CHAPTER 6 TOUCH HER AND DIE
Corsine sat behind her desk in the sterile white chamber she had carved out of the station’s industrial guts, and every surface gleamed under lights calibrated to mimic a laboratory.
The ancient alien technology she studied was arranged on shelving units behind her, components I recognized from the station’s original infrastructure, removed and isolated for analysis.
Data pads and research terminals lined the walls.
The room was organized with the same rigor she applied to her trafficking schedules.
“The buyers from the Kethosi Sector are becoming impatient.” She did not look up from her terminal as she spoke. Her voice carried the flat modulation of someone discussing inventory management. “The last shipment was two cycles late. They are threatening to source from a competitor.”
“There are no competitors.” I stood across from her desk. I did not sit. Sitting in Corsine’s presence placed my eyes at her level, and I had learned that looking down on her was one of the few tactical advantages my height provided. “No one else has access to the compatibility scanner.”
“Which is exactly why delays are unacceptable. I need three new candidates identified and prepped for extraction within the next cycle.” She tapped her terminal, and a display of prisoner biometrics appeared on the screen between us.
“I have flagged several with promising markers. Your security detail will need to facilitate the transfers without incident.”
My jaw locked. Forty-seven pairs in three years. Ninety-four living beings processed through the Forgotten Corridors and loaded onto trafficking ships while I maintained order and told myself the calculus justified the cost. Three more. Always three more.
“Which prisoners?”
She turned the display toward me. Names, cell assignments, biometric data. I scanned them with the speed my species brought to visual processing. Two humans, one Drakhari. All female. All young. All were flagged with markers indicating potential genetic compatibility.
I memorized the names. Filed them. One day, they would be part of the evidence package I transmitted to the Galactic Authority. One day.
“The timeline is aggressive,” I said. “Two of these prisoners are assigned to essential maintenance details. Removing them simultaneously will create operational gaps.”
“Then fill the gaps. That is your function, Warden.” She looked at me for the first time. Her pale eyes were clinical. “Unless there is a reason you find this particular request objectionable?”
A trap. The question was always a trap. She tested me the way she tested her compounds, applying measured pressure to observe the reaction.
“There is no objection. I will coordinate the transfers.”
“Good.” She returned to her terminal. “How is our experiment progressing?”
The experiment. Kira.
I kept my expression neutral. My scales kept their color. The discipline of three years under this woman’s observation had forged control mechanisms that operated below conscious thought.
“The subject has adapted to the proximity requirements as expected. No complications.”
“I would like to conduct a follow-up assessment. Have her brought to my lab within the week.”
No.
The word detonated in my chest with enough force to shift the thrum into a frequency I had not produced since the Processing Room.
Corsine would not touch Kira. Would not scan her.
Would not run her instruments over the bond that lived between us, reducing it to data points in a trafficking catalog.
“The subject is assigned to critical Life-Support maintenance. Removing her from her detail during the current repair cycle would compromise the station’s atmospheric integrity.
” My voice held. The voice of a warden managing resources, not a bonded male protecting his mate.
“I will schedule the assessment for the following cycle.”
Corsine studied me. Three seconds. Four. She returned to her terminal, then paused
“I should mention. Maintenance will be installing upgraded environmental emitters in the Warden’s wing this week. Atmospheric calibration. Standard procedure.”
She did not look up. “You may notice some auditory interference. The frequency range overlaps with Zethrani’s hearing. It will be temporary.”
Atmospheric calibration did not require emitters installed inside residential walls. And Corsine did not notify me of standard maintenance.
I filed the information and said nothing.
I left her office with the names of three prisoners who would disappear within the week and the knowledge that I had bought Kira seven days before Corsine demanded access to her.
Seven days to get the evidence to the GA. Seven days to save Sera. Seven days to stop the next shipment before three more names joined the forty-seven.
The corridor stretched ahead of me, and I walked toward my quarters with a stride that was controlled because everything about me was controlled, because control was the structure I had built around the rage and the grief and the helplessness that had accumulated over one thousand one hundred and eight days in this station.
