Chapter 16
For a second, the only sound in Jen’s ears was the rise and fall of her own breathing.
He’d refused to hand her over. No hesitation or calculation.
Just no.
Three years ago, the man she’d trusted most had traded her work for his own advancement—and slept just fine afterward. Tonight, a man she’d known for hours had looked down the barrel of an impossible choice and chosen her.
She didn’t know what to do with that. So she filed it where she put everything too big to process—behind the next task, the next problem, the next step.
The laser cutter started again—a distant whine that climbed fast into a grinding shriek, vibrating through the deck and into her bones. Not just cutting anymore but pushing through, metal peeling back under plasma heat and hydraulic pressure.
Wyatt looked straight at her. “They want you, they come through me first.”
She swallowed against a thickness in her throat.
Akilov knew they were trapped and had nowhere to run.
The only variable left was time.
She turned her attention to the pressure-relief vents.
Jen scanned upward, information she’d mapped a thousand times during maintenance checks.
The vertical exhaust trunk ran from the missile bay straight up through three decks to open air—designed to dump catastrophic overpressure if the weapons systems ever went critical.
It was inactive now, the dampers locked open.
Hardly an exit anyone sane would choose.
But they were out of options.
“We’re leaving,” Wyatt said. “Right now.”
Jen crossed to the far side of the bay. She stopped next to a rectangular steel hatch set into the corner where the bay wall met the exhaust trunk. Warning stencils marked the surface in faded yellow:
OVERPRESSURE RELIEF / DO NOT BLOCK.
Behind her, boots hit the deck. Wyatt, following without argument or debate.
He moved with her as if they’d been doing this for years instead of hours—falling into step with an ease that felt dangerously close to trust.
“Right. We’re climbing into the ceiling. That’s happening now.” Caro drew level with her, neck craned, staring up at the vent, her breath coming too fast.
Not panicking yet, but an edge showing through.
Jen dropped to her knees beside the access hatch, hands on the wheel lock. Frozen solid. “Wyatt.”
He was already beside her. They wrenched it together—one grinding revolution, then another, until the seal broke with a metallic shriek and the bolts disengaged.
Caro paced, hands clutched across her chest. “You know maybe I was hasty. Just because there’s a ladder inside doesn’t mean we should use it. It’s not an exit. It’s the vertical exhaust trunk.”
“It’s our only option,” Jen answered. “Unless you want to be here when Akilov comes through that door.”
Wyatt had positioned himself between the door and the two of them. His sidearm was in his hand now, held low against his thigh, finger indexed along the frame.
Heat bled through the main door, visible as a wavering distortion in the air. Sparks didn’t just shower—they poured through the widening gap in molten streams that hissed and spat against the deck.
Time was running out, compressing until every second felt too small to hold everything they had to do. If they waited another minute, they’d lose the vent. If they rushed, they’d lose Caro.
Jen climbed back to her feet, wiping grease from her hands on her thighs.
Caro had gone pale, freckles standing out stark against bloodless skin. She’d stopped moving—frozen in that space between flight and paralysis where fear pinned you in place and made you watch your own death approach.
Jen knew how that fear tasted. She’d experienced it every time she’d had to crawl through the station’s ventilation system over the last few hours, fighting claustrophobia and the weight of tons of steel pressing down from above.
“Caro.” She took hold of her junior’s upper arms and gave a gentle squeeze. “We are doing this. And you’re going to be fine.”
“No.” The word came out small and broken. “I can’t. I don’t do heights, and that’s…that’s straight up, and if I fall—”
“You won’t fall.” Jen caught Caro’s trembling hands. “I’m going first. Wyatt’s going last. You’re between us. We’ve got you.”
“Chief—”
“Caro.” Jen squeezed once. “You can do this. I know you can.”
The cutter shrieked, and rough voices shouted urgently in Russian.
Wyatt yanked the hatch open.
Heat rushed out—warm and carrying the stink of old grease and metal oxidation. The opening was maybe two feet square, barely large enough for shoulders to fit through, and beyond it, welded ladder rungs rose through the vent shaft like vertebrae. A thick grille blocked the route ten feet up.
She led Caro by the hand over to the hatch.
“I’m going up first so I can remove the grilles. Caro, you’re next. Wyatt brings up the rear.”
“Jen—” Wyatt started.
“No arguments.” She met his eyes, reading concern there, maybe even the urge to go first himself and take point, like he’d done all night. “I know this system. You don’t.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. It cost him to let her lead—to not put himself between her and danger. He held up his handgun. “Go. I’m right behind you.”
The nod was sharp. Professional. But his eyes stayed on her a beat too long, making sure she was ready—the same look he’d given her on the ladder before she’d climbed into the dark. Be careful. I have your back.
Jen swung her legs through the hatch. The metal walls closed around her immediately, brushing both shoulders at once. It was thirty feet straight up to the next junction, then another thirty to open air with no safety lines or margin for error.
The rungs were slick under her hands, filmed with condensation and old lubricant. Her grip tightened instinctively—one slip in a shaft this narrow and she’d slam elbow-first into steel.
The air reeked of old lubricant and rust, thick enough that every breath tasted metallic.
Up. Just climb. Don’t look down. Don’t think.
She closed her eyes. She’d done this twice already tonight.
One more time.
She pulled herself through the hatch completely, boots finding purchase on the first rung. Emergency lighting cast everything in sickly yellow-green, shadows jumping as she climbed.
Her boot slipped once, just enough to spike icy adrenaline.
“Jen?” Wyatt.
“Fuck.” Her forehead bumped cold metal, the sound echoing hollow through the shaft. There wasn’t room to even straighten her arms. Her knuckles ached with tension as she fought to slow her lungs’ rapid suck of oily air. “I’m okay.”
The first grille loomed above her—heavy-gauge steel mesh bolted into the shaft walls. She braced her boots on the rungs, shoulders wedged against the shaft walls, and pulled the power driver from her belt.
Four bolts. Her hands were shaking and the driver kept slipping off the heads.
Come on. Come on.
The first bolt dropped. She caught it before it fell—a bolt pinging off Caro’s head was not the morale boost they needed right now. Second bolt. Third. Fourth.
She forced the grille sideways until it caught on the retention clip bolted into the shaft wall—a small mercy of engineering design she’d never been more grateful for.
One down. She didn’t want to think about how many more.
She looked down just as Caro entered the hatch. A sobbing noise escaped her. “I can’t—”
“You can.” Wyatt’s hands appeared, steadying her. “Reach for the first rung. I’ve got you.”
Caro’s hand shook so badly it was visible from ten feet up. Her fingers closed around the ladder, slipped, caught again.
“Good,” Wyatt said. “Now, the other hand.”
Caro pulled herself through, jerky and uncoordinated, but she was inside the trunk now and moving upward in desperate lurches.
Wyatt’s voice was low and calm in the enclosed space. “I’m coming up. Keep moving.”
The hatch clanged shut.
Darkness swallowed Jen, except for the emergency lights, casting the vertical shaft in intervals of green-yellow glow and absolute black.
The three of them were sealed inside the vent now.
No turning back.
Only up.