Page 99 of Tracked and Taken

Her pulse on the panel is at thirty-two.

“Weapons on the floor. Sidearm first.”

I take my sidearm out. I place it on the floor.

“The neural baton.”

I take it out. I place it on the floor.

He does not ask for the MP blade at my ankle. His overlay does not, by his expression, register it. The blade is old MP stock, long out of any equipment overlay.

I leave it.

“Walk.”

I walk.

He is two meters behind me.

His footfall is a half-beat slower than a healthy Draelith’s.

I do not know what is wrong with him. I do not know why his rosettes are gray at the edges. I do not know why his skin has the sallow pull of a body that is eating itself from the inside. I know only that he is dying, and that he is the male Tael identified at V-6 as former colleague, terminated, off-book, grievance unknown, and that whatever his grievance is, it has brought me two decks below Torek’s chamber and is walking me toward a door whose signage I do not want to read.

The signage shifts as we descend. Subject becomes Induction. Pair-Bond Induction Chamber, Observation Lab Three.

Pair-bond induction.

My stomach turns over.

I do not know what that means in a technical sense, and I do not need to, because whatever it means, the word induction applied to the word pair-bond is not something a healthy facility puts on a door.

The door opens at Kesh’s keying.

As I step through, my eyes catch on a prep tray beside the inner door. The tray holds a standard research setup. Forceps. Clamps. A medical-grade scalpel in a foam recess.

My hand passes two inches over it.

The scalpel goes into my palm.

He is at the console across the chamber, keying a sequence.

He does not see.

I stop at the center of the room.

The chamber is clean the way the corridors are clean. A floor drain sits in the center of the tile, with new grout around it. A padded restraint chair stands against the far wall with its arms folded down — adjustable, considerate, recently sanitized. Somebody designed this room. Somebody submitted drawings. Somebody else approved them, and a third person invoiced for the drain.

He keys a second sequence. A small light on the console goes amber. He keys the external observation channel. The speaker on the exterior wall goes live.

Tael is going to hear this.

Kesh turns to face me.

Four meters between us.

I keep the four meters.

“Stand where you are.”