Page 59 of Claimed By the Wraiths

Serak looked at me. Those black eyes, steady.

“I’ll handle the door,” he said.

“I know.”

He shadow-melded. His skin went dark, his body dissolving into the space between the lights until the corridor was empty and I was standing alone.

I heard the panel open from the other side. I heard footsteps in the corridor beyond, soft, the kind of steps that didn’t belong to anyone. I heard the guards at the comm hub door stop talking.

A sound from one of them, sharp, surprised, cut short. A body hitting the floor. A second body hitting the floor.

Silence.

Serak’s voice, from the darkness: “Clear.”

The comm hub’s main door was palm-print locked. The maintenance panel behind the room was not.

Serak let the visual meld climb over him, opened the maintenance panel, and slipped through the service opening into the comm hub.

I heard two sounds from inside. Short. Muffled.

Then the main door opened from the inside and he was there, the meld receding from his skin. Two interior guards on the floor behind him.

Inside: heat and noise, the hum of transmission equipment pressing in from every wall, and at the center the console I’d been walking toward for nearly two weeks.

Two guards down, one breathing, one not. I stepped over them and sat at the console.

“Deyric. I’m in.”

“Spoof window is open. One-use token coming now.” He read the string once. I entered it exactly.

The handshake caught. Held. The network opened. Authentication confirmed.

Deyric said, “Fail-operational lock is live. Twenty minutes. Remote shutdown and reconfiguration are frozen; the hub keeps routing. Only a local isolation command can cut the protected systems.”

“Connection established.”

“Receiving. Starting upload now.” His voice was focused, all the dry humor stripped away. “Twenty minutes for full broadcast. GalacNet first, then military frequencies, then diplomatic channels. Each one authenticates separately.”

I watched the first channel open. Data streaming out.

Shipping manifests, facility communications, prisoner records, financial transactions. The conspiracy’s own files, authenticated by the conspiracy’s own systems, broadcast from the conspiracy’s own communications hub.

Undeniable. Self-authenticating. Proof.

“Twenty minutes,” I said to Serak.

He took position at the door. The corridor beyond was dark and getting darker.

“Twenty minutes,” he said.

SERAK

The first five minutes were quiet.

Deyric’s voice in my ear marked the first threshold. “Five minutes. GalacNet authenticated. Broadcasting. Military frequencies opening.”

I held the doorway. The corridor outside the comm hub was thirty meters of straight passage ending at a T-junction. Anyone coming for us had to come down that corridor.