Page 4 of Stolen By the Wraiths
The comm clicked off, leaving us in a silence punctuated by the screaming alarms. The giant alien—Ressh—swore under his breath, a low, guttural sound that seemed to vibrate in my bones.
"Change of plans," he said, turning to me. Those amber eyes were intense, focused. "We're being hunted."
"No kidding," I snapped, gesturing at the flashing lights. "I got that part. Who's 'we'? My plan was to get paid and disappear, not play tag with a station full of trigger-happy security." My survival sense was screaming at me to ditch this guy and vanish into the station's guts. He was a magnet for trouble, and I was standing way too close.
"The people who tried to kill you work for a man named Kess Vain," he said, his tone a deep rumble that vibrated through the deck plates. "He wants that data core, and he wants you dead. Right now, I'm the only thing standing between you and them."
Great. Just great. "So what's the brilliant new plan? Because 'get there' isn't exactly a detailed schematic."
"The west spire is on the other side of the industrial sector. We go down. Through the lower levels."
"The underbelly." I almost smiled. He might be a super-soldier, but this was my turf. "You'll get us killed down there. You stick out."
"And you don't?"
"I know how to be invisible," I shot back. "You look like a monument to bad decisions. Follow me. Stay quiet. And try not to kill anyone unless they shoot first."
Without waiting for an answer, I pried open a floor grate and dropped into the service tunnels below. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and unidentifiable machine grease. It smelled like home.
For what felt like hours, we moved through the station's forgotten pathways. The silence between us was heavy, broken only by the drip of unseen fluids and the distant groan of the station's life support. We navigated catwalks over cavernous recycling plants, the air shimmering with heat from below. We squeezed through ventilation shafts that were tight even for me, the metal scraping against my jacket. Ressh moved with a surprising silence for his size, but he was a predator built for open spaces, not the cramped confines of the station's bowels.
He was also a furnace. The warmth radiating from his body was a constant presence at my back, a strange comfort in the cold, damp tunnels.
I tried to ignore it.
I failed.
Every time he brushed against me in a narrow passage, my skin would prickle, and I'd have to fight the impulse to lean into the contact.Get a grip, Rowe. He's a tool for survival, not a space heater.
We had to hide twice. The first time, we pressed ourselves into a grimy alcove as a security patrol marched past, their boots echoing ominously. Ressh was a solid wall of heat in front of me, so close I could feel the rhythm of his breathing. The patrolleader paused, sniffing the air. My heart hammered against my ribs. But then he shrugged and moved on, and I could breathe again.
The second time was worse. We were crossing a narrow maintenance spine over a chasm of churning machinery when we heard voices ahead. We scrambled into a side conduit, a space barely wide enough for one person. Ressh pushed me in first, then crowded in behind me, his body pressing me hard against the cold metal wall. I was sandwiched, his chest a hard plane against my back, his scent overwhelming my senses. I held my breath, listening to the mercenaries pass by below, their voices rough and cruel. One of them laughed, and the sound made the hairs on my arms stand up. Ressh shifted behind me, a low growl vibrating through his chest and into my spine. It wasn't a sound of aggression, but of pure, lethal protection. And a part of me, a part I refused to acknowledge, found it thrilling.
After another hour of tense travel, we found a slightly more secure place to rest: an abandoned, dusty mess hall for a long-decommissioned sector. A few overturned tables and chairs were the only furniture.
"We need to stop," I said, my legs aching. "Just for a few minutes."
He nodded, his eyes scanning the exits even as he moved to the center of the room. I slumped onto a less-filthy chair while he took up a watch position by the door.
"Here," I said, pulling a ration bar from my pack and breaking it in half. I tossed him a piece. "Don't say I never gave you anything."
He caught it easily and ate his half in two efficient bites. I nibbled on mine, the chalky protein bar tasting like sawdust. The silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable.
"So, who's this Vain guy?" I asked, needing to fill the quiet. "What's his beef with you?"
His expression tightened. "He was my commanding officer."
That shut me up. I waited, and after a long silence, he spoke again, his voice low and strained.
"He runs a black ops unit for the Consortium. Or he did. My unit. The Rift Wraiths."
"Catchy name," I muttered.
"We were the best," he said, and there was no ego in it, just a statement of fact. "Until he sent us into a trap. Framed us for war crimes. Tried to have us all eliminated."
I processed that. A professional soldier, betrayed by his own. It was a story I understood all too well, just with bigger guns. "So this Vain guy is a real bastard."
"He's a monster." Ressh's voice was flat, his gaze fixed on some distant point. "And that core is the first proof we have of what he did. It's our only chance to clear our names."
