Page 16 of Silent Lucidity

Tenthil counted five guards outside—two at the front door, two patrolling the grounds, and one on the roof. More were undoubtedly stationed inside. The only entrances visible from his vantage point besides the front were a side door and a door on the roof, the latter near an empty pad that could be used to land hover vehicles.

Normally, infiltrating such a place would be the end result of days of surveillance and planning, a step taken only once all potential variables had been identified, understood, and neutralized as possible. But now, restless twinges coursed along his legs, and his fingers repeatedly flexed and relaxed of their own accord, lengthening and retracting his claws.

Tenthil didn’t have days to watch and plan; he had today. He had one chance.

There could be no failure.

He hurried to the nearest ladder and descended to street level two roads away from Cullion’s. No one was nearby when he emerged from the maintenance door, and he plunged into the back alleys to loop around behind his destination. Many of the homes in the sector dumped their waste in the rear alleys, out of plain sight, to await collection by sanitation drones. In other sectors, such leavings would’ve been picked through daily by scavengers desperate for anything they could eat or sell for a few credits. But the residents of the Gilded Sector deemed even their refuse too good for the unwashed masses, and both private security and the peacekeepers cleared out garbage pickers regularly.

Fortunately, that meant such alleys were typically deserted, making them ideal pathways for people like Tenthil.

He stopped behind Cullion’s manor, checked for onlookers, and pressed himself against the rear wall to concentrate. After several seconds, he heard what he’d sought—the sound of heavy, booted footsteps moving toward the front of the manor. Based on what he’d witnessed of the patrols, he had about thirty seconds before the security guard returned.

That was more than enough time.

Drawing in a deep breath, he strengthened his bioelectric field, turned to face the wall, and hauled himself up. The sensor lights atop it flickered off for a fraction of a second as he broke their detection field—that was all it took for his body to adapt to and mimic the sensor’s signal. For that instant, he felt the invisible field projected all around him, stretching along the wall to either side and continuing upward at an inward curve to form a dome over the manor.

Tenthil braced his boots atop the wall and leapt across the gap between it and the building. He caught himself silently within a recess running from ground to roof, glanced around him, and climbed. The sculptures meant to dazzle onlookers provided numerous handholds to speed his ascent.

Within a few moments, he grasped the edge of the roof and lifted his head peer over it.

The lone rooftop guard paced toward the front of the building, auto-blaster in his hands, swinging his gaze from side to side.

With a smooth motion, Tenthil pulled himself onto the roof. He drew a knife as he padded toward the guard—another vorgal. Apparently, Cullion preferred the tall, muscular, savage-looking beings for his personal security team. Many species considered vorgals intimidating, especially in hand-to-hand combat.

Just another obstacle in my path.

Tenthil crept up behind the vorgal, reversed his grip on the knife, and reached up, wrapping an arm around the guard’s head to wrench it backward. Before the vorgal could make a sound, Tenthil extended his other arm past the vorgal’s shoulder and jabbed the knife inward. The blade plunged into the center of the vorgal’s throat; the species was particularly resistant to having their throats slit due to flexible-but-tough bone-like fibers on the sides of their trachea, believed to be an evolutionary remnant from a time when they would battle one another with tusks, seeking to bite any vulnerable body parts.

Keeping hold of the vorgal, who was choking on his own blood, Tenthil glanced at the rooftop door. The scanner on the doorframe was a familiar sort—it read the Consortium-issued ID chips that were meant to be installed in every being in Arthos. Tenthil didn’t have one, and even if he did, it would only trip the alarm if he used it on this scanner.

All he needed was a chip with the proper clearance—inside a living body.

The vorgal struggled when Tenthil tugged him toward the door; even were he not dying, the vorgal wouldn’t have been able to overcome Tenthil’s strength. The vorgal’s feet dragged over the roofing, occasionally kicking or stomping, until Tenthil reached the door and swung his captive around to face the reader. Several thin, indistinct beams of light projected from the reader and swept over the Vorgal’s body; ID chips were usually installed in an individual’s left arm, but the radically different anatomies between some species often necessitated full-body detectors to ensure the chip was located and scanned.

With a beep and a click, the magnetic locks disengaged, and the door swung open. Tenthil shoved the vorgal aside and released his hold, simultaneously twisting the knife and tearing it free. Tenthil caught the door with his boot before it closed, bent to wipe his blade clean on the vorgal’s pants, and slipped into the manor. Knife in hand, he walked down the tristeel-grating steps and stopped at the blast door at the base of the landing.

Tenthil pressed his ear against the wall beside the door. He couldn’t hear any alarms or panicked voices within—a good sign, but it didn’t mean he was clear of danger. Even if his entry hadn’t been detected yet, it was only a matter of time before the other guards realized one of their own was down. Things would move quickly once that happened.

He tapped a knuckle against the control panel. The door receded into the right side of its frame, opening on a hallway adorned with stone sculptures, columns inlaid with gold, and dark, patterned carpeting. Tenthil stalked forward, shifting the knife into his left hand to drop his right hand to the grip of his blaster. His ears twitched and his nostrils flared. The place was quiet, but a variety of smells filled the air. One of them, though faint, belonged to the terran female—he had no doubt of it. His blood heated as he drew in a deep breath and focused on her scent.

She’d been here. Shewashere; he knew it instinctively, though logic dictated he couldn’t possibly be sure.

When he reached a smaller hallway branching off the main one, he paused and sniffed the air again. The scent was stronger there, if only subtly so; he turned and followed the new path. He had a vague idea of the corridor’s purpose—its more modest décor suggested it was meant to keep servants out of sight—but his focus on the scent left room for little else in his mind. Increasingly, conscious thought retreated to the back of his mind, leaving only his immediate sensory perceptions and the driving need to locate his female.

Tenthil passed several closed doors; he knew none of them were the right ones by smell alone. She was somewhere deeper inside the manor, caged like an animal, held as a possession by this arrogant ertraxxan, a trophy for him to show off as he chose. The flames already raging in Tenthil’s chest intensified, spreading their heat through his body.

He rounded a corner and nearly collided with another vorgal guard, this one stationed in front of an elevator.

The surprised vorgal turned toward Tenthil, his gaping mouth displaying his jutting tusks. Tenthil acted before the guard had completed his turn; he lunged forward and pushed up off the floor, throwing his weight behind his elbow as he slammed it into the guard’s chin. The vorgal’s head snapped back and struck the wall. Tenthil grasped the back of the vorgal’s skull, holding it steady, and thrust his knife into the underside of his foe’s jaw. Dark green blood flowed over Tenthil’s gloved hand and dripped onto the floor. He tugged the weapon free just as a door a few paces down the hall opened.

Two more guards hurried into the hallway—a broad-shouldered, scaled ilthurii and a dark-skinned volturian with glowing silver face markings.

The volturian tapped the comm unit on his chest. “Intruder on the upper—”

Tenthil drew his blaster and fired before the volturian could speak another word. The plasma bolt zipped through the volturian’s throat and disappeared into the wall behind him, leaving a hole ringed in glowing orange. The dead vorgal, who Tenthil released to draw his gun, collapsed to the floor.

He angled the blaster toward the ilthurii, but the scaled warrior was quick, leaping at Tenthil before a second shot could be fired. Tenthil swayed aside, flattening himself against the wall to his left.

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