Page 94 of Tracked and Taken

I suit up. The kit settles over the silk and the bruises and the part of me that is still in that bunk. I lock it down. Eleven minutes to breach. Want is for after.

The ventral maintenance hatch cycles at 0937.

Tael goes first. I follow at two meters.

The air is wrong.

Four degrees colder than the ship. Disinfectant first. Under it, something organic, the filters have stopped fully catching. Closed-circuit air ran too long past sedated bodies. Fear leaves a residue. This place has been soaking in it.

The walls are seamless. No crew signage. No waste ports. Nothing that says anyone works here. Low blue light. Nowhere to hide. Every corridor is a throat.

Tael, quietly: “You see it.”

“I see it.”

“Quietly, sweetheart. Running scent.”

“Copy.”

He drops into a crouch. Head tilted. Nostrils flared. Eyes half-closed. The intake configuration — pulling air across his receptors, not pushing scent out. I have watched him do this twice. I have not watched it this close.

It is precise. It is also a male hunting while the thing he is protecting stands two meters behind him.

Seven seconds.

He stands.

“Torek is on this deck. Forty meters ahead, left corridor at the first junction. Sedated. Breathing. Maren’s signature is at saturation.”

“Copy.”

JINX: “Tael, I am reading three unregistered male Draelith scent signatures on the lower decks. Separate from the facility staff profile. Freelance.”

“Kesh and two others.”

“Confirmed on Kesh. The other two are hired. I am timing the facility patrol rotation against our intercept window for Torek’s chamber. Four minutes. Go.”

Kesh. Tael’s shoulders drop into the configuration I saw at V-6. His tail locks against his spine.

“Copy. Natalie. Close.”

“Close, Tael.”

We move. No talking. He is a meter ahead. Tail alert, not last night’s wrap. He checks I am still there without turning his head. I feel every check.

We clear the first junction.

Chambers.

Transparent walls. Sedated occupants. A Krellan female, bonded signature in distress at sedation level four. Her hand twitches. I can see my face in the glass over hers.

Sshari male.

A bonded Juneth pair on parallel slabs, arranged to face the glass.

The glass is spotless. That is the detail that catches. Not the restraints. The housekeeping. Someone wipes these walls on a schedule. Someone files a report when a hinge squeaks. The horror is not that this place exists. The horror is that it is administered.

“Tael.”