Page 14 of Vylit: Glowing for Her
I rounded on Silvyr, my biolights flashing warning patterns. "Explain yourself!"
Kazmyr moved between us, his massive form radiating heat that distorted the air. "Let him speak. Silvyr doesn't act without reason."
Silvyr's fingers danced across multiple interfaces simultaneously, his form occasionally glitching as he pushed his hybrid systems to their limits. The emoji drones around his head had vanished completely.
"Detected an echo in the comm stream," he explained, voice fluctuating between synthetic and organic tones. "Your transmission was being mirrored to an unauthorized receiver. Tracing now."
Silence fell over the chamber like a physical weight. Maya's breath caught audibly, her body tensing against mine. I pulled her closer instinctively, one hand splaying protectively across her back while my senses heightened to combat readiness.
"The IDA wouldn't betray its own protocols," I argued, though doubt crept into my voice like toxic algae. "Mates are sacred."
"Only on Mavtros and a few other planets." Silvyr's laugh held no humor, just static-laden bitterness. "Naive, even for you, brother." His fingers blurred faster, holographic data streams surrounding him in concentric rings. "There. Confirmation locked."
The central holowall flickered, then displayed a complex network diagram. Red lines traced from our transmission to the official IDA servers, then branched off through hidden pathways to an unmarked node.
"The Agency's systems are compromised," Silvyr announced, his voice flat with certainty. "Our position, Maya's genetic profile, your bond status—all of it was being fed directly to a secondary network."
Kazmyr's Ember Marks flared white-hot with rage. "To pirates?"
"Worse." Silvyr expanded the display, zooming in on the mysterious node. "To someone inside the Agency itself. Someone with administrative access to all mate pairing data across seventeen sectors."
Maya stepped forward, her scientific curiosity temporarily overriding fear. "How is that possible? Wouldn't there be safeguards?"
"There are." Silvyr's form glitched violently as he pushed deeper into the encrypted data. "Someone built backdoors into the system. Someone who knows exactly how to hide them."
My rage had transformed from hot to cold, crystalizing into something far more dangerous than mere fury. If the Agency itself was compromised, then Maya wasn't safe anywhere. Every mate in the galaxy was potentially exposed.
"Who?" I demanded, my voice so low it barely registered above the ambient hum of the skiff.
Silvyr's face split in a humorless smile that never reached his eyes. "Got it." The display shifted again, revealing a hidden user profile buried beneath layers of encryption. "Codename: Asset P. Access level: Unlimited. Creation date: predates the current Agency system architecture."
The moss covering Maya suddenly contracted, responding to her spike of fear. Her voice, when she spoke, carried the clinical detachment I was learning indicated her scientific mind taking over in times of stress.
"So this Asset P has access to every mate pairing in the database," she reasoned. "Including mine. They knew where we were because they're tracking all mate activity through the Agency's own systems."
Kazmyr growled, the sound vibrating through the deck plates. "This explains the missing mates from the outer sectors. Not random pirate activity, targeted extraction based on insider information."
My protective instincts exploded in a wave of bioluminescence so intense that Maya flinched and shielded her eyes. My skin temperature rose ten degrees in seconds, heating the surrounding air until it shimmered.
"I will tear this Asset P apart," I vowed, each word burning in my throat like acid. "I will find them. I will destroy them. I will protect what is mine."
Maya's hand found my arm, her touch cooling against my overheated skin. "We need to be smart about this. If they're inside the Agency, they have resources we can't imagine."
"She's right," Silvyr nodded, his form stabilizing as he withdrew from the data stream. "Direct confrontation is suicide. We need to go dark, gather intelligence, find out what Asset P wants with the mates they're tracking."
"And why they're feeding information to pirates," Kazmyr added, his golden eyes narrowing thoughtfully. "There's profit in this somewhere, but there has to be more than that."
I pulled Maya against me, my biolights dimming to a protective pulse. Every instinct screamed to take her and run, to find some distant world where no signal could reach us, where I could complete our bond in safety and keep her from all who would harm her.
But running wouldn't stop this threat. It wouldn't protect the other mates being hunted across the galaxy. It wouldn't satisfy the warrior code that burned in my bones.
"We hunt this Asset P," I decided, my voice hard with resolve. "We find who betrayed the Agency, who endangered my mate, who feeds innocent complements to pirates."
Silvyr nodded, his silver skin rippling with calculations. "I'll begin by erasing our existence from the Agency databases. As far as they're concerned, you two vanished during the pirate attack." His expression turned grim. "But first, I need to sever all connections to the Agency network before?—"
A sharp ping echoed through the chamber, emanating from the comm array. The holowall flickered unbidden, displaying a simple text message that scrolled across the screen in pulsing green letters:
GENETIC COMPLEMENT IDENTIFIED: MAYA POE + VYLIT OF MAVTROS
