Page 40 of Taken By the Alien Killer
The panel shifts—less than a blink—and drops like a whisper. Rayek is there. No fanfare. No court. Just heat and gravity and the force of him. He lands without sound. The guards don’t turn. His hand is already at the belt of the nearer one, sliding a chipfree with the ease of a sin he practiced in a different life. He’s behind the second before breath remembers it should warn. A pulse-touch under the ear and the man folds like a bad idea. The first starts to speak; Rayek cups his mouth and the rest never arrives.
“Hello, boys,” CynJyn says brightly, because she is incapable of silence around crime.
Rayek meets my eyes and the whole room goes secondary. He slides the stolen chip across the bar reader. The bone-wrapped alloy clicks, sulks, then surrenders. The cell door unlatches with a metal sigh that feels like something out of my chest has found its hinge.
“Up,” he says, and I’m already moving, already dragging CynJyn by the elbow, already leaving a part of me behind to haunt these bars in case I need to come back to yell at them.
“Hey, Commander,” CynJyn grins, breathless. “Great vacation spot. Three stars. Towels were bones.”
“Hands,” he says, and his is there, palm open, a platform I’d jump onto in a hurricane. He boosts me like I weigh nothing. I grab the lip of the duct, fingers skidding on dust and grease; he pushes and I slide in on my forearms, metal grating kiss-burning my skin through the thin fabric. CynJyn scrambles after with a grunt, horns knocking the frame. Rayek follows, a dark tide, closing the panel with a breath.
We are inside the ship like a cough. The duct is close, hot, smelling of old oil and fried dust and that iron tang that never belongs. My throat scratches. My knees protest. CynJyn says, “Ow, ow, ow,” in a whisper that laughs. Rayek’s breath is steady behind us, a metronome of sanity.
“Left,” he says. “Two meters, drop. Quiet.”
“How do you know—” CynJyn starts.
“He’s been walking the walls for hours,” I say, because hope tastes amazing and I want to chew it. “He knows her bones.”
“Bones,” CynJyn says, and huffs a little laugh. “Appropriate.”
We hit the drop, a maintenance shaft mouth like a dark throat. Rayek slides past us and lowers himself first, hands finding invisible rungs. His shoulders brush both sides. He looks up and that gold hits me like a flare.
“Your foot,” he says, and his hand is on my calf, guiding blindly, sure. “There.”
“Okay,” I whisper, and it’s please, and it’s yes, and it’s don’t leave.
Sirens somewhere else decide to join the party. A klaxon cycles higher. The deck under us thumps. A voice barks through the shipwide, crisp and furious: “Hard hold, report! What are you doing with my chain?”
“The chain’s lonely,” CynJyn mutters. “Let it date.”
We spill out into a wider duct and crawl faster, elbows and knees, palms slipping. Heat blooms under my hands; my bruises complain; my shoulder screams when I bump it wrong. The world shrinks to metal and breath and the low, constant growl of engines doing violence to the dark.
“Stop,” Rayek says, and we freeze. He leans into a grille and listens with his whole body. I can feel him hearing—jaw flexing, lashes a shadow across his cheek, a tiny tilt of his head toward a noise the rest of us can’t name. He points—two fingers, right, then down—and mouths, “Shops.”
“There be wrenches,” CynJyn mouths back, feral.
He ghosts the grate loose and we pour into the machine shop like a spilled pocket. The room smells like solvent and pride. Tools hang in neat rows that make me ache with gratitude for the orderly mind that put them there. A cutting torch sulks in its cradle. A line of grease smears the floor like a signature. No one is here; the sirens lured talent elsewhere.
“Bag,” Rayek says, and I’m already yanking an empty kit off a hook, stuffing it with anything that looks like it might makea lock regret its life choices—wedges, fiber cutters, a jack that expands like a hard idea. CynJyn plucks goggles off a nail and shoves them at me.
“Cute,” she says. “Grease chic.”
“Later,” I gasp, because the word later is the best lie I’ve told all week.
Footsteps hammer past the door. Voices curse. Someone yells, “Find the leak!” Someone else yells, “Find my lunch!” The ship bucks slightly, like something big just took a bite out of its schedule. A heat haze ripples across the doorway. A smell like burning insulation sneaks in and slaps my sinuses.
“Fire,” CynJyn whispers, delighted and terrified.
“Electrical,” Rayek says, all soldier. “Panel eighteen is down.”
“Good,” I say, because chaos is our saint. “Bad,” I say, because chaos eats saints for dessert.
We dart back into the duct. Rayek shoves the grille up with his shoulder and hoists me like I’m made of air. My thigh brushes his shoulder and that touch is a bell ringing in a church I didn’t know I built. CynJyn climbs, boots clattering on the frame, and curses in Kilgari so pretty it sounds like a toast.
We crawl toward sound. Toward heat. Toward a hurricane we didn’t start but might survive if we grab the right anchor. A hatch below us bangs open. A Reaper stomps through my field of view, bone collar glittering with red-wash sweat. He stops, sniffs the air, and says, “You smell that?” to nobody. Another voice answers from the hall: “Yeah. Pride.”
Rayek’s hand lands on the small of my back, steadying, a press that says We are a pack, move, go. So we go. The duct opens into a cross-junction; the left branch glows, a red pulse that means heat and panic. The right branch hums cool. He tips his chin right. I start to turn that way and then the left side coughs smoke through a seam and I hear someone below scream—short, ugly, cut off.
