Page 61 of Stripe Theory

Alora ran.

The maintenance shaft stretched before her like a metallic maze, emergency lights casting strange shadows. Each movement sent fresh waves of pain through her injured shoulder.

Stay alive, she thought fiercely, both to him and Maya. Just stay alive.

Her tablet mapped the shortest route to ground level, but Genesis Corp had been thorough. Every main exit would be watched. Which meant...

“Time for something crazy,” she muttered, pulling up the building’s original blueprints. Her father always said her best ideas came from questioning conventional wisdom. Right now, conventional wisdom said going down meant using stairs or elevators.

Conventional wisdom had never met Dr. Alora Sky.

The ventilation shaft access panel yielded to her override codes. It was tight – barely wide enough for her shoulders – but it ran straight to the loading dock level. As she wiggled into the confined space, Rehan’s alarm pulsed through their bond.

“I know what I’m doing,” she assured him out loud, though she wasn’t entirely convinced herself. “Mostly.”

Just thirty feet.

A burst of gunfire somewhere above made her freeze.

Twenty feet. Her shoulder screamed in protest as she reached for the next rung. Blood made her grip slippery, but she forced herself to maintain steady pressure. Maya was counting on her. Sierra was counting on her. Rehan...

The depth of emotion that thought triggered almost made her miss the next handhold.

FORTY-SIX

Pain lanced through Alora’s shoulder as she landed in the maintenance corridor, her momentum carrying her into a controlled roll. Emergency lighting cast everything in an eerie red glow, transforming the mundane hallway into something from a nightmare. Her tablet chirped – three Genesis Corp teams converging on her position.

“Well, shit,” she muttered, pushing to her feet. “Because this day wasn’t exciting enough already.”

Her father’s data flashed across her tablet screen, the molecular decay rates accelerating beyond their models’ predictions. What had taken weeks in their simulations was happening in hours. Time was running out.

The maintenance level stretched before her like a concrete maze. She mapped out routes in her head, calculating probabilities. The Genesis Corp teams were moving with military precision, cutting off obvious escape paths.

Good thing she’d never been fond of obvious solutions.

Her earpiece crackled. “Dr. Sky?” One of Hunter’s security team said, voice tight with tension. “They’ve rushed Maya into surgery at the medical lab. The wound... it’s not healing.”

Ice slid down Alora’s spine. Shifter healing should have kicked in by now. Unless the ammunition Leeta’s shifters used was specially designed to not only injure but infect with who knew how many variants.

She reached the below-ground tunnels between buildings. Service passageways branched in multiple directions, maintenance access points offering possibilities. And threats.

She didn’t need enhanced senses to feel them coming. Three Genesis Corp operatives emerged from the shadows, moving with unnatural speed. Their eyes gleamed with telltale viral enhancement – Leeta’s “improvements” creating something between human and shifter.

“Really?” Alora backed away, mind racing through options. “I don’t suppose you’d believe I took a wrong turn looking for the ladies’ room?”

The largest operative smiled, all teeth and no humor. “The hard way then, Dr. Sky?”

Her injured shoulder screamed as she ducked his first strike, but she’d been studying enhanced shifter biology for months. She knew exactly how the virus affected reaction times, muscle control, neural pathways...

Knowledge was power. Sometimes literally.

She triggered the emergency sprinkler system, but not before tossing a vial of her latest enzyme catalyst into the water. The enhanced operatives’ heightened senses worked against them as the chemical reaction overwhelmed their adapted neural pathways. They staggered, disoriented.

“The thing about playing with evolution,” she called over her shoulder as she ran, “is that adaptations can be predictable if you know where to look.”

City infrastructure had never been so fascinating. Utility tunnels offered countless paths, assuming you knew which ones to trust.

With their connection, she felt Rehan’s mounting concern as reports reached him about the virus’s acceleration. Sierra’s condition was deteriorating faster than anyone had anticipated and Maya could likely die. The weight of what was at stake pressed down on her with every step.

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