Chapter 48
Kael charged in a second behind Wraith, almost crashing into her as she stopped cold.
They stood in a cavernous room, larger than the Eventide’s arena, stinking of blood and antiseptic. The walls were lined with medical tools and diagnostic screens with half-decipherable biometrics.
The room was filled with corpses. Other corpses.
Some floated in yellow-tinged tanks, limbs distended from long immersion, their skin peeling like wet parchment. More lay drained on slabs, chests pried open to expose organs hooked to clear tubes, still pumping artificial fluid. One hung suspended by his spine, neural cables burrowed into his skull, eyes milky with death.
In the center of the chamber was a circle. The shimmer of a shield formed a dome over it.
Inside were three large, black rocks. The Anchor, the Void whispered the word to him.
Tied, no, chained to the rocks was a mummified skeleton.
Kael wondered why you would bother to chain a corpse—then watched in horror as it lifted its head and opened its eyes.
“Spirit,” Wraith whispered next to him as the door slammed closed behind them.
She saw his lips move.
“Baby Bird.”
Everything inside her went cold.
Then silent.
Then sharp.
Kael had been prepared for Wraith to run to Spirit. He was ready to try to grab her.
Instead, she seemed to relax.
In an instant he was taken back to the first time they met on that prison rock. The way she lounged on the chair, fully confident of her ability to kill him and everyone one else with him.
It froze something deep in his chest.
He tried to reach her. Gently. With no clue what he was doing.
She batted him away without changing expression.
His eyes darted around the room again. This was an abomination. And there would be a reckoning.
Yes, the Void whispered, soon.
“Are you planning on joining us,” he called out. “Your museum is cute, but once you’ve seen one vivisection, the impact is somewhat dulled.”
Silence echoed.
At the Anchor, Spirit’s head had fallen again. As if it were too heavy for his neck.
Disrupt, said the Void.
No further instructions were forthcoming.
Great.
There was a brief whining of gears under strain and a section of floor opened, revealing an elevator rising with a single man on it.
He was not what Kael had been expecting.
Short, round faced and cheerful looking, but there were no laugh lines around his eyes. He was probably in his sixties, and his hair was gray and thinning.
“Major Veyne, we haven’t had the pleasure. Although Captain Raine and I have shared brief acquaintance.” His voice didn’t match his appearance. It was cold, brittle, and deadly.
But Wraith smiled like he’d brought her a bouquet of roses and complimented her shoes, “He ordered me to detonate a rift bomb in the middle of one of our largest space battles,” she said brightly. “Then locked me in a cell, called me a traitor, and told me I’d die there.”
“If you’d obeyed orders, we wouldn’t be here today.” He smiled at her. “And I wouldn’t have had one of the most successful experiments in all my years as Research Director.” His eyes flicked to Spirit. “Perhaps I should thank you.”
Kael raised his eyebrows, glanced at Wraith who was still smiling. That would be a very badidea.
“You seem very calm for a man in a room with two people who carved through a corridor full of your guards,” he commented.
“And I am very much looking forward to finding out how that works, Major. But to answer your unspoken question, I am the Tether to this site. If I die—” he brought his hands together “—boom.”
“Oh, you don’t have to die,” Wraith noted casually, and for the first time, the Director’s pallor grayed.
“Torture. How quaint. Of course, then Major Veyne would never find out what really happened to his brother. Ezra was a true patriot, born and bred.”
Kael had gone very still next to her. Very… quiet.
She hesitated. She needed to be able to do whatever came next.
For Spirit.
And she wasn’t sure if she could do that with him in her head. But as the other options were explosion or dissection…
She sighed inwardly, even as she kept the Director locked in her gaze. She didn’t want to break Kael. Knew she may have to cross a line he wouldn’t. And she now knew exactly where that line was.
But they needed every advantage they could get.
She buried her resolve, built a shell around the core of her, and reached.
His anger was cold. His voice clear, taut, We need to disrupt the Anchor.
He meant the… thing that Spirit was attached to. How?
Kael shrugged, started walking a slow arc towards the Director. And shut her out.
Kael’s pulse, which had spiked when Wraith spoke to him, settled.
This wasn’t about Ezra. It couldn’t be. This was about information. About whatever data this facility held. He needed to preserve all of it.
And then put it on display for the universe to see.
Which meant that—for now—the Director had to live.
But he’d pay.
He was looking forward to it.
“Ezra the patriot,” he barked a laugh, “I don’t think you knew him at all.” Paused, “Unless you’re one of those officers that thinks that everyone that dies in battle is a patriot rather than a tragedy.”
He kept his tone to what he thought of as SID-light.
Just enough judgment to bait.
Just enough contention to argue.
The Director blinked. Smiled.
And he’s taken the hook.
“I consider most War deaths to be lost opportunities. Or failed experiments.”
He leered at Wraith. It wasn’t sexual, but Kael instinctively wanted to punch him regardless.
Wraith put two fingers to her throat, checked her pulse, “Sorry, I don’t think I qualify as a War death.”
The Director glared at her.
Kael let his lips curl up, genuinely amused and wanting the old man to see it.
Deliberately ignoring the psychopath’s goading was annoying him and hopefully putting him off-balance enough to make a mistake.
He’d probably gone unchallenged for decades. He was overdue.
“So, Ezra,” he started again, mentally apologizing to his brother. “He wasn’t what you’d call a… stellar candidate. Decent hand-to-hand, but that was mostly size and strength.”
Ezra had been huge. Larger even than Phantom. But—
“Not the sharpest mind. It’s why he ended up as a Fleet bomb-tosser, rather than SID.” He shrugged. “Could be worse. He could have been an infantry grunt.”
The Director was staring at him. Kael had strolled almost two thirds of the way to him, occasionally pausing to look at the displays.
He felt ill every time he looked at one.
“What’s your name?” he asked, looking up from a particularly unpleasant tank, “because calling you the Director in my head is getting repetitive.”
Kael was holding the Director’s attention. So, Wraith turned her attention to Spirit.
She didn’t bother with stealth. She just walked up to the barrier and crouched. Her heart didn’t break, looking at him.
It shattered.
“Hey, Matt,” she whispered.
Ash. You… didn’t run.
“Did you expect me to?”
Hoped you’d… learned better… by now.
“Was never going to happen.”
Can… you… kill me?
He raised his head. His eyes were sunken so damn deep in his skull, but they were still the same sky blue.
“I’ll try,” she promised. “Any idea how to disrupt—” she waved a towards him “—this?
Void.
His head fell again, and she felt him slip into unconsciousness.
She brushed away tears.
She had to bring the barrier down.