Chapter 8
Dexter
Haven's End looks like a corpse held together by spite and failing life support.
I watch it grow in the viewport as we approach, half the station dark, entire sections gone cold and silent.
The parts that still have power flicker like a dying heartbeat.
This is where people come when they've run out of universe to hide in.
The kind of place that doesn't ask questions because it can't afford the answers.
Webb is here. Deep in the station's guts, according to Torres's intel. Holed up in a research facility that officially doesn't exist, surrounded by enough firepower to make a direct assault suicide.
Good thing we're not planning a direct assault.
"Split approach." I pull up the station schematic on the holo-table.
Kesh and Torres lean in, studying the layout.
Astra stands apart, arms crossed, her eyes on the dark sections of the station like she can see through the hull to what's waiting inside.
"Kesh, you and Torres take the main entrance.
Make noise. Draw attention. Astra and I go through here.
" I highlight a route through the abandoned sections, a narrow path through corridors that haven't seen atmosphere in months.
"Tight quarters," Torres observes.
"That's why it'll work. They won't expect anyone to come through the dead zones." I glance at Astra. She's already suited up, checking her weapon with the methodical precision that means she's thinking about violence. "We suit up, use the emergency airlocks, breach from the lower levels."
"And if we run into trouble in those corridors?" Kesh's question is pointed. The abandoned sections aren't just tight. They're coffin-narrow in places, barely wide enough for one person, let alone two in EVA suits.
"Then we adapt." I shut down the holo-table. "We move in two hours. Get ready."
The airlock cycles open with a hiss of equalizing pressure, and I step into silence.
Not the clean silence of space. The sick silence of a place that used to be alive and isn't anymore.
My suit lights cut through the darkness, illuminating corridors choked with frozen condensation and debris.
The temperature readout on my HUD shows fifteen below zero.
Cold enough to kill in minutes without protection.
Astra moves beside me, her suit lights painting shadows on the walls.
We're tethered together by a safety line, standard procedure for EVA work in unstable environments.
The line pulls taut between us as we navigate the narrow passage, her shoulder brushing mine when the corridor narrows to barely shoulder-width.
I can hear her breathing over the suit comm. Steady. Controlled. The rhythm of someone who's done this before, who knows how to keep panic at bay when the walls close in.
"Dexter." Her voice crackles in my ear. "Contact in thirty seconds."
I check my own scanner. She's right. Two heat signatures ahead, moving through what should be a sealed section. Guards, probably. Webb's people, checking the perimeter.
"Hold position." I press against the wall, feeling the cold through my suit. Astra does the same, close enough that I can see her eyes through her helmet visor. They're hard, focused, and something else. Something that looks like anticipation.
The guards pass below us, their lights sweeping the corridor we were about to enter. We wait, pressed together in the darkness, until their voices fade and the passage clears.
"Move." I unhook from the wall and drop into the lower corridor, landing in a crouch. Astra follows, her boots hitting the deck with barely a sound. We're inside the facility perimeter now. The corridors here still have power, emergency lighting painting everything in sickly red.
The research facility reveals itself in pieces.
First, the door. Reinforced, mag-locked, with a security panel that's been modified with tech I don't recognize. I pull out the bypass kit, but Astra's already moving, her hands flying over the panel with the kind of speed that comes from muscle memory.
"Medical override," she murmurs. "They're using a hospital-grade security system. Probably salvaged from a colony ship."
The lock disengages with a soft click. The door slides open, and we step into a laboratory that shouldn't exist.
Equipment hums softly in the dim light. Workstations arranged in a circle around a central holo-projector, currently dark. Monitoring stations with screens still displaying data streams. And along the far wall, rows of storage units marked with symbols I recognize from my father's personal files.
Spatial anomaly research. The same field Malachar Torrence spent twenty years studying before he disappeared.
"Dexter." Astra's voice is quiet, controlled, but I hear the tension underneath. She's standing in front of one of the workstations, a data slate in her hands. "Look at this."
I cross to her, reading over her shoulder. The notes are in multiple hands, different writing styles, different terminologies. But one section, dated three months before Sigma-9, is in handwriting I'd know anywhere.
My father's.
"He was here." The words taste like ash. "Before Sigma-9. Before he vanished. He was working on this."
"Not just working on it." Astra scrolls through the data, her face illuminated by the slate's glow. "Directing it. These are his research parameters, his hypotheses. Dexter, this whole facility was his project."
The implications settle over me like a shroud. Sigma-9 wasn't random. The coordinates, the assets, the ambush that killed her squad and destroyed my father, it was all connected to this. To research that someone wanted badly enough to kill for.
"Well." The voice comes from the doorway, calm and familiar. "I was wondering when you'd find me."
I turn, hand already on my weapon, but I don't draw. Not yet.
Webb stands in the entrance, flanked by four guards with rifles raised. He's older than the last time I saw him, hair gone grey at the temples, new lines carved into his face. But his eyes are the same. Sharp. Calculating. The eyes of a man who's always three moves ahead.
"Dexter Torrence," he says, stepping into the lab. "And Astra Venn. Together. That's interesting." His gaze shifts between us, assessing. "I assume you're here to kill me."
"That was the plan." I keep my hand near my weapon, but Webb makes no move to draw his own. Neither do his guards, though their rifles stay trained on us. "Want to tell me why I shouldn't?"
"Because I can give you answers." Webb moves to one of the workstations, his movements unhurried. Like we're colleagues discussing research, not enemies in a standoff. "About Sigma-9. About your father. About what you're really chasing through the dark."
"You sold us out." Astra's voice could cut through hull plating. "You gave them our coordinates. My squad died because of you."
