Page 26 of Polestar
Antony.
Ana froze, swallowing a sob of frustration.
How can I do my job if my guilt over Antony’s accident keeps interfering?
She straightened her shoulders, determined to ignore the echo of Antony’s voice from her nightmares.
Moving further away from Magnus, she tried to grasp the faint tethers of energy that had drawn her here to begin with.
Still rife with polar bear shifter energy, she followed it anyway.Maybe it wasn’t Magnus she was picking up on after all, since it led away from him.
Curious, she followed the energy trail.Which led her to another section of the ship.
A vast room containing the ship’s engine, with pipes and machinery jutting out of it in what seemed like controlled chaos to Ana.
The signature that guided her here lost its direction and seemed to surround her now.Unable to pinpoint where to go next, she resigned herself to placing a hand on the steel railing between herself and the engine.
But not just yet.
Realizing she’d forgotten to talk through her path, she quickly recapped where she was.
“Energy signature similar to Agent Bjornson’s led me to the engine room from the cargo hold.I’m going to make first physical contact here.”She finally placed her hand on the rail and continued to move forward as she searched through the images of crewmen that had been here until she found the person associated with the signature.
The vision of a young man, similar in build to Bjornson, crouched along this rail, injured.
She followed it to the end, where a bank of steel paneled controls faced her.
Save them.
An overpowering sense of urgency surged through her.She dropped her phone into her pocket and placed both hands on the massive control box.Moving around the side of the control panels, she saw a gap between it and the wall, close to floor level.
The urgency increased, and she found a section with a missing panel.
“Here,” she shouted to Bjornson as she got down on her hands and knees.“There’s something here.”
Unable to see into the darkness of the cramped space, she reached out a hand, seeking whatever hid in the box.
She hadn’t expected her hand to land on what felt like a foot.A cold human foot.
Startled, she cried out and fell back.
Bjornson appeared beside her.“Are you alright?”
“There’s someone in there.I don’t know if they’re alive or not.”
He left her to peer into the space, pulling out his phone to aim its light into the darkness.
“Shit.We’ve got a body hidden inside the engine room’s control panels,” he spoke into his earpiece.“Vital status undetermined.”
As soon as the shock of finding a human body rather than an object passed, Ana approached and replaced her hand on the foot, trying to sense their spirit.“I think they’re still alive.Yes!He’s alive, but barely.”
Within minutes, an emergency response team arrived and got to work extracting the survivor.
Now they just had to determine who this man—polar bear shifter—was, and why he was there.
Magnusanxiouslystoodasidewhile the medical team worked to free the man hidden inside the engine room’s control panel.
“Magnus, he’s a shifter.”Ana’s voice was quiet.
