Chapter 1 Zara #2
I should have planned this better. I should have had a route mapped, a diversion created, a ship waiting.
I didn't plan this at all. I'm doing it because if I walk out of this room and go back to my desk, I will spend the rest of my life knowing exactly what route these seven people traveled to their deaths, and I was the one who made the trains run on time.
The cell locks are centrally controlled too. I queue them all to open simultaneously, on a timer, synced to the sensor diagnostic window. Thirty-nine minutes.
Then I walk to Cell 7. The Vorath watches me approach. The blue light in its skin is a steady, even pulse now, neither fast nor slow. Calm? Alert? I can't read it.
"I'm going to open the doors," I say. I don't know if it understands me.
I don't know if any of them understand me.
"In about thirty-nine minutes. The halls will be clear for eight minutes.
That's not a lot. But there are maintenance shuttles on sublevel one and I can get the bay doors open remotely. "
The Vorath tilts its head. The gesture is so oddly human that it catches me off guard.
Then it speaks.
"You are afraid." Its voice is deep, not loud, resonant. It goes through my chest. The words are slightly formal, precisely formed, like each one was selected from a menu.
"Terrified, actually," I say. "So let's not make it worse by having a long conversation about it."
"You will open the doors."
"Yes."
"Why?"
I stare at the being in the glass box. Eight feet tall, four arms, chained to the floor, skin that glows with its own pulse, asking me why I'm committing career suicide and probably actual suicide.
"Because I'm the logistics coordinator," I say. "And this cargo was misrouted."
Something shifts in its expression. I don't know enough about Vorath facial structure to call it a smile, but the light in its skin brightens, just for a moment, and the low vibration in my chest changes pitch. Warmer, maybe, if sound can be warm.
I don't stay to chat. I have thirty-seven minutes and a station full of people who are about to have a very bad night.
I take the elevator back up to the logistics hub, sit at my desk, and start building the most important routing table of my life.
Maintenance shuttles, bay door sequences, sensor blind spots, patrol schedules.
I pull it all together in a spreadsheet because that's what I know.
That's what I am. I'm the woman with the spreadsheet.
Twenty minutes later, my comms unit pings. Sublevel alarm. Biosensor fluctuation in Hold 9-C. Someone in security is asking if it's a system error.
I flag it as a diagnostic artifact in the maintenance log. Routine. Ignore.
Twelve minutes after that, the shift changes. The sensor diagnostic runs. The cell doors open.
I sit at my desk and watch six dots on my tracking overlay move through the corridors I mapped for them, toward the sublevel one maintenance bay, toward three shuttles I've already unlocked remotely.
I gave each shuttle a pre-programmed jump route to different systems. Scatter pattern. Harder to track.
Six dots. Not seven.
Cell 7 hasn't moved.
I pull up the internal cameras. The Vorath is standing. Unchained, because the cell door opened and the chain locks released with it. It's standing in the corridor outside its cell, eight feet of dark marble and blue light, and it's not moving toward the shuttle bay.
It's moving toward the elevator. Toward me.
Oh no.
The diagnostic window is closing. I have four minutes of sensor blackout left.
I grab my bag, my datapad, and the emergency credit chip I keep in my desk drawer because I'm the kind of person who keeps an emergency credit chip in her desk drawer.
I head for the east corridor, toward the secondary shuttle bay that I kept off my routing table because it was my exit.
My escape. The one shuttle I saved for myself.
I round the corner and stop.
It's there. The Vorath. Standing in the corridor like it teleported, except it didn't, it just moved faster than something that size should be able to move.
It fills the hallway. All four arms are at its sides.
The blue light is pulsing steadily, calmly, and it's looking at me with those dark, lightless eyes.
"You are leaving," it says.
"That was the plan, yes."
"I will go with you."
"That was very much not the plan."
It doesn't move. It doesn't argue. It just stands there, eight feet tall and luminous, and waits, like the concept of being told no is something it heard but chose not to process.
The station alarm triggers. Not a drill. Someone found the empty cells.
"Fine," I say, because I'm out of time and out of options and the eight-foot glowing alien has apparently decided that my escape plan is now a group activity. "Fine. But you're too tall for the shuttle and if you break anything, I'm listing it on your invoice."
"I do not have an invoice."
"You do now. Move."
We run. Well, I run. It walks quickly. Same speed. The shuttle bay is ninety seconds away and I can hear boots on metal somewhere behind us. I hit the bay door release, the shuttle powers up on my remote command, and I throw myself into the cockpit.
The Vorath folds itself through the shuttle door. Four arms, eight feet, into a space designed for humans. It crunches in. Things creak.
"I told you," I mutter, and punch the launch sequence.
The shuttle clears the bay. Open space. Stars. A jump gate four minutes away.
Behind us, the station lights up with pursuit alerts.
I aim for the gate and push the throttle to maximum.
I am Zara Cole. I am thirty years old. I was a logistics coordinator. And I just stole Helix Corp's cargo.
All of it.