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He needed to shut down Charlotte’s questions. If he forbade them, she’d only persist. They hadn’t known each other long but he recognized the stubborn streak in her. She wouldn’t relent. She’d keep picking away with indirect questions, talking around the prohibited topics, until he slipped and revealed a previously hidden piece of himself.
Previous companions had been easy to control with trinkets and luxuries. He knew that would not work with Charlotte. What did he have that she wanted that he could limit? His library? Possibly, but he enjoyed watching her read by the fire too much to take that away. Draven found that he was a selfish creature, inclined to indulge his cravings. Could he limit access to himself? His blackened, shriveled heart ached at the thought. That was the last thing he wanted.
He required a distraction, something more interesting and shinier than his two centuries of experience. Sadly, his imagination failed.
Draven leaned against the workbench and contemplated his most recent problem: the ruined cryo unit. It had functioned for two hundred and eleven years since landing and another eighty-eight years of space flight. Two hundred and ninety-nine years. No one could claim that it was shoddy craftsmanship. Naturally occurring mineral deposits in the mountain shielded the delicate circuits from the energy surges that fried so many other electronics. That shielding was why the mountain had been selected for the lab. The military base was mere decoration, hiding the last remaining pieces of functional technology. Emphasis on last.
What the Nexus energy surges failed to damage, time accomplished. Material degraded. Corroded. Leaked.
Fucking battery. The last battery.
Draven crossed the room and stood before the cryo unit. If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect it to have broken on purpose.
On his wedding night. The timing couldn’t have been more auspicious. Minimal guards on duty meant that alarms would go unheeded, no one would have noticed the unit’s countdown to opening, and no one had been there when the prisoner woke.
Currently, the cryo unit’s inhabitant was sedated and chained in a cell on a lower level. It wasn’t a good solution. A terrible solution, actually. He needed either to fix the cryo unit—impossible—or figure out what to do with the prisoner.
Draven placed a hand on the cryo unit and slumped forward until his forehead rested on a control panel. Lettering had long since worn away, but he knew the layout by heart. He entered the code in his sleep, on the rare occasions he slept. The body of the unit was constructed of tempered, high-endurance glass. Once the glass panels had been transparent, allowing technicians to observe the sleeping occupants. Time discolored the glass to a grungy, foggy gray.
“Useless thing,” he said, smacking the control panel with the palm of his hand. The tactile feel of the panel gave way, but nothing responded. Nothing would without power. Perhaps if he strung together enough photovoltaic panels and wired it directly into the—
No. The solar panels were fairly low-tech and less prone to malfunction but he lacked the ability to make more. He already scavenged the abandoned levels of the Aerie for solar panels. Every single one was already in use.
Ancient humans had batteries. Copper rods and…He struggled to remember. Iron? Tin? He couldn’t imagine that copper and iron would produce enough of a chemical reaction to generate much of a charge, but it was a starting point.
This is what he had come to? Rooting about in his collection of broken toys, hoping to repair them with bits of copper and iron? Useless garbage, the lot of it.
Furious with himself and the situation, he kicked the cryo unit. The panel rattled, barely attached. It clattered to the floor, revealing the battery compartment. Discolored blue and gray crystallized acid covered one end of the battery. He ripped the battery from the unit, wires dangling and scattering the crystals. He turned it over in his hands, closely inspecting the end of the block coated in crystals.
Crystals that were clustered around a puncture. The perfectly round puncture.
Rage overtook him. Someone did this. Someone sabotaged his work. Worse, realization dawned that Charlotte’s wormwood poisoning had been a distraction while someone punched holes in the last functioning battery.
He threw the damaged battery across the room. It slammed into a shelving unit, knocking over a glass jar. The jar landed on its side and slowly rolled to the edge of the shelf. Draven clenched his hand, wanting to catch the jar but he was too far away. He watched as the jar plummeted to the floor.
The sound of shattering glass filled the lab.
The last bit of his control broke. He grabbed a metal baton—every workstation was equipped with batons because the prisoner was not always compliant—and slammed the baton into the cryo unit. The brittle plastic of the control panel cracked. Tempered glass panels groaned under the assault. Fine cracks splintered across the surface with a creak and a pop. Typical. The material was engineered to withstand unimaginable force and dramatic temperature fluctuations, but time—just time—caused it to fail.
Enraged, he hit the weakened point again. And again. All he had were broken pieces and worn parts. No matter how many times he cobbled the pieces together, he could never succeed. Time always won.
The baton vibrated in Draven’s hands, and he pummeled the cryo unit. The tempered glass cracked. A network of spider web-like fractures spread across the surface. Soon the entire front of the unit was cracked glass.
He turned his wrath to the nearest workbench, swinging the baton along the surface and knocking everything to the ground. Glass shattered. Paper drifted in the air. The stench of chemicals offended his nose, but he did not care. He barely breathed. His respiration rates were so low that he could breathe in a toxic cloud without concern. He swept the workbench clear of the cryo unit’s salvaged parts. What did he need them for? He’d never get it working again. Not that it mattered, not with someone actively destroying his equipment.
Stringer watched him from the door, arms crossed over his chest. “Feel better?”
Draven’s chest heaved. He dropped the baton. Metal rang out against the concrete floor. “I do.”
“Dare I even ask?”
He smoothed back his hair, retying his hair in a queue. “Better not. Are you here for a reason or to silently judge me?”
“The duty roster needs your approval.” Stringer held out a clipboard.
Draven waved it away. “I need a list of everyone who accessed this level the night of the wedding,” Draven said.
Stringer frowned. “There was a skeleton shift. I can find out who was on duty.”
