Page 14 of Claimed By the Wraiths

“He said no.”

“He didn’t lock the hangar,” she said.

I stopped walking.

Maris glanced back but didn’t say anything else.

SERAK

Iwent to the bridge and pulled up the Meridian Station schematics.

Not because I’d changed my mind. Because I needed to see the problem clearly.

One crew member, no backup, a Consortium venue with its own security apparatus. Everything I’d told her was operationally correct.

I studied the station layout.

Commercial docking on the lower ring, the kind of berths that handled civilian traffic and cargo deliveries. Conference levels on the middle ring, the polished floors and badge-controlled access of a venue designed for people who spent their lives being important. Service corridors running through the spine, connecting everything, maintained by staff who kept the lights on while the diplomats talked.

Someone in cargo staff clothing could move through those service corridors without flagging Consortium security. The conference floors would be impossible.

But the infrastructure underneath was just a station. Corridors, conduits, junction boxes.

The same terrain I’d worked my whole career.

If someone were to map the station from underneath while Jessa worked the conference from above, the two of them could cover the entire facility.

One in the light, one in the dark. Both doing what they were built to do.

I studied the maintenance access points. Six per level.

Service spine with vertical connections. Ventilation shafts wide enough for a person, if the person didn’t mind narrow spaces.

I didn’t mind narrow spaces. I’d proved that at the relay.

Ressh found me an hour later. He leaned in the bridge doorway and watched me work for thirty seconds before speaking.

“You’re looking at Meridian schematics,” he said.

“I’m studying the problem.”

“You’re figuring out how to go with her.” He crossed to the console and leaned against it, arms folded. “When Vain caught us at Epsilon, they put a suppressor collar on me. I could feel Alix on the other side of the facility and I couldn’t reach her. I knew what was being done to me and I knew worse was being done to her.” He paused.

His traceries had gone flat. “That was the worst twelve hours of my life. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“She can’t go alone.”

“Then don’t let her go alone.”

I looked at him. He met it with those amber eyes, traceries shifting in slow patterns.

Not agitated. Settled.

The expression of a man who’d already thought this through and was waiting for me to catch up.

“You’re the captain,” he said. “Nobody else can make that call. But you should know, the crew already assumed this was how it would go.”

“How what would go?”