Chapter 10 #2
Nice work, you actually got something right for once.
They stood in the darkness, his arms around Cait, holding her close to his bigger, harder body. The sound of their breathing was loud in the confined space. Too loud. What if the guard heard them?
Then he looked down and all that fell away.
She was… right there.
The cupboard was small. Barely big enough for one person, let alone two.
Her back was against the wall, shelving digging into her shoulder blades.
His body blocked her from the door, one hand braced above her head against a rack of cleaning supplies.
There was nowhere to put his other hand that wasn’t on her.
He felt the heat of her through the thin fabric of her shirt. Could smell her… a floral, sweet scent that made his hindbrain sit up and pay attention.
She tilted her face up to say something, his gaze tracking her movements easily in the dark.
He could see clearly, but he knew she couldn’t.
Humans didn’t have the same kind of genetic adaptations to different conditions that the Lathar did, and his clan—former clan—had lived on a planet that spent over six months in darkness every year.
Her mouth was right there.
Two inches. Maybe less. He could just lean down and…
The guard’s footsteps were audible through the door now. Slow and methodical. The unhurried pace of someone checking boxes on a patrol route, not someone who’d seen anything suspicious.
Guard is passing, Fred said in his ear. Hold position. Ten seconds.
Ten seconds.
That was an absolute eternity.
Her breath was warm against his jaw. Her hand had come up at some point, he didn’t remember when and her fingers were resting against the bare skin of his chest, not pushing, just… there. He felt his own pulse under her palm.
Five seconds.
The footsteps were directly outside the door now. He held his breath as the creak of leather, the soft exhale of a male who was bored and tired and counting the minutes until his shift ended, reached his ears.
Cait’s fingers curled slightly, brushing just over his heart.
Clear, Fred said. He’s past you. Continuing down the corridor. You can move in thirty seconds.
Thirty seconds.
Cait looked up, and the silence stretched between them, thick and heavy. Her eyes were dark in the dim light, pupils blown wide. He could see the pulse jumping in her throat.
“Raaze,” she murmured.
He closed the distance.
One kiss, that’s what he told himself. Just one kiss. But then her mouth opened under his, and she kissed him back, her hand flat against his chest.
And he was lost.
The guard’s footsteps faded down the corridor, the rhythmic thud of boots replaced by the silence in the closet. The world shrank to the space between Cait and Raaze, the air between them electric.
Her fingers were still clamped around the edges of Raaze’s jacket. Shit.
Clear, Fred said. But you need to move. Now. The window’s shrinking.
Releasing him, she stepped back quickly.
Too quickly. Her shoulders hit the shelving behind her, and there was a soft ‘clank’.
They both froze, wide-eyed. If whatever that was fell, there was no way she could twist and catch it, not without causing a cascade of the rest of the contents of the shelves…
But nothing happened. No armed guards yanked the door open and hauled them out. The corridor outside stayed silent.
Raaze’s hand found the panel in the dark, and it slid open. He didn’t look at her. Didn’t say anything about what had just happened. Neither did she. There wasn’t time. And she was absolutely not going to be the one who brought it up.
Checking the corridor, he put a hand on her elbow and urged her out of the closet. He followed, his presence a heavy weight at her back.
Turn left at the next junction. Forty meters to the archive access point.
Fred’s voice was clinical in her implant. Professional. She hadn’t turned off the visual feed on her lens, so he had to know what they’d been up to in the closet.
Yeah… she’d think about that later. Much later. Preferably never.
The corridor forked to the left, and Raaze moved, putting himself between her and the opening ahead before she’d even registered it. His larger body shielded her from view as they passed.
Twenty meters. Service door on your right.
Another junction and another gap, but this time she was watching. Raaze did it again… that smooth pivot and move alongside that looked casual but wasn’t.
Almost there, Fred said. The door is marked with a yellow maintenance stripe. Turning left in ten… nine…
Focus. She could unpack whatever was going on with Raaze later.
They turned, and it was right there. Yellow stripe across the center, access panel glowing a soft amber, indicating it was locked but not alarmed. Beyond it, according to the schematics Fred had pulled, was the archive’s inner security checkpoint. And after that—
This is as far as my route takes you. The inner door is on a separate system. Isolated from the main network. You’re going to have to do this one yourself.
