Page 14 of Tracked and Taken

“I like you, Torres.”

She goes back to her desk. Picks up the bear. Holds him against her upper body the way someone holds a thing they need, and doesn’t explain, and I don’t ask, because some things don’t need explaining. They just need holding.

Something in me loosens. Not the wanting; that’s still there, occupying its designated corner of my awareness and refusing to pay rent. The part of me that has been standing alone in gaps for four years and has noticed that this room, for all its fairy lights and poor decisions, is full of people who stand in gaps too. Who got fired, got terminated, got discarded by systems that didn’t deserve them. Who ended up here because a woman with a notebook decided they belonged.

I don’t belong here. I’m Junction One security. Coordination, not crew.

“Harkin’s shift pattern,” Xor says. Flat. Bringing us back. “He is on-station?”

I pull up the maintenance roster. Scroll. Find him. “Level Three. Finishing his rotation.” I check the time against the equipment log. 1614. “Equipment return starts at 1745. He logs in, stows his tools, logs out. Fifteen-minute window. Single door. No vent he fits through.”

“Tidy.”

“Tidy is what I need.”

“Team?”

“Myself and two Junction One security officers.” This is a clean answer to a clean question. This is a takedown. I know how to do takedowns. I have done dozens of them and none of them have involved a Draelith. “Harkin won’t see me coming. In and out.”

Xor nods. Once. The Xarthian equivalent of a written approval stamp.

Tael’s voice cuts across the room. Casual. A male considering the weather.

“You’ll want a tracker.”

Three heads turn toward him. Petra’s, Flossie’s, and, traitorously, mine.

“I have a take-down plan.”

“You have an arrest plan.” He is still looking at whatever is on the display in front of him. The voice is gravel-smooth, working-register, entirely unconcerned. “Different product. The synthetic compound from Bay 7: if Harkin has been handling it, he’s been handling it inside two days. It’ll be on his hands, his tools, the edges of his locker. I can confirm the match in the room, before you walk him off the station. That turns a who accessed the system case into a who was running the compound case, which is the one you actually want.”

“I don’t need a tracker to arrest a maintenance tech.”

“You don’t need one to arrest him. You need one to build the case.” A beat. Tael still not looking up. “Your words, Torres. This morning. Then my screening needs to be better than the point.”

I am going to kill him.

“We don’t need to find him,” I say. “We know where he is.”

“Finding isn’t the only thing a tracker does.”

“It’s in the name, Vosk.”

“It’s in the job description. The name is decorative.”

Petra, from her desk, delighted: “He’s using logic, Torres.”

“Petra.”

“I’m just observing.”

“You are narrating.”

“Narration is a form of observation with audio.”

Flossie is writing again. Her pen has not slowed down. Her pen is, in fact, moving at the speed of a woman recording data for a betting pool she will absolutely not be declaring to me.

“Your call, lovey.” Warm. Utterly unhelpful.