Page 2 of Tracked and Taken

He sits. Uninvited. Settles into the chair as if it grew to accommodate him, legs extended, tail curling into a loose spiral behind the backrest. He runs warmer than a human; I felt it from four feet away yesterday. At this range, the ventilation is carrying the rest of him, and I redirect the thought with the grim determination of a woman who has survived worse distractions than a good-smelling Draelith.

“The docking bay footage,” I say.

“Frame 4,471.”

My hands go still. He went straight to the frame number. Not show me the footage. The specific frame.

“You’ve already reviewed the data I shared with SNAG’s systems.”

“On the walk here. Draelith processing speed.” A fact. No performance. “Frame 4,471. Maintenance ship. Diagnostic gap. Twenty-minute window.”

Two keystrokes bring the footage to my primary display. The maintenance ship sliding into Bay 7 during the gap when camera coverage cycles. Twenty minutes of darkness.

“The ship is registered to a shell company. No trading history, no physical address, one other registered vessel. I ran the registration protocol—“

“Corporate extraction methodology.” He finishes my sentence. Not interrupting; arriving at the same place at the same speed, and the corner of his mouth does something that isn’t quite a smirk. Something surprised. Like he didn’t expect me to agree, and the discovery has knocked him half a step sideways.

The analytical equivalent of finishing each other’s—No. Absolutely not.

“SRS uses the same shell structure for covert intercepts,” he continues, and either he didn’t notice the pause or he’s choosing not to comment, which is almost worse. “Two registered vessels, one active, one dormant for redundancy. The registration survives one level of investigation and collapses at two.”

He knows this because he was SRS. Salvage and Retrieval Solutions: eight hundred agents, an Apex Tower address on Orion Outpost, and a motto, Recovery Without Compromise, that Junction One’s docking fines have never convinced them to live up to. He’s sitting in my chair, offering their tradecraft up like a weapon I’m welcome to aim, and the aiming part of my brain is already calculating angles.

“You’re asking me to use your knowledge of SRS operations to investigate a case that might involve SRS operations.”

“I’m offering context. Take it or spend three weeks getting to the same place through proper channels. Your call, Torres. I’m comfortable either way.”

He is visibly, infuriatingly comfortable. The chair. The sprawl. The tail doing its lazy spiral, like the furniture exists to support his opinions.

“Proper channels. Yes. You said that yesterday. Right before you told me my protocols were unnecessary.”

“I said the formal coordination request was unnecessary. Your protocols—“ His gaze drops to the displays behind me, then back. Slow. Deliberate. Like he’s taking inventory. “I haven’t had enough time with your protocols to form a judgement. Yet.”

“The diagnostic gap.” I keep my voice level, but the level is higher than I planned. “The twenty-minute window you walked yesterday.”

“Correct.”

“I walked it years ago.”

His mouth closes. The smirk doesn’t vanish, but it stalls, the way an engine stalls when it meets something the engineering didn’t account for.

I pull up Request 4471-C beside the footage. Date-stamped. Three months before Torek vanished. “Monitoring equipment for the diagnostic gap. Denied by STI Operations Division. ‘Insufficient threat justification.’” The Stellar Togetherness Initiative: the galactic government in theory, and in practice a ten-story building on Orion Outpost full of people who have never stood in a docking bay at 0300. Second request. Third. Fourth. The denial chain populating the display, date after date, polite refusal after polite refusal. “I’ve been filing variations of this request since I took the post. The current chain is four for four.”

His face changes. Not the smirk. Something shifts in those silver eyes, the pupils contracting or reshaping or doing something I don’t have a reference for, but I’ve spent fifteen years watching people reassess me across desks, and the expression underneath is universal. He’s recalculating. I got there first.

“Your request was denied.”

“Every time.”

The monitors hum. The fluorescent lights hold their steady, unglamorous frequency.

“That’s not a security failure.” His voice has dropped. Lost the gravel-smooth performance, the vocal equivalent of a smirk. “That’s an institutional one. And you’ve been—“

Fighting it alone. That is what he is about to say, or something close enough that my back teeth already ache from the weight of it, because institutional failure is the language the scar through my left eyebrow was bought in. Fifteen years Military Police. A commanding officer who looked at evidence in a female trafficking case and said pursuing it would compromise operational priorities, his coffee still warm in his hand. Three people in a cargo hold. I chose the fist. The perpetrators walked. He is still serving. I got a scar and a transfer and Morrison saying you’ll do. I do not need a Draelith tracker finishing that sentence with a voice that sounds like he understands.

“The maintenance ship docked at Bay 7 during the gap.”

He stops. Mouth open on whatever he was about to say. The something-underneath retreating behind the silver eyes as I slam the conversation back onto professional ground with the subtlety of a blast door. I want the case.