Page 14 of Alien Mercenary's Wife
Two blocks from her destination, she spotted the first tail.
A man in a dark coat, keeping precise distance behind her. When she slowed, he slowed. When she turned a corner, he followed thirty seconds later. Professional, patient, and clearly tracking her despite the disguise.
How had they picked her up so quickly? Facial recognition software, maybe, or some other surveillance technology she wasn't aware of. Whatever, it didn’t matter. She needed to lose him before she reached the storage facility.
She ducked into the next shopping complex, using the maze of stores and corridors to break line of sight. The layout was perfect for evasion, with multiple levels, dozens of exits, and enough visual clutter to confuse pursuit. She moved through the crowds like she belonged there, browsing store windows while keeping track of reflective surfaces.
The man in the dark coat appeared on the upper level, scanning the crowd below. He had backup. Now she was looking, she spotted at least two other watchers positioned at different exits. They were boxing her in, trying to limit her options.
She grinned. They were thinking like security, expecting her to be a sheep.
Spotting a service corridor marked "Employees Only", she slipped inside. The maintenance areas of commercial buildings were always connected, honeycombs of passages that let workers move between facilities without being seen by customers. She followed the corridor to an adjacent building, then exited through a loading dock three blocks away.
By the time her pursuers realized she'd left the shopping complex, she was already approaching the storage facility from a completely different direction.
SecureSpace Storage occupied an entire city block, hundreds of individual units stacked in a fortress of concrete and steel. The kind of place where people stored the remnants of their lives—old furniture, family heirlooms, things too valuable to throw away but too bulky to keep.
Or, in her case, the tools needed to disappear.
She'd rented the unit years ago under a false identity, paying cash for extended terms. The woman at the rental office had been bored and uninterested, processing the paperwork without asking questions or recording biometric data.
Unit 847 was on the third level, tucked between two larger storage spaces. She keyed in the access code and pulled up the metal door, revealing the interior.
It was mostly empty.
A military-surplus duffel containing everything she'd need to survive off the grid for months was by the door. It had clean identity documents, enough cash to avoid electronic transactions, medical supplies tailored to her specific condition, and weapons that couldn't be traced back to her, as well as a couple of changes of clothes.
But the most important item was tucked in the back corner: a set of experimental exo-legs she'd acquired through black market contacts. The technology was crude compared to military-grade equipment, but it would compensate for her failing nervous system long enough to keep her mobile.
She'd hoped never to need them. In her mind, the exo-legs were an admission of defeat, an acknowledgment that her body was failing faster than her mission could succeed. But with teams hunting her through the city, survival took priority over pride.
Shoving them into her duffel, she sealed the storage unit and threw the key in the trash as she left. She wouldn’t be coming back. The exo-legs made the duffel heavy. She needed to find somewhere secure to install them and then calibrate the system properly.
The pod hotel three streets away was exactly what she needed. SleepEasy Pods catered to the kind of clientele who paid cash and didn't ask questions: shift workers, travelers avoiding expensive hotels, and people who needed to stay off the grid. The clerk barely looked up when she paid for three nights in advance, sliding a keycard across the grimy counter without asking for identification.
Pod 47 was a claustrophobic capsule barely large enough for a single person. Still, it had the essentials: a narrow bed, basic hygiene facilities, and most importantly, a door that locked from the inside. She sealed herself in and activated the privacy shields that would block electronic surveillance.
Only then did she allow herself to truly relax for the first time since the explosions.
Her hands shook slightly as she unpacked the exo-legs from her duffel. The device was a patchwork of salvaged components and experimental technology, jury-rigged by black market engineers who specialized in off-books medical equipment. Not pretty, but functional.
The installation process was awkward in the cramped space, but she managed to strap the device around her waist and thighs. The neural interface required careful calibration… too sensitive and it would overcompensate for every movement, too dull and it wouldn't provide adequate support when her legs failed.
She spent twenty minutes fine-tuning the settings, testing the response time, and adjusting the power distribution. The exo-legs felt strange beneath her clothes, but they were already compensating for the weakness in her left side. Each step was steadier than it had been in weeks.
Satisfied with the mechanical system, she turned her attention to communication. The pod hotel's internet connection was basic but functional, and more importantly, itwas anonymous. She connected through multiple proxy servers, bouncing her signal through a dozen different countries before accessing the darkfeed channels she'd discovered during her research.
Most of the encrypted boards were useless. Their users were mainly conspiracy theorists, black market dealers, and people with more paranoia than sense. But there were a few places to share information that couldn't be discussed through official channels.
She crafted her message carefully, using authentication codes that'd verify her identity to anyone who had served with her unit. The message itself was deliberately vague; a request for contact from someone in serious trouble, with specific details only former Scorperio veterans would recognize.
She had no real expectation it would reach anyone. Most of her unit was dead, killed in that final ambush. The few who might have survived had probably disappeared, living under new identities or dead from "accidents" like the other veterans. But it was the only lead she had left, the only chance of finding someone who might understand what she was facing.
The message sent, she cleared the computer's memory and settled back on the narrow bed. Outside her pod, the hotel hummed with the quiet activity of people who lived on the margins… shift workers catching sleep between jobs, travelers avoiding the expense of proper hotels, and others like her who needed to disappear for a while.
For the first time since the explosion at the metro station, she felt something other than despair. She was alive, mobile, and off the grid. Her enemies had resources and surveillance technology, but they'd made one critical error in their planning.
They'd assumed she was just another broken veteran, paralyzed by her condition and trapped by bureaucratic systems.They had no idea what a tank commander could accomplish when she had nothing left to lose.
