subject of a Velarkis board investigation that opened at 1430 station time. The corporate counsel for BioSystems in this sector has gone dark. I am not surprised.”

“Copy.”

“Morrison is at Iris-Nine with Luzrak running scene control. They have already cleared three chambers for transport. The first transport will be inbound to Junction One in approximately six hours. Twenty bonded mates. Luzrak is going to have his hands full.”

“Copy.”

“Torres.”

“Flossie.”

“Are you all right.”

I look at her.

The honest answer is no. The operational answer is yes. The answer that is going to make Flossie’s job easier in the next twenty-four hours is yes.

“I will be. I have been chemically exposed. I need a medical screen. Then I need to sleep for ten hours and to not be on the schedule for forty-eight hours after that.”

“Copy. Medical first. Vosk?”

“With her.”

“Copy. The screen room is in medical bay two. I have cleared it.”

She turns. She does not turn back.

The half-second she takes at the corner before she rounds it is, by my read of her shoulders, the half-second Flossie Knight takes when she has been holding the second of her three crises in the upper register of her brain and is allowed to let it down a notch.

She is glad I am back.

She does not have the bandwidth to say it.

We pass the medical bay.

The window onto Bay One is open. Through the window I see Maren first — her hair down, her clothes the same clothes she has been wearing for some indefinite number of days.

She is in the chair beside the bed.

Her hand is in his.

Torek is awake. Sedated still, by the slow blink of his eyes — he is going to be on the slow side of conscious for some hours yet. But his hand is moving in hers. His fingers tightening, loosening, tightening again. The small motion a Xarthian male makes with his bonded mate’s hand when his nervous system is, by the chemistry of pair-bonded contact, running the recovery protocol it has been engineered, by his species, to run.

Maren does not see us.

Her face is against his face. Her mouth at the side of his face, not kissing, just near.

I do not intrude.

Tael’s hand comes to the small of my back.

He does not pull me away. He does not push me forward. He stands at my shoulder and he lets me look for the count of some seconds I am not keeping.

Then —