Page 94 of Stars in Umbra
Now, Mo stood on the exterior of the secure room, built with nine layers of reinforced alloy.
Stealth fields blocked all outside signals.
The summit was a fortress, and he made it so; every door sealed, each corridor swept.
Drone patrols ran offset loops, and facial and gait recognition scanned every guest. Even the culinary staff had been vetted and subjected to neural resonance and retinal checks.
Still, his instincts screamed it wasn’t enough.
Regardless, he keyed the blast doors to double-seal the secure room.
They locked, their sensors being ion-resistant, motion-reactive, and triple-fail safe enabled.
Only Kainan had the overrides to open it from within the room.
Mo, confident all was safe and sound, prowled away, moving to his guard station, a glass office at the rear of the venue.
He strode in, lifting his chin to the surveillance specialist techs manning the screens.
The room’s main focal point was a bank of monitors, where they had eyes on the VIP doorway at all times.
After a quick debrief with his Sable Security tactical team, Mo sank into a chair with a sigh.
He let his head fall back on the cushioned rest and eased a finger under the collar of his matte-black uniform to loosen it.
Only then did he permit his mind to wander.
He thought ofher.
The curl of her lip when she laughed at him over a glass of wine.
The beautiful lines of her spine in her backless dress as she walked away from him at the ball.
Her moans when he ravaged her as he brought her to sensual incandescence.
Fokk, he missed her so much it sickened him.
With a curse, he knifed forward, opened his comm tab, and shelved her from his mind, unable to think of her anymore.
Without warning, a spike hit his brain like a sniper’s bullet.
Mo flinched, his vertebrae jerking upright as a jolt carved through the base of his skull.
He threw a hand over his braided hair, clutching the back of his cranium, as his jaw locked in agony.
The moment the pain lanced through his head, the walls narrowed, the air thinned, and his eyesight tunneled into red.
One crimson pulse flashed behind his eyes.
Then another.
This wasn’t standard, nor was it a result of fatigue from too little sleep.
This was a command from a neural nucleus buried deep within the architecture of his brain stem.
The hidden nodule woke, and with it came both a spoken and written directive that flickered across his cerebral vision with unmitigated chilliness.
:: INITIATE PRIMARY DIRECTIVE. TARGET: SABLE. ELIMINATE RIDERS. DESTINATION: SECURE SUMMIT ROOM. PRIORITY: ABSOLUTE. ::