Then the bond screamed.
A detonation of terror that slammed through the emotional resonance link and hit me in the center of my chest like a pulse-blaster round. Kira’s terror. Her body was flooding with the chemical markers of a human subjected to an immediate physical threat.
I ran.
The corridor blurred. My stride ate up the distance in bounds, cracking the floor grating under impacts my body was not designed to withstand. Guards pressed against the walls as I passed.
A prisoner stumbled out of a junction, and I went over him without breaking rhythm. The bond pulled me forward like a tether, and the terror pulsing through it was escalating with every stride. Underneath the fear was pain.
She was in pain.
The door to my quarters was sealed. I hit the access panel and the lock cycled too slowly, far too slowly, and the half-second delay was enough for the red to start bleeding into the edges of my vision. A Zethrani combat response.
Blood vessels in the ocular tissue dilate, filtering the visual spectrum toward motion detection and threat identification. The world narrowed. Colors drained. Movement sharpened.
The door opened.
My office. My space. The room I had secured for her promised her safety within, given her the lock code so she could control who entered.
A guard stood in the center of it. Human. One of Corsine’s operatives, not station security. I recognized him. Harrick. He ran contraband through the Forgotten Corridors and supplemented his income by threatening prisoners who could not fight back.
His hand was on Kira’s arm. His fingers dug into the flesh above her elbow, and she was pressed against the desk, and the data terminals were scattered where she had been shoved backward into them.
Her face was turned away from him, her other arm braced against his chest, holding distance. Her lip was split. Blood on her chin.
Blood.
Her blood.
The red in my vision went total.
What followed was not a decision. It was a biological event. Three hundred thousand years of Zethrani warrior genetics detonating through a nervous system that had been selectively bred for exactly this purpose and then, supposedly, decommissioned.
The bond had reactivated more than the mating instinct. It had reactivated the killing one.
I crossed the room in two strides. My hand closed around Harrick’s throat. My fingers wrapped the column of his neck, and the claws I had retracted for fourteen days in Kira’s presence extended to their full length and pressed against the skin beneath his jaw.
He left the ground. The motion was lateral, a full-arm displacement that sent his body across the room and into the far wall. The impact cracked the metal sheeting. He hit the floor and scrambled, reaching for the weapon on his belt, and I was already there.
I pinned him with one hand on his chest. My knee on his thigh.
My claws dimpled the body armor over his sternum, and the pressure I applied was measured by a calculation that occurred below conscious thought: the exact force required to puncture the armor without reaching the organs beneath.
The line between restraint and killing is measured in millimeters.
“You touched her.” My voice was gone. What came out was a register I had not used in years, a sub-harmonic frequency that resonated in the walls and the floor and the bones of the man beneath me. A sound designed by evolution to paralyze prey. “You put your hands on her.”
Harrick’s face was white. His mouth moved. No sound came out. His hands clawed at my forearm, and his fingers could not close around the circumference of my wrist.
“Do you understand what you have done?” The words came from a place in my throat that tasted like copper and fire. My scales were burning. I felt the heat surge through them, past calm, past arousal, into something older.
Harrick’s wide, wet eyes reflected it back at me. Red. A deep, pulsing crimson. The color of a Zethrani male in killing mode. “Do you understand what I will do to anyone who touches her?”
“Corsine sent me.” He choked the words out. “She wanted the engineer. Wanted her brought to the lab. I was following orders.”
Corsine.
The name cut through the red haze by a fraction. Enough to register. Not enough to stop.
“Corsine does not give orders regarding prisoners in my custody.” I leaned closer. My claws pressed deeper. The armor creaked. “I give orders. And my order is this.”
I brought my face to within inches of his. My pupils were slits. My scales were casting a red glow across his skin. Every sub-harmonic frequency I possessed was tuned to the register that said, in every language my species had ever spoken: you are prey.
“If you touch her again. If you speak to her. If you occupy the same corridor as her. I will remove your hands from your body and send them to Corsine in a specimen jar.”