17. Nyra #3
The time for being the thing he protects finally reaches its end. I have to reach that bridge before Selra's ghost code finishes sealing him in. If I can get into the core, I can bypass the lockdown from the inside and tear those bridge doors open myself.
Staring down the dark, narrow tunnel, I resign myself to the claustrophobic nightmare rather than staying hidden, while Korr’s butchers carve their way through the ship.
I want to be at his back. I want to ensure that when the butchers arrive, they find more than just an old Warlord waiting for them.
"I'm coming, Draevik," I promise, climbing into the artery. "Don't you dare die before I get there."
I pull the stone plate shut behind me, plunging into the electric dark.
The darkness in the maintenance artery feels thick and alive, moving with the frantic clattering of a ship undergoing a lobotomy.
I scramble upward, my fingers digging into the narrow ridges of the dark walls while K-Seven bounces against the conduits behind me, its light strobing in a dizzying sequence.
Every time Virex Prime shudders from a distant impact, the walls press in, threatening to turn this crawl space into a coffin.
"Nyra, the core temperature in this sector is rising," K-Seven babbles, its voice echoing sharply in the confined space. "The invasive code is triggering a purge sequence in the secondary cooling lines to force the Commander to reroute power. We must move faster!"
"I'm moving, K! Just keep that light steady!" I shout, my lungs burning from the thin, ozone-heavy air.
The mark acts as a compass now, pulling me toward the storm’s eye.
I ignore the scrapes on my knees and the way the raw energy from the conduits makes the hair on my arms stand up.
I have to be the variable Selra failed to calculate.
I have to be the one thing in this ship that operates outside a digital command.
I reach a junction where the cables thicken into a trunk of bedazzling violet fibers—the central spine. Deep in the guts of the ship, a massive labyrinth of stone and power cables separates me from the bridge. Yet here I stand, at the threshold of the core systems.
"K, the manual bypass," I gasp, pulling myself onto a small ledge. "Draevik has the bridge on lockdown, but Selra is loop-feeding the internal security to keep the automated turrets from firing on the boarders. I have to physically break the link."
"Unit identifies the primary release valve at your eleven o'clock," the drone reports, its spotlight pinning a heavy, circular dial half-buried under a mess of neural webbing. "But Nyra, the pressure required to turn that?—"
"I’ve spent my life turning valves that didn't want to move," I grunt, throwing my weight against the dial.
I lock my boots against the opposite wall and pull with everything I have.
The metal is freezing, biting into my palms, but I hold on.
I mull over the way Draevik looked at me before he sealed the doors—the weight of a thousand years of loneliness in his eyes.
I recall the way he set a place for me in his world.
"Open, you piece of junk!" I scream.
The dial gives, turning with prolonged, agonizing resistance as ancient gears screech back to life. Somewhere deep in the corridor outside this shaft, I hear the echo of metal on metal. The boarding party is moving through the lower decks, clearing the secondary access points.
"They're coming, K! I'm out of time!" I exclaim, giving the dial one final, desperate heave.
A hiss of pressurized gas vents into the shaft, nearly knocking me off the ledge.
From beyond the bulkhead, a heavy metallic clunk signals the release of the manual bypass.
I did it. I have opened a path for myself to navigate toward the core, but I have also exposed my own position to the local sensors.
"Override successful," K-Seven shouts over the rising roar of the reactor. "The central spine is accessible!"
I scramble toward the exit hatch, my heart racing out of control. Survival has a different shape now. It is the man standing a mountain away from me. I need to get through this artery and find a way to the bridge level before the butchers finish their climb.
I close in on the final panel, my fingers brushing the release lever.
Tucked away in the marrow of the ship, I stay close to the core systems to feel the frantic pattering of the vessel's heart.
Through the thin metal of the hatch, the sound of heavy boots hitting the deck strikes like a deafening barrage.
I freeze, my hand trembling on the lever. The thumping of their movement travels through the spine, through my bones. They are in the corridor right outside this hatch. They may have reached the central spine, but their focus is entirely on finding an upward ascent.
The shadows of the butchers flicker through the grate as they prepare to ascend, unaware that I watch from the dark, the sole witness to the open manual path.
Draevik remains a world away, leaving me trapped within the walls alongside the men who want to tear us both apart.
Survival twists like a single, tangled cord, binding us, and I refuse to let them cut it.