Page 58 of Claimed By the Wraiths

Furious and in control of every bit of it.

“Time to go,” he said.

I was already moving. Through the door, left, into the service corridor behind the holding level.

The route I’d rehearsed for nearly two weeks was finally under my feet.

Narev’s code went first.

One level up, Kovac keyed the four digits into the maintenance terminal as the attack klaxons pushed the station into emergency mode. The biological containment alarm started seconds later, a second tone layered over the attack. Internal response peeled toward the research wing.

A boat builder, taking one more system apart.

Kovac hit the cameras next.

The eastern holding feeds died. Ninety seconds of blindness, exactly as tested from Rynn’s map.

“Patel.”

The junction door stood open. Three bad codes, a fail-open reset, and a fault that would look like incompetence instead of sabotage.

A boat builder. A bonded pair who had spent months testing the walls. A guard barely out of his teens.

Three cracks in Vain’s system, opening at once.

Then I moved.

The spine corridor was narrow, poorly lit, designed for maintenance access rather than foot traffic. Serak moved beside me and the bond made the coordination immediate.

We didn’t speak. We didn’t signal. We didn’t need to.

I turned left and felt him already covering the right. At the next junction his attention gave me two people ahead—maintenance staff, unarmed, not a threat—and I was moving again before I consciously sorted the information.

This was what Ressh and Alix had. What Thoryn and Maris had. Not just trust or training. Two sets of instincts arriving at the same answer at once.

I’d watched them do it for years. Experiencing it from inside was different.

We climbed through the spine. One level. Two.

The comm hub was on the command level, two levels above the holding area. Service corridor access behind the room, the maintenance panel Serak had identified during his mapping.

Maris’s voice came over the comm. “First pass complete. Deyric’s spoof bought us one targeting cycle. Zevik kissed the military ring long enough to drop Ressh and Alix, then peeled away. We’re looping back now. Thoryn, Solren, and I hit the main hangar in thirty seconds. Once we’re off, Zevik goes back to the external array with Deyric aboard.”

“Acknowledged,” Serak said. “Jessa and I are in the spine corridor. Two levels below the comm hub.”

“Deyric’s ready. Data package is queued. The moment Jessa opens the channel, he pushes the upload from the Raptor.”

“And the worm?”

“Separate trigger. Jessa activates it from the comm hub console after the broadcast completes. Deyric found the research replication riding the privileged diplomatic backbone. Once the hub authenticates, the worm follows that trusted path into anything still connected.”

Two objectives. Broadcast the evidence, then burn the source.

We reached the command level service passage. The maintenance panel was where Serak had marked it.

He pressed his hand flat against the surface, feeling for vibration, for movement on the other side. The bond gave me what he was sensing: two people in the corridor beyond, guard post, armed, standing between us and the comm hub door.

Two more inside the hub itself. Four total.