Varrick
Sabine met me outside her quarters an hour before the first shift.
The station’s corridors were empty, swallowed by the quiet that preceded the dawn rush.
She was dressed in maintenance coveralls that did nothing to hide the way her body moved.
She'd pulled her hair back tight, exposing the curve of her neck where I'd pressed my fangs last night without breaking skin.
The memory of her taste flooded my mouth.
“Ready?” Her voice was steady, but I caught the slight tremor in her hands as she checked her tool belt.
“It's a trap.” I needed her to understand. “Every step will be too easy.”
“I know.” She moved closer, close enough that her scent, adrenaline and determination and an underlying sweetness, wrapped around me. “That's why we're going to spring it on our terms.”
We took the service lift to Level 15. Her keycard worked perfectly. Of course it did. Qeth wanted us to get close enough to gloat.
The maintenance shaft was narrow, forcing us to crawl single file. I went first. I could feel her presence close behind me, her hand brushing my ankle whenever I paused to check a corner. Every accidental touch sent a current through me.
“Left here,” she whispered, her breath warm against my ear when she leaned forward. “The blind spot extends for twelve meters.”
The Level 16 security corridor was conveniently empty. No patrols. No automated sweeps. Just silence and the hum of failing electronics. We moved through it like ghosts.
Level 17. Still nothing. The lack of resistance was a warning, but Sabine moved with absolute confidence. All that time, she'd been memorizing these routes. Her long-planned escape had led to this moment, with me.
“There should be guards here,” I murmured as we reached the Level 18 access point.
“There are.” She pointed to a monitor showing two guards rushing toward Level 12. “Krave's disturbance. He's pulling them away without making it obvious.”
Krave. The Mondian who'd lost his brother to Qeth's paranoia. Our unwitting ally in this mutual destruction.
Level 19 passed in a blur of empty corridors and disabled cameras. Sabine's stolen keycard opened every door, her memorized codes bypassed every lock. By the time we reached Level 20, we'd been infiltrating for less than fifteen minutes.
“This feels wrong,” I said. “Too simple.”
“He wants us here.” She pulled out her device, a thing of beauty made from stolen parts and rage.
Circuit boards cannibalized from gambling machines, processors lifted from security terminals, all wired together into something elegant and devastating.
“The question is whether his trap is better than mine.”
“Ready?” I asked. “Once your device goes live, this place will tear itself apart. That's our only cover.”
“Let them come,” she said. “We'll be gone in the chaos.”
The vault antechamber was ostentatious even by Qeth's standards. Walls lined with trophies from everyone he'd destroyed, pieces of jewelry from ruined merchants, weapons from dead competitors. A monument to greed.
“Behind the third panel,” I said, recognizing the pattern. Qeth had always hidden his real treasures behind his showpieces.
My hand found the hidden release. The false wall swung open, revealing the actual vault door. Biometric locks, quantum encryption, pressure sensors. All of it degraded, failing, held together by desperation and stimulants.
“How long?” Sabine asked, already pulling security bypasses from her belt.
“Three minutes.” I pressed my palm to the biometric scanner, letting my neural signature interact with my own corrupted algorithms. The system recognized me, fought me, then surrendered as I overwhelmed it with mathematical patterns it couldn't process without me.
Sabine worked beside me, her fingers moving with precision over her equipment, rerouting power, confusing sensors.
This close, I could feel the warmth from her body, smell the light sheen of sweat on her skin.
When she reached across me to access a panel, her breast brushed my arm, and we both froze for a heartbeat.
“Focus,” she breathed, but her pupils were dilated, her pulse visible in her throat.
The vault door opened with a soft hiss minutes before the shift change.
Inside, on a pedestal, sat the Regalia. Even disguised as an ornate gaming token, it pulsed with alien power. The crystalline lattice structure was beautiful and terrible, containing enough encrypted data to topple empires. Or rebuild them.
“He's watching,” Sabine whispered, and I nodded.
I could feel it. The weight of surveillance, of anticipation. Qeth was somewhere in the station, probably in his office, waiting for this moment. The moment he thought he'd won.
I lifted the Regalia. It was heavier than expected and hummed against my palm with dormant energy. The last piece of the Sovereign's legacy, finally in my hands.
“Now,” I said.
Sabine activated her device. Her fingers moved across it with the same precision she used to deal cards, inputting codes, executing programs she'd been refining for months.
“Thirty-second delay,” she said. “We need to be moving when it hits.” Every outgoing transmission, every docked ship's communication relay, every connected terminal—her device was using them all.
Just before his pre-dose window, we ran.
Not back through the service tunnels. That would be expected. Instead, we took the main corridor, setting off every single alarm we'd avoided on the way in. Red lights bathed everything in blood. Sirens wailed through the station.
I grabbed Sabine, spun her against the wall as footsteps approached. Her body pressed against mine, her breath coming fast.
“Trust me,” I said, then kissed her.
Hard. Desperate. We were lovers caught in the wrong place, not thieves with stolen property worth killing for. The guards ran past, heading for the vault, not even glancing at the couple making out in an alcove.
When I pulled back, her lips were swollen, her eyes dark with want that had nothing to do with performance.
“Brilliant,” she gasped, but her hands were fisted in my shirt, holding me close.
“You're brilliant,” I said, meaning it. Meaning everything. “Your device.”
The screens around us flickered. Then exploded with data.
Every crime Qeth had committed. Every family he'd betrayed. Account numbers, murder orders, blackmail material. All that time Sabine spent watching, recording, gathering evidence during her “maintenance” shifts. All of it broadcasting on every display in the station.
The reaction was immediate. Shouts of rage from the gaming floors. The crash of breaking glass from the VIP levels. The station's underworld realizing they'd all been played, stolen from, lied to.
“Mutual destruction,” Sabine said, a fierce smile transforming her face. “He wanted to trap us. Now he's trapped by his own crimes.”
I kissed her again, quick and fierce with pride. She made a sound that went straight through me, her body arching into mine despite the chaos around us.
“We need to go,” she said against my mouth.
“Then let's go,” I replied, pulling her with me.
We ran through the collapsing order of the Parallax Casino, the Regalia heavy in my possession, Sabine's hand tight in mine. Behind us, screens continued their relentless display of truth. Qeth's empire was eating itself alive.
We'd turned his trap into our weapon. We made it back to the vault entrance.
The Regalia was secure in my jacket, Sabine's device had done its work.
Now we just had to survive long enough to use our advantage.
That's when we heard footsteps. Heavy. Deliberate.
Coming fast. 'They know we're here,' Sabine breathed.
The door to the vault antechamber was our only option. We ducked inside just as—