Chapter 3
Venom
I couldn't let this progress any further.
The first couple, Fay and Vruhag, had escaped the Trials with my help.
Well, mostly the chii's help. I'd only done some gentle nudging, a few more sponsorships, and hacked into the Trial's security systems to allow a tractor beam to whisk them off the planet.
They were currently hiding on a spaceship, the Bloodstar, after abandoning their previous ship, the Artep, which had been crewed by a ragtag assortment of low-level criminals. For now, they were safe.
With them were the Gofren Qong and his mate, Penny.
She’d turned out to be the Peritan female whose empty pod I’d found during my very first visit to the cryopod chamber.
For some reason, they’d let her out and made her work as a maintenance r’hat in the sewage pipes.
I’d only discovered her existence after she’d freed her mate and escaped Kalumbu Station on the Artep.
Then there was Silus, the satyr, and his human bride, Pria.
Silus had been part of the Artep’s crew, working as a hacker like me, but had flown to Kalumbu to save his mate.
I’d given him plenty of assistance from afar, hacking into the planet’s defences to open a barrier for the satyr.
I couldn’t resist sending him a hidden message, but I wasn’t sure if he’d received it.
I’d helped them again when Silus had activated an emergency beacon, disguising the signal to the space station’s sensors and amplifying it for ships in orbit, namely the Bloodstar.
Shortly after, letting Vruhag’s shuttle onto the planet and then back into space again had almost got me caught.
The station’s security AI had caught on that someone was interfering with the systems and had laid a trap for me.
I’d discovered it just in time, but I’d realised I couldn’t be the Bloodstar’s secret helper for much longer without risking mission failure.
Three Peritans had found their mates. Any moment I'd not been at work, I'd been watching their progress. They were all relatively safe on the Bloodstar.
But my mate was still here.
As were twenty-five other females still sleeping in their cryopods.
One unlucky female had been pulled from her pod yesterday and transported to the surface this morning. The thought made my coils tighten. I wanted to help her – but the longer she remained in the Trials, the longer my mate stayed untouched. Safe.
I hated that truth. I wanted to rescue them all. But I had to prioritise her.
She was my one and only.
She just didn’t know it yet.
To help the female in the Trials, I had tried to get the chii involved again, but I wasn't sure if they'd received my message. If they had, they hadn’t replied. Fortunately, most of my colleagues were obsessed with the Trials, so I could have them open on my screen without raising suspicion.
Still, the longer this continued, the harder it became to hide my true purpose.
And I was running out of time.
I used to think I could keep this up – split myself into two people. The cold hacker. The silent observer. But that mask was cracking. Every time I looked at her pod, I felt it slip a little further. Every time someone walked too close to the cryopod chamber, I bristled.
I was already making mistakes.
I couldn’t afford more.
Because if they found out who she was to me – what she was – I wouldn’t get the chance to save her.
They’d use her.
And then they’d kill her.
There was no coverage of the female just now, so I hacked into a drone and made it fly to the storage room where the pods stood. My coils tightened with every second it took for the signal to stabilise. The screen glitched, then snapped into focus.
The room was darker than usual. I switched to night-vision – and sucked in a sharp breath. I looked around the control room to make sure nobody had taken notice of my reaction, then stared at the screen again.
Her pod was open.
And empty.
My mate had gone.
Nagas' hearts are hard to stop, even with the most effective poisons and drugs, but in that moment, my hearts stopped for a click.
How could this have happened? I had multiple sub-routines running that were supposed to alert me to any mention of her pod in the system. There had been no scheduled pod opening today. And especially not hers.
I didn't know what to do. This was not planned. And I hated surprises.
Gritting my teeth so much that my fangs stabbed my lower lip, I hacked back into the system and started to write a quick programme that would search for my mate.
It was a messy hack, something I wouldn't usually do, but this was an emergency.
I had to know where my mate had gone. Was she already on the way to the planet's surface?
She wasn't due to join the Trials for another two weeks.
She was the last of the five Peritan females, I had made sure of that.
I checked on the remaining females. They were still slumbering in their pods.
Lucky them. As I was waiting for my search to have a result, I had time to write some more security protocols.
If anyone got close to their pods, I would get an alert.
The same should have been true for my mate's cryopod.
How had someone circumvented my programme?
It shouldn't be possible. I was the best hacker on Kalumbu station.
Yes, there were better hackers in the galaxy, but the station's systems were firewalled from the intergalactic net.
You had to be on the space station itself to access them.
That's why I'd been sent here in the first place.
Someone must have erased the logs manually. A higher clearance than mine? That left only a very short list of suspects.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. My tail was trembling with anxiety and anger. No, it was more than that. Fury at myself. At my failure. If I wasn't even able to protect my mate while she was asleep, how could I ever be worthy of her?
A frustratingly gentle ping announced my programme's success. After a quick look around – all my co-workers were either watching the Trials or working – I opened the search results.
No.
Oh Glycon, no.
She was in the worst possible place in the entire station. Somewhere I could not reach her. What in the seven worlds was she doing in Jarra's quarters?
My coils constricted so tightly I had to bite back a hiss. Panic clawed at my throat, sharp and sudden.
What interest did the Prime Game Maker have in her?
He hadn't paid much attention to the other Peritans – at least not until Penny and Vruhag had escaped.
Maybe that was it. He might be searching for answers as to how anyone could flee the Trials.
It had been impossible up to this point.
Nobody ever got out of the games alive. The public thought that the few contestants who survived until the end were transported off the planet, but the truth was much darker than that.