"Yes." Webb doesn't flinch from the accusation. "I provided information to certain parties in exchange for compensation. I won't insult you by denying it."
"Then you admit it." Her hand moves to her weapon.
"I admit I was a conduit." Webb's eyes stay on her, unflinching.
"What I didn't know was what they planned to do with that information.
The coordinates, the asset locations, the patrol routes—I thought it was corporate espionage.
Industrial intelligence gathering. I didn't know they were planning a massacre. "
"Liar." The word is flat, absolute.
"Probably." Webb's smile is tired, empty of humor. "But consider this: Sigma-9 wasn't about you. It was never about you. It was about what you were guarding. Cargo you didn't know you were carrying. Research data. Malachar's work."
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees. I feel it in my chest, in the ice forming around my lungs.
"Explain." My voice comes out cold, controlled. The voice I use when I'm one wrong word away from violence.
Webb pulls up a holo-display, and data streams across the air between us. Coordinates. Asset manifests. Transfer records. And buried in the middle of it all, a single file tagged with my father's personal encryption signature.
"Your unit was transporting more than supplies," Webb says, highlighting a section of the manifest. "Hidden in the cargo containers, encrypted and compartmentalized, was twenty years of Malachar's anomaly research. Someone wanted it. Badly enough to kill everyone who knew it existed."
"Who?" Astra's question is ice and rage in equal measure. "Who gave the order?"
"The Obsidian Protocol." Webb shuts down the display. "An organization that exists in the spaces between governments and corporations. They wanted the research. They hired the kill team. And they recruited me to provide the information that made it possible."
"Why?" I step closer, every muscle coiled tight. "Why would you help them?"
"Because they offered me something I couldn't refuse." Webb's voice stays level, but something flickers in his eyes. Fear, maybe. Or regret. "Asylum. Protection. A way out of a situation that was already spiraling beyond my control. I made a choice. It was the wrong one. But I made it."
"You murdered my squad." Astra's voice shakes with barely contained fury. "You destroyed their lives. Their families. Everything they were. And you call it a choice?"
"I call it survival." Webb turns to face her fully.
"And if you want to kill me for it, I understand.
But kill me after I give you what you came for.
The truth about what's on the other side of that spatial tear.
The truth about what the Obsidian Protocol is really after.
The truth about why Malachar disappeared. "
"You're lying." Astra's hand is on her weapon now, fingers white-knuckled on the grip. "You'll say anything to stay alive."
"Yes." Webb's smile is grim. "But consider: if I wanted you dead, why am I talking instead of fighting? My guards have had clear shots on both of you since you walked through that door. If this was an ambush, you'd already be bleeding."
He's right. I hate that he's right, but he is. This is something else. An offer. A negotiation.
"What do you want?" I ask.
"Asylum." Webb's voice is steady. "Protection from the people I betrayed to get here. Information for safety. That's the deal."
"No deal." Astra moves before I can stop her, weapon drawn, firing as she crosses the distance between them.
Webb throws himself sideways, and the shot goes wide. His guards open fire, and the laboratory erupts into chaos.
I'm moving on instinct, weapon up, returning fire as I track Astra's position. She's fast, faster than she should be, her body remembering combat training even as her mind screams for blood. She's on Webb in seconds, weapon pressed to his throat, her finger on the trigger.
"Astra, don't!" I shout over the weapons fire, but she's not listening.
"You killed them," she says, and her voice is empty of everything but rage. "You killed them all."
"Yes." Webb doesn't struggle. "So do it. Pull the trigger. But know that if you do, you'll never learn the truth about what really happened that day."
Her finger tightens on the trigger.
And the world explodes.
Not weapons fire. Something else. A concussive blast that lifts me off my feet and slams me into the wall hard enough to crack my ribs. The laboratory lights strobe, emergency klaxons shrieking, and I see Webb on the floor, his hand on a panel I didn't notice before.
Self-destruct. The bastard triggered a self-destruct.
"Astra!" I'm on my feet, scanning the smoke and chaos for her. "Astra!"
I find her ten feet away, crumpled against a workstation. Blood spreads across her side, dark and wet. One of the guards got her. A lucky shot in the chaos, or maybe not luck at all.
The guards are down. Webb is gone, vanished into the smoke. And the facility is tearing itself apart, bulkheads groaning, atmosphere venting through cracks in the hull.
I grab the nearest data terminal and jack in, my fingers flying over the interface. Five seconds. That's all I have before the whole system crashes. I pull everything I can, dumping files into local storage without even checking what they are.
Then I'm at Astra's side, hauling her up, her weight nearly nothing in my arms.
"Dexter?" Her voice is weak, confused.
"I've got you." I move toward the exit, her blood hot against my hands. "Stay with me. Astra, stay with me."
The corridors are a nightmare of failing systems and collapsing infrastructure. I run through passages that are disintegrating behind me, Astra's weight solid and real in my arms, her breathing shallow and rapid against my chest.
"Dexter?" She's trying to focus on my face, her eyes glassy with pain and shock.
"I'm here." I take a corner too fast, nearly losing my footing as the deck buckles beneath me. "I'm not leaving you."
"I know." Her voice is fading, slipping away even as I tighten my grip. "That's the problem."
She goes limp in my arms. Unconscious. Her blood soaks through my shirt, warm and wet, and for a moment I'm back on Sigma-9, standing over bodies I couldn't save, covered in blood that wasn't mine.
Not this time.
I run harder, her weight driving me forward instead of holding me back. The ship is ahead, the airlock open, Kesh already inside shouting coordinates and medical jargon I don't process.
I carry her through the lock. I lay her on the medical bay table. I step back, and my hands are red with her blood again.
But this time, I didn't leave.
This time, I stayed.