Page 17 of Hunted By the Wraiths
“Too quiet,” she agreed. She bypassed the main lock and opened the door. We slipped inside.
Her office was exactly what I would have expected. Clean, functional, all hard lines. She went straight to a panel on the wall that looked like a piece of abstract art, worked a hidden mechanism, and it slid open.
Inside was a small vault. She keyed in a code. The vault door opened.
She reached inside and pulled out a second data chip.
The moment her fingers touched it, a faint red light blinked on the vault’s internal panel.
“It’s my personal alert,” Maris said, her voice dropping, all business. “It just pinged Vashil’s comm. She knows we’re here.”
She slammed the vault shut just as station-wide alarms blared to life. Vashil’s voice, amplified, echoed through the corridor outside.
“Lock down Sector Gamma. The intruders are in the admin block. Everyone, now!”
“Move!” I grabbed Maris’s arm and pulled her toward the door.
We burst into the corridor just as two of Vashil’s security guards rounded the corner. They weren’t Consortium. Just station security.
“They’re my people, Thoryn!” Maris yelled over the alarm, raising her blaster. “Vashil is their supervisor. They’re just following her orders!”
They raised their rifles. Maris fired twice. Two clean shots to legs and they dropped.
We ran. More footsteps pounded toward us. Vashil’s entire network was coming down on us.
We rounded a corner and ran straight into two more guards. I shoved Maris behind me and charged. I took the first one high, grabbing his rifle and slamming him into the wall. The second one lunged, a vibro-blade in his hand.
I twisted, trying to bring my own weapon up, but he was too fast. The blade scraped past my vest and dug deep into my side.
I roared, a mix of pain and fury, and threw him off me. He hit the opposite bulkhead and didn’t get up.
“Thoryn!” Maris was at my side, her blaster out, covering the corridor.
“I’m fine,” I lied. Blood was already soaking my shirt. The new pain was sharp, bright, and cutting through the dull throb from my shoulder.
“This way!” She grabbed my arm and pulled me down a side passage. It ended at a heavy maintenance hatch. She wrenched it open and shoved me through.
We fell into a dark, narrow maintenance tunnel. Maris sealed the hatch behind us. The sounds of pursuit were muffled, then faded.
Silence. Just the drip of water somewhere in the darkness and the sound of my own breathing, too loud and wet.
I slumped against the wall, my hand pressed to the wound in my side. It was bleeding badly.
Maris activated a small light on her datapad. Her face was pale. She looked at the new chip in her hand, then at me, bleeding from two different wounds.
She opened her mouth, but there was nothing to say. We had the second chip. But we were trapped, deep in the guts of the station, with no ship, no allies, and Vashil’s entire guard hunting us.
We were stranded.
The maintenance tunnel was dark.Cold. Narrow enough that my shoulders scraped both walls if I wasn’t careful. Every scrape sent fresh agony through the plasma burn. The vibro-blade wound in my side had soaked through whatever Maris had used to wrap it. The blood ran down, warm and wrong.
Pain scale: Shoulder at an eight. Side at a seven. Bond pain holding steady at nine just from her proximity in this narrow space. Aggregate score: I was having a wonderful time.
Maris moved ahead of me, her light cutting through the darkness. She knew exactly where she was going. No hesitation. No checking maps. Years of building an empire meant she owned every tunnel, every forgotten corner.
Now every tunnel had enemies in it. Her empire was eating itself. Because of me. Because I’d brought the Consortium to her door.
Worth it, though. She was alive. That was the only data point that mattered.
