Page 28 of Marked By the Bounty Hunter

Tyrix nodded, his head tilted as he tracked something I couldn’t detect. “Chemical traces are stronger here.”

My knees protested as I ducked under a low-hanging conduit. The air grew thicker with each level we descended, heavy with the smell of burnt electronics and something medicinal that burned the back of my throat.

“Wait.” I caught Tyrix’s arm. A maintenance panel hung askew ahead, its edges still warm. “Someone’s been through here. Recently.”

He brushed his fingers over the metal. “Within the hour.”

The deeper we went, the more signs appeared - access panels disturbed, power connections jury-rigged into configurations that made my maintenance training scream in protest. Whoever had done this knew enough about station systems to be dangerous.

A strange humming vibrated through the deck plates. Not the normal song of the station’s systems - this was wrong, discordant.

“They’re drawing massive power.” I studied the readouts. “Way more than medical equipment should need.”

“How much further?”

I checked the schematics. “Two more junctions. Then-”

The words died in my throat as labored breathing echoed through the tunnel ahead. The sound was wet, gurgling - barely recognizable as something that had once been Poraki.

Tyrix’s hand reached for mine in the darkness, squeezing once before letting go. We moved forward in silence, following the awful sound.

The room opened up like a wound in the station’s flesh.

Medical equipment crowded the space, a nightmare blend of stolen hospital gear and station power systems. Neural monitors pulsed with readings I’d never seen before, their displays showing cascading patterns that looked more like programming code than vital signs.

A device that should have been measuring brain activity had been modified, its sensors rewired to feed something back into the system. Cables snaked across the floor, pulsing with diverted power.

And in the middle of it all lay Jevik.

My stomach lurched. The monitoring data hadn’t prepared me for this. His skin had gone translucent, shot through with threads of purple-black. The gills at his neck fluttered weakly, struggling for each breath. Tubes and wires pierced his flesh, pumping in whatever hellish cocktail was destroying him from the inside out.

“Gods.” I pressed my hand to my mouth. “What did they do to you?”

His eyes flickered open at my voice. For a moment there was nothing behind them - just the empty stare we’d seen in the controlled maintenance workers. Then recognition sparked.

“Na...Nalina?” The word came out as a wet rasp.

“I’m here.” I moved closer, trying to make sense of the equipment readouts. His vitals strobed red across every screen. “We’re going to get you out-”

“No.” His hand shot out, surprisingly strong, gripping my wrist. “No time. Have to... tell you...”

“Save your strength.” But even as I said it, I knew. The cellular breakdown we’d seen in the data was accelerating. His body was literally falling apart.

“The humans.” Each word seemed to cost him tremendous effort. “They started... with the humans first. Testing... compatibility...”

“Compatibility for what?”

“Neural pathways more... adaptable. Easier to...” His eyes rolled back as another surge of whatever they were pumping into him hit his system. “Integration rates... higher than... other species...”

His back arched as something surged through the tubes. Purple-black spread further under his skin.

“Where light... doesn’t reach.” His grip on my wrist tightened painfully. “That’s where... they keep...”

He convulsed, fighting against whatever tried to silence him. “Dr. Gondon... she tried to... but they...”

An alarm shrieked through the station’s comm system. Security alerts flashed red across my tablet.

“We’ve been detected.” Tyrix’s hands moved over the equipment, downloading what data he could. “We need to move. Now.”

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