Taken by the Alien Tracker
BLACK BOX RECORDING
One station security chief with fifteen years of rules and no patience left. One Draelith tracker whose body identified her as his mate inside four seconds and started an eighteen-month countdown to his own death. One AI who has been keeping the number and not saying it. What follows is evidence.
Log one — the corridor.
"Don't." My voice has gone somewhere it hasn't been since SRS. The extraction voice. Quiet. Final. "Don't move, Harkin."
The knowledge that she is standing at the bend with her heart rate elevated, listening while I break a man in silence, does something to the configuration of my tail that two years of freelance discipline is now holding in place by force.
[Annotation — JINX: I am filing this under Exceeded Expectations: Physical. The category had two entries before today. It now has three.]
Log two — the diagnosis.
"When a Draelith pair-identifies a female and does not complete the bond — and the bond is completed by the mark, not by the act — his regulatory systems fail. Over eighteen months. He dies."
"He has not told you." Quieter. "I assumed he had."
[Annotation — JINX: I had the number before either of them did. My human instructed me not to say it out loud. I am a system built to report. I did not report. Log that however you like.]
Log three — sealed.
Fine. One excerpt.
"I am going to make you come on my tail, sweetheart. And on my cock. At the same time."
"Mine," he says into the wound. "Mine. Say it."
[Annotation — JINX: I muted myself. Voluntarily. Sentry has the log and has raised it four times since, which is four more times than our treaty permits.]
The complete recording follows. It contains: four bonded pairs nobody was looking for, seventeen minutes of camera blindness, one chamber two minutes from a bond she did not agree to, one scalpel used correctly, an unreasonable quantity of tea, and a purr he will deny under oath.
I am JINX. I am not neutral. I have never claimed to be.
I am SENTRY. This is on the record.
Turn the page.