“Yeah,” she kept her voice low. “That’s why I brought tools.”
Raaze positioned himself at the corner, watching both approaches. His posture had shifted the moment they’d stopped moving… looser through the shoulders, weight balanced on the balls of his feet. Ready. For what, she didn’t want to think about. But whatever it was, he was ready.
Her knees hit the cold floor, and she pulled a thin, flexible multi-tool from her kit. Her hands were steady despite the adrenaline racing through her system.
The outer panel came off easily. Just four screws with standard threading, not at all what she was expecting from an alien installation. Shouldn’t they have something more exotic than screws that could have been made in any human factory?
She sat back on her heels as she pulled the panel off and looked inside. Yeah… this was going to be fun. The Healer’s Hall security wasn’t residential garbage like V’Teth’s door had been. This was proper encryption and proper hardware. Which meant it was going to be a proper pain in her ass.
The checkpoint guard is due back in eleven minutes.
“Got it.”
The lock fought her. It wasn’t just a tumblers-and-pins game; it was a digital handshake wrapped in a physical deadbolt. She slid the probe in, waiting for resistance. The first pin clicked, and she almost smiled. Almost. She knew better than to tempt fate.
The bypass she tried got rejected, and she hissed between her teeth as the mechanism clicked back to neutral as if it were personally offended. The second attempt made it further, the tumbler shifting against the probe, but then the failsafe kicked in and reset the whole sodding thing.
Her hands were sweating, so she wiped them on her thigh, and tried again.
Seven minutes.
“Fred. I swear to—”
“He’s not wrong.” Raaze’s voice was low and calm. He hadn’t moved from his post at the corner of the corridor. “But you’ve got this.”
She didn’t answer as she kept working. The third bypass was working. She felt the mechanism respond to the probe’s frequency, which meant she was close. The tumbler shifted. Applying pressure to the secondary catch, she held her breath, and—
Click.
The door slid open in front of them.
Raaze glanced back at her, one eyebrow arched. “Useful skill set.”
She grinned, packing up her tools and sliding them into a thigh pocket. “I have layers.”
“Clearly.”
The archive stretched out ahead of them, rows of storage units arranged in precise geometric patterns. Emergency lighting cast everything in a dim blue glow, the kind that made shadows pool in corners.
She moved between the rows until she found the secondary door Fred had marked on her lens display. It was smaller than the outer entrance, tucked into an alcove like an afterthought.
She knelt and popped the access panel.
And stared.
“What the fuc—fudge?”
Raaze appeared at her shoulder, his bulk blocking the light. “Problem?”
“No. The problem is there is no problem.” She gestured at the mechanism with her probe. “This is… this is nothing. Basic tumbler lock, no encryption layer, no failsafe. I could open this with a hairpin and a prayer.”
She’d expected this to be harder. Layered security, with escalating difficulty. That was how it worked. You didn’t put your best lock on the outside and leave the inner door held shut with wishful thinking.
Raaze shrugged, the movement easy despite the tension in the corridor behind them. “Why would they bother?”
“What do you mean? Why would they bother? This is the Healers’ Hall archive. Patient records, medical research, probably half the genetic data in the sector—”
“Which is protected by the guards.” He ticked points off on his fingers.
“The checkpoints. The encrypted outer door you just cracked. The fact that this entire facility is on a separate network that can’t be accessed remotely.
” He nodded toward the lock. “That’s not security.
That’s box ticking because this door needed a lock. ”
“That’s idiotic.”
His mouth curved, not quite a smile. “No one expected anyone to get this far. So why waste resources on a lock no one would ever reach?”
She wanted to argue. It offended her engineer’s soul, the idea that security could be this… lazy.
Four minutes, Fred reminded her.
Right. Complain about shoddy security practices later.
The lock gave up its secrets in under thirty seconds. The door slid open with a soft hiss, revealing the records room beyond.
“Through,” she said.
Inside, the inner sanctum of the archive was a tomb of humming servers and dim blue light.
She didn’t waste time, sliding into the seat behind the primary interface and her fingers flying across the keys.
This was her element. It wasn’t about fighting or sneaking; it was about patterns. Her language. Not his.