Fuck.
I didn't know what to do. This rarely ever happened. I wasn't sure what to do with that feeling. How to cope. I wanted to go on a rampage. Slay them all. Free my mate. Kill Jarra.
But... I could not.
I remembered why I was here, why I'd signed up for this fucking job.
I had lost track of that motivation over time, but now that I saw their lifeless faces flicking through my mind, I knew.
It was worth it. Worth all the pretence, the waiting, the ugliness, the death.
In the end, justice would be done, and I could go home.
With my mate. If I could rescue her before it was too late.
There were no cameras in Jarra's quarters that I could hack into. I wouldn't be able to fly a drone there either. I was blind.
Wait. When I'd first come to Kalumbu Station, I'd found a loophole in the code that I'd always planned to exploit, but never had a reason to. This was the perfect reason.
With the tiniest spark of newfound hope, I started typing.
I kept a tight awareness of my surroundings, glancing around frequently.
I was lucky that my colleagues were all captivated by today's episode of the Trials.
It was a particularly bloody one. Last I'd checked, three contestants had died already.
Every room in the station had microphones installed in the ceiling, both to access the internal AI assistant and to communicate with other inhabitants.
Whoever had designed the station's security systems had put a lot of effort into protecting these microphones from unwanted access, but I was not your usual hacker.
I'd instinctively known I'd be able to crack the code the moment I'd looked at it.
It wasn't easy and took too long – every moment my mate was with Jarra could be her last – but I persisted.
The security AI was fighting me, trying to develop new lines of defence at the same time as I was writing my code. I wouldn't have long.
"...perfect. I like my contestants to have spirit."
Jarra's voice filtered through my auditory implant. I detested the male. He was a cancer that had infested not just this station, but the entire planet. Kalumbu had been beautiful once. Now it was a place of death and despair.
"Fuck you!" My mate's voice. It was the first time I heard her speak, yet she sounded so very familiar.
I was glad I'd spent the past two rotations researching her language and uploading it to my internal translator.
I had even learned the basics myself, just in case I couldn't fit her with an implant right away. But then the game makers had given implants to a few of the females, including my mate. Maybe that’s why Jarra had chosen her. She would understand his cruel words.
"As I said. Spirit." Jarra laughed. "But now it is time for you to show me what you can do. Prove yourself and I might change my mind."
I was missing crucial parts of the conversation. What did he have to change his mind about? I hoped it was sending her down to the planet's surface as a contestant. Although...knowing Jarra, the alternative would be at least as horrible.
"Fuck you," my mate repeated.
I cheered her on mentally, yet I was also terrified of how Jarra would react.
He did not appreciate insubordination and punished any misbehaviour or perceived disrespect severely.
I had learned to avoid him, and if I had to interact with him, I played the perfect grunt.
Jarra desired to be admired and revered.
People like him were easy to handle if you knew what his needs were.
"One more time and you will suffer the consequences," Jarra warned, his voice quiet and collected, yet sharp around the edges.
This time, my mate stayed silent. As much as I didn't want her spirit to be broken, I was also glad that she hadn't given him a reason to threaten her further.
"That's better. Now we can get to know each other better."
I coiled up my tail so hard that it hurt to stop myself from screaming. I had to do something. A hundred different options ran through my mind, none of them enough. I was ready to break my cover when K=lwr, the Quentan next to me, cursed in his native language.
"The anti-fire system is broken again. A blockage. Anyone know how to fix this without sending a r’hat through the pipes?"
A new idea blossomed. Jarra was a Irridonian. The chemicals in the automated anti-fire systems were harmless to most species, but not to Irridonians. If I could release them in his quarters, blaming the broken system, it might distract him for long enough for me to come up with a better plan.
I typed furiously, hacking faster than ever before. The anti-fire systems weren't protected much as nobody saw them as a threat to the station. Deadly if they didn't work, but nobody had assumed that they could be used as a weapon. I was a lucky bastard.
"Sorry, you will have to send a r’hat or two," I told K=lwr absentmindedly.
"Did you 'ear one of 'em escaped?" Bawwa from two workstations further budged in. "Some strange species I'd never 'eard about. Purritan or something like 'at."
They were talking about Penny. I hadn’t realised her escape was public knowledge, but I couldn’t worry about that now. I finished the code and deployed the hack. My coils were constricted so tight it was hard to breathe. This had to work. I didn't know what else to do.
Neither Jarra nor my mate had said anything in a while. I checked the link. It was still live. What was he doing to her? Was she even still alive? No, she had to be. She was a valuable commodity. Jarra knew that. He was driven by base instincts most of the time, but he wasn't stupid.
A horrified scream echoed through my implant. I repressed a grim smile and resisted the urge to turn down the volume. Jarra was clearly in a lot of pain. Good. He deserved every bit of it.
"What is happening?" my mate asked in the background, sounding more curious than afraid. I was so proud of the way she conducted herself. Not surprising with her background.
Jarra groaned and screamed. My plan was working even better than expected.
The Prime Game Maker was disabled for now.
I had to use this time to give my mate a way to escape.
I changed systems and unlocked all the doors in his quarters.
As soon as I did, the sensors showed one of them opening.
It had to be my mate. Without cameras, this was the only way I could monitor her progress until she was in a public corridor.
I made sure all the doors and portals on the entire floor were unlocked. Now I could-
A heavy hand landed on my shoulder.
"What the klatting rut are you doing